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H1-B Administrators Are Challenging An Unusually Large Number of Applications (bloomberg.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader decaffeinated quotes Bloomberg: Starting this summer, employers began noticing that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services was challenging an unusually large number of H-1B applications. Cases that would have sailed through the approval process in earlier years ground to a halt under requests for new paperwork. The number of challenges -- officially known as "requests for evidence" or RFEs -- are up 44 percent compared to last year, according to statistics from USCIS...
"We're entering a new era," said Emily Neumann, an immigration lawyer in Houston who has been practicing for 12 years. "There's a lot more questioning, it's very burdensome." She said in past years she's counted on 90 percent of her petitions being approved by Oct. 1 in years past. This year, only 20 percent of the applications have been processed. Neumann predicts she'll still have many unresolved cases by the time next year's lottery happens in April 2018.
"We're entering a new era," said Emily Neumann, an immigration lawyer in Houston who has been practicing for 12 years. "There's a lot more questioning, it's very burdensome." She said in past years she's counted on 90 percent of her petitions being approved by Oct. 1 in years past. This year, only 20 percent of the applications have been processed. Neumann predicts she'll still have many unresolved cases by the time next year's lottery happens in April 2018.
Both were hit with RFE. Guidance from the lawyers were:
They seem to be cracking down on the practice of finding unusual combinations of qualifications in the candidates (like BS in accounting, fluency in Kannada language and truck driving license), putting them all as necessary qualifications making it impossible for anyone else to apply.
We only hire people with Masters or PhDs from top American schools. We were at a very heave disadvantage in the earlier loose era. TCS, Wipro and the assorted Indian body shoppers would grab the H1Bs and our candidates had to live through lottery. But now, we can easily meet the law, in spirit as well as the letter. Personally I welcome such strict scrutiny. It should have been like this from day 1.
US high school grads with 1 or 2 year training is enough to do most jobs done by the Indian Body shop imports. They should not even be considered for H1B. Simple coding is all they do, and they were gaming the system. They should restrict H1Bs for Graduate degrees from US universities. That will curb the rampant resume inflation and outright lies in the resumes.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Even if it wasn’t the author’s intent. From TFA:
”For Centro, a company in Chicago that makes technology for ad agencies, the problems started this summer. Centro had applied for visas for three young employees who already had the legal right to work for a limited time after graduating from college. One of the applications had been chosen in the H-1B lottery. Emilie Clark, the company’s director of human resources, happily called the employee to tell him his immigration status was settled for the next three years. ”
H1-B is supposed to be used for special cases where there simply aren’t enough Americans available with a particular hard-to-find skill set. There’s just about zero chance that some young recent graduate has such a background. But just for the sake of argument, what were the skills in this case? Again, from TFA:
”... which consisted of writing algorithms and required knowledge of multiple programming languages as well as a solid understanding of relational data storage systems ...”
Seriously? The company needed an H1-B for that?
#DeleteChrome
As an added bonus, I can tell them to punt someone I don't like because I feel like it, and the contracting place removes them. No separation, no work on my side other than locking some accounts. Plus, I don't have to worry about HR and interviews.
In this Weinsteinian era, it starts to make me wonder how much sexual harassment gets swept under the rug in this system.
Pressure some woman for sex and when she doesn't deliver, tell the body shop she's not working out and you want her replaced. Given the generally low ethics associated with body shops, I can totally see them playing into serial offenders and sending them easy prey.
There is nothing to stop a foreigner from working for an American company, and that's as is should be. It is the government's responsibility to protect America, both by protecting it from attack and by protecting the American culture (by which I mean people with philosophies such as "All non-Muslims must die" should be rejected, and that large numbers of people unfamiliar with what freedom requires cannot be rapidly assimilated.)
Non-Americans no not have the right to be in America, and they certainly don't have the right to work here. It's not America's responsibility to provide a living for anyone who chooses to come here, and a successful attempt to remove all restrictions from entry into the country will destroy the country.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I have seen this play out in a small manufacturing firm in the midwest US. Nearly all of the 80 line workers were "permanent temps". Everyone is hired through temp agencies, and technically work for the temp agency on site. This practice is so the company can get away with not following many worker protections. If a manager does not like an employee, a phone call to the temp agency and the worker is "unplaced", not fired, at no cost or risk to the manufacturer.
There were allegations of sexual misconduct by some female employees about the building manager after private meetings. Sometimes nothing happened but criticisms. Sometimes the woman just would no longer have a timecard after the meeting.
This never happened to the comparatively few men working the line.
No one had money for legal action. More than half of the line employees only spoke spanish and were of questionable legal status (given name and paperwork name were different, claimed to be relatives but did not act like they knew each other well, shared cellphones and vehicles with only one licensed driver).
Such goes the life of the invisible tier 3 blue collar workforce making parts for BMW, Toyota, Tesla, and so on.
Having, over many years, been responsible for filling software development positions at various companies, I beg to differ. There simply are not enough skilled and motivated developers in the US.
Of course there are plenty of programmers -- if you just need warm bodies for a government contract or something like that, but that's not what I need.
Perhaps 1/3 to 1/2 of my employees started working in the US on an H1-B (some subsequently got their GC or became citizens). These were among my most valuable employees and, overall, were the highest paid. In one recent job, the top two highest paid people in my group were on H1-Bs -- they were that good and I paid for performance. I would much rather hire an "American" worker for every position -- it saves me the hassle of H1-Bs and related pain and I know that developers are staying around because they really like the work rather than just because it's too much of a problem for them to switch jobs. Yet, because I needed quality developers, I happily hire the most qualified person and that's often the H1-B candidate.
(That said, I've also seen horrible abuses of the H1-B program at other companies and, at one company I worked at, mild abuses -- none of my H1-B's were subject to those abuses at that latter company though).