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Trump Administration Tightens Scrutiny of Skilled Worker Visa Applicants (inc.com)
wyattstorch516 writes: The Trump administration is tightening the scrutiny on the H-1B visa program (Warning: paywalled; alternative source). Changes would undo actions by the Obama administration. There are two big regulatory changes looming that would undo actions by the Obama administration. "The first change allowed spouses of H-1B workers the right to work. That regulation is being challenged in court and the Trump administration is expected to eliminate the provision rather than defend it," reports WSJ. "The second change affects the Optional Practical Training program, which allows foreign graduates from U.S. colleges in science and technology an extra two years of work authorization, giving them time to win an H-1B visa. The Trump administration could kill that benefit or reduce the two-year window, according to people familiar with the discussions." The Journal highlights a "series of more modest changes that have added scrutiny to visa processing":
- "USCIS directed last month that adjudicators no longer pay 'deference' to past determinations for renewal applications. This means an applicant's past approval won't carry any weight if he or she applies for a renewal.
- The agency is conducting more applicant interviews, which critics say slows the system. The agency spokesman says this process will ramp up over several years and is needed to detect fraud and make accurate decisions.
- In the spring, the agency suspended premium processing, which allowed for fast-track consideration to those who paid an extra fee. This option wasn't resumed until October, meaning many workers who qualified for a coveted H-1B visa had to wait months for a decision.
- State Department officials have been told to consider that Mr. Trump's 'Buy American, Hire American' executive order directs visa programs must 'protect the interests of United States workers.' And the Foreign Affairs Manual now instructs officers to scrutinize applications of students to ensure they plan to return to their home countries. A State Department official said the official rules haven't changed but said a 'comprehensive' review is under way."
- "USCIS directed last month that adjudicators no longer pay 'deference' to past determinations for renewal applications. This means an applicant's past approval won't carry any weight if he or she applies for a renewal.
- The agency is conducting more applicant interviews, which critics say slows the system. The agency spokesman says this process will ramp up over several years and is needed to detect fraud and make accurate decisions.
- In the spring, the agency suspended premium processing, which allowed for fast-track consideration to those who paid an extra fee. This option wasn't resumed until October, meaning many workers who qualified for a coveted H-1B visa had to wait months for a decision.
- State Department officials have been told to consider that Mr. Trump's 'Buy American, Hire American' executive order directs visa programs must 'protect the interests of United States workers.' And the Foreign Affairs Manual now instructs officers to scrutinize applications of students to ensure they plan to return to their home countries. A State Department official said the official rules haven't changed but said a 'comprehensive' review is under way."
First off, it's "President Trump" and execution of his platform is pretty much what the voters expect, isn't it? Or have we come to expect less of our voted officials?
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Another anti-Trump clickbait article. How about everyone boycott this one?
Instead of just claiming there are no qualified applicants locally, why not create a national job board, where H1B employers must list the jobs publicly on a nationwide basis for 6 months before filing a H1B application. I mean, they are going to pay to import labor, why not require them to try to import it from another state in the US first.
Now the POTUS needs to get the SCROTUSES that sit on the SCOTUS and interpret the COTUS for the POTUS to re-interpret the COTUS to protect American Jobs.
Doing so will require the support of all the ROTUSES and SOTUSES of both HOTUSES and of course the GOTUSES of the SOTUS.
If the POTUS can't do that, than why don't we just elect a cat to sit in as the POTUS.
Just in time!
Twinstiq, game news
Trump's Mar-A-Lago gets approval to hire 70 foreign workers
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/trumps-mar-lago-approval-hire-70-foreign-workers-51041012
I'm a US citizen who just took a job in Japan and the system here is that once you get your visa, you can work anyone you want to work for the duration of the visa (1 year). After that time is up, your current employer has to sponsor you. It changes the dynamic because the employer knows they can't hold onto you so they they a) only invest in someone they really want and b) do what they can to make sure you are _happy_ working for them because they don't want to have to go through the whole process again. I'm not saying the system is perfect but if the company lied to me or treats me like crap I'm perfectly free to find another job (and people do).
The current US system is going to be abused as long as it let's employers enslave employees. Ethics aside, as an employer you'd have to be stupid to ignore a relatively cheap pool of labor that legally bound to you for the years it takes most people to get a green card.
Those are the ones Trump takes advantage of for his businesses:
See, in that case there's a need for US businesses to be able to compete in a global market.
Large-ish tech company (ASIC design), headquarters in SV, but we're a satellite office elsewhere. Of maybe 40 people, I'd wager at least a third are H1B, and probably a quarter are on OTP. And we're growing and still hiring.
We've posted and solicited all over, websites LinkedIn, colleges, etc. We just can't get very many American applications. No idea why, but we hire from the pool of applicants, so we have lots of talented H1Bs. If this goes through, our applicant pool is going to get even smaller.
Finally, someone is making sense on Slashdot!
What will become of the Simpsons?
Even though the U.S. citizens did not elect him
President Trump is our constitutionally elected president. If you don't like the process spelled out in our Constitution, feel free to start the amendment process.
Failing that, feel free to leave.
I love hearing about how businesses "can't find talent".
Here's a question for you. How many internships and apprenticeships has your company sponsored? I'm not talking about running-for-coffee internships. I'm talking about partnering with a local or regional engineering college, taking a few prospective grads and training them to do ASIC design.
Too many companies whine about a talent shortage, and then want the government to solve that problem for them.
Boo hoo - no sympathy from me.
to remove propaganda. Presumably, this is to make sure that "foreign" propaganda does not interfere with our native, domestic propaganda. You see, Americans prefer to have only sanctioned, sanitized American lies presented to their narrow idiot minds.
Of course, the people who will gladly engineer this kind of invasive surveillance and censorship are dirty shitbags from India. They come to America and are happy to do the badful and then we end up with MS windows logging every keystroke and AI Echo donuts to watch over and "teach" our children. All this decline is due to lazy, fruity millenials who love their homosexual tech-toys and swipe-phones.
We need to deport all millennials too.
Immigration law is just that - law. Enforcing the law is the job of the executive branch. I see nothing wrong with enforcing the laws on the books. If you don't like the law - work with your congresscritter to change the law.
For businesses claiming a "shortage of talent" - I want to ask one question: How many internships and apprenticeships have you sponsored? I'm not talking about running-for-coffee internships. I'm talking about partnering with one or two local engineering colleges, taking a couple of prospective grads and training them to do the highly skilled work that you want done.
Too many businesses complain about a talent shortage, do nothing to solve the problem, and then ask for Government to solve the problem for them.
You may like (or not like) German immigration policy - but you can not also ignore the fact that Germany integrates training for their skilled workforce into the education of that workforce - and the on-the-job training is done by the industries that need the talent.
If you aren't doing anything to try and fix the problem, you have no right to complain about it.
There are two optional practical trainings possible for students admitted to accredited US universities. Curricular Practical Training that happens before graduation. and Optional Practical Training, that happens after graduation. Both are limited to 12 months. In addition for STEM graduates, there is an additional 15 month extension to the OPT, allowing them 27 months of work permit, and if you include CPT, an F1 student can work for 39 months in USA.
This news item seems to suggest the 15 month additional time give to STEM graduates is going to be taken away.
I have seen the abuse of CPT and OPT. Mostly in non science fields. People enroll in a 12 month "executive MBA" programs in cheap less popular state schools, (heard of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, or University of California at Washington PA? these legit PA state schools with low fee), and game the system to work get 24 months and sometimes wangle another 15 month by showing their STEM undergrad degree from some diploma mill in India.
On the other hand, people coming to USA, be eligible to enroll in legitimate accredited US univ, with a genuine STEM program and get the degree and get to work in USA are the good kind of immigrants/workers we Americans should seek to encourage.
What we need to really fight is the way the body shopping Indian companies like TCS or Wipro or Infosys or their American counter parts Accenture, Syntel, iGate who game the system by claiming degrees from Indian Diploma mills to be equivalent to American Accredited university degrees. This is the abuse we should fight. Any Indian, Chinese, or any one, who struggles through GRE the way my kids do, and do a genuine Masters should be welcomed.
But the body shopping companies have the money to spend of lawyers to game the system, and the unorganized students from foreign countries can't match them.
Think about what we are doing here, we recruit smart people from all over the world, give them an American standard education, insight into American way of doing things, and then send them back. At the same time, we allow low quality graduates from Indian diploma mills to flood our system depressing the wages of Americans.
Can we be more insane than this? The incredible stupidity of our system astounds me.
I am from India, now I am an American and as American I want the next generation of me from India. Not the TCS dummies.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This is why I voted for Trump!, way to go man, keep up the good work, we need to keep skilled jobs in american hands!
Now if we could only get the hiring managers to realize this. 2 cheap H1bs, that together, provide half the productivity (which is roughly my experience with them. . .) of an American worker for the same outlay, is NOT a smart business deal. . .
Maybe try paying better salaries and you'll get more talent? Oh I forgot you live in Silicon Valley where every cost is inflated 10x.
Americans sometimes wonder why real wages have stayed stagnant since the 1960s. The simple answer is supply and demand: in response to the toxic effect of unions, businesses have been lobbying for us to dump more people into the workforce. This increases supply and thus reduces wages, which allows business to counter-act unions. We have been flooding the workforce since the 1960s with women, Hart-Cellar Act third world labor, illegal immigrants, H1Bs, and now digital helpers like computers and (soon) robots. Each one of these dumps cuts wages. What Trump is doing is pure business logic: he is reducing supply, increasing demand, and therefore, raising wages.
Alternative Right.
There are two things i see happening in the job market.
One is that businesses are not offering enough money for people to leave their current place of employment, this applies to workers that have the exact skills that a new business wants. Seems like employers want to tighten budgets more and more and do not understand that in order to make money, you have to spend money.
Two is that businesses have un realistic expectations for the skills they require and are being overly specific with what they are looking for. This artificially limits the applicant pool by cutting out transferable skills or things that they actually learn on the job, more often than not because the business has a proprietary process for doing something instead of the standardized process that is taught in school. This leads to hiring people who pretty much just lie about their skills to get the job and as an added bonus will take a much lower salary because they know that the bosses will put up with more issues if they aren't paying that much for a person.
Conclusion: the people who run businesses have forgotten that in order to make money you must spend money, especially when you are talking about individuals and their skills.
And he's still have a negative Slashdot article about how he's racist because the cure doesn't apply to cancers that predominantly affect [non-white race here].
Have the program require a $50k fee per worker, non-refundable, and have it so that workers can switch jobs without penalty at any time, regardless of what their contract says.
With those two changes, companies will need to offer exceptional wages to retain any H1-B workers they hire. For specialized workers that are hard to find in the US, they may do it. But if they try to hire Joe Average Programmer at below-market wages, then they'll be quickly out $50k, and their hire will jump ship to another company.
He’s targeting students, not companies like wipro.
"Trump Administration Tightens Scrutiny of Skilled Worker Visa Applicants "
Past tense. Deed is done.
"There are two big regulatory changes looming that would undo actions by the Obama administration...that (existing) regulation is being challenged in court "
Future tense. Not yet done. Subject to change or revision.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
I'd contend a lot of the success of the United States in the last 40 years has been due to acquiring all those smart folks from the other parts of the world and getting them to come here. They get settled, found American companies, hire people, and pay some level of taxes.
Now it sounds like we're going to educate them (though they might just go elsewhere) and force them out so other countries likely will offer them perks to come and do the same. Then in 10-20 years, we're going to be asking why aren't we the leaders in various industries.
Like most actions by this administration, it isn't about solving a serious issue, but it is very much about the optics of it.
As a H1b myself, who was recently approved for a skilled worker permanent residency (green card) (which allows me to jump to the head of my country's queue, cutting my green card wait time from nearly a decade to a year or two), the number of haphazard changes coming from Trump's team is stunning. It's almost as if they aren't so much as trying to fix problems, but placing hurdles on a track (in that people will still be able to do what they've always done, but it makes it slow and burdensome for everyone - honest applicants as well as those gaming the system).
They've even slowed down permanent residency approval: everyone who has an employer sponsored green card petition approved will still need to go through a pointless interview before they can actually get their status changed (to "catch fraud" in a 10 minute interview, that apparently wasn't caught by the previous n-levels of scrutiny over many years). It is taking months (may soon take more than a year) to schedule the interview because this change was done with minimal staffing and training changes - there are records of cases where the applicant knows more about the necessary paperwork than the interviewing officer, because the training wasn't proper.
I won't deny that H1b abuse exists and that program needs changes. However, the answer isn't to put in more bureaucracy (which is what the current change is about: go through a complete review of the renewal, even if there were no changes from the original application). Why would a applicant whose H1b petition was approved last time suddenly no longer be valid this time around? Instead, greater scrutiny should go in to the original application itself: is this a Google/Microsoft/Apple/Amazon/Facebook "type" hire where the applicant is really getting a good salary for that region/job (with the additional burden of paperwork makes it unlikely to be a fraud), or is it a consulting farm where they are trying to get 10,000 people H1bs for sub-par wages?
The spousal work permit is another change that is driven without logic: the reason people need to do this is because it takes 15 years to get a permanent residency, and the spouse might not work during that time. You really aren't significantly impacting the supply by preventing spouses from working - what you are doing is making it so that people decide that it isn't worth waiting around for decades before being able to work.
The OPT is another change that drives away talented people from this country. "We (the US government) don't care that you have a MS/Ph.D. (that we paid for through grants) - pack your shit up when your education is done, and go back where you came from." This is short sighted - the people who come here are often more skilled than Americans, and their talent would be a net asset for the country. With multinational companies able to move jobs and people around quite easily, it's to the benefit of the US to keep these people (other countries are actually concerned about brain-drain).
There are hard challenges to immigration reform. They require significant efforts, detailed understanding of the nuances of the current status of immigration, and balanced initiatives to address the limitations while preserving what is in the long term best interests of the country. Or you could just cut the "diversary" visa, sign unconstitutional ban orders that catch even permanent residents, and just wing it.
First, open an office outside of Silicon Valley in the USA. Or allow telecommuting for people in the USA outside of SV. Or else you better pay $200K for the lowest level person because the cost of living is ridiculous in SV.
THAT is why you can't get talent, you expect them to take a vow of poverty. You are in the WRONG LOCATION for talent!
Silicon Valley is out of touch. This is more proof why.
I am a liberal. I do not support this program. If companies cannot be trusted to honorably follow this law, then remove the H1B program.
Canadian here.
What I don't understand about America's immigration policy is this: If America needs a particular class of person (carpenter / developer / nurse / whatever) why doesn't America just let them immigrate to the USA? Apply for a green card, get a green card, arrive, then be on a path to citizen as an "American."
Why all this "H1B" business and "Green Card Lotteries" and all the other nonsense?
I admit I'm cynical, but on paper this is a good move. I'm sure the companies who actually use the H-1B for cheap labor have some nice exceptions carved out, but signalling that the floodgates are closing might force companies to get creative about how they find and train people.
I work for a multinational company and have worked with several on-staff H-1B workers who are quite good. The company uses The contractors that come in from the body shops (TCS, IBM, Accenture, Infosys, etc.) are quite obviously brought in to reduce costs. I think the program itself is OK, in that the letter of the law lets companies have a small safety valve to hire highly skilled people in certain industries. What I don't like, having worked in IT for 20+ years, is that there's less opportunity for newbies to get entry-level work and the work performed by the H-1Bs is no better than what you'd get from a domestic newbie. If we scare all potential new hires away from IT or computer science, we're going to have a newbie pipeline problem. Even 18-year-old students make rational choices about their futures, and we see a lot of very smart people spending their talent working for investment banks or getting their MBA and becoming management consultants.
If we can show people there's still a career path to be had in IT and development, then people will continue to pursue it. If the body shops take all the H-1B visas and use them to staff up help desks or do grunt work development, then people will see there's no future and act accordingly.
I really wish these morons would understand that the US needs to compete in technology. And when you get to the bleeding edge of technology, the people who truly understand and are working to develop the "new things" are usually just a handful. And that handful of people rarely lives in the US. In my career, there are about 70 people around the world who work on the same technology, and the vast majority aren't American. We already have to get tons of H1B visas to compete. There simply aren't people in the states with the skillset, knowlege, and desire to work in the area.
we have really good startup visas, student visas that transform in to work visas. etc
if you are a tech company it only takes two weeks to get approval to bring a tech worker in with permanent resident path.
We also have really good R+D tax / rebate credits.
good place for a tech HQ or satellite office.
Oh yeah and two things. Free health care and a very diverse and inclusive population
The headline makes it sound like this is a done deal, but even the summary doesn't even say they're actively pushing it, they're just 'expected' to do these things.
Talk to me when the actual number of H1-B visas handed out is reduced or when either of the two changes mentioned take affect. Until then this is all just theater. It plays well with his voters but he never actually does any of it. Anyone else remember during the election when he said he hires workers on visas for his golf courses because he couldn't find workers and there were interviews with people who applied and were turned down?
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we can't fight that because it's too complex. We'll get bogged down in details and lose, just like we're doing now. End the program entirely. Admit PHD candidates and above only and have them reviewed by other PHD candidates. Then properly fund our schools with a 'College for All' program so that if American businesses want an educated workforce they have to pay for it instead of importing it. Anything else is a losing proposition for American workers.
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Their political views are irrelevant to their ability to design/code hardware and software.
If you insists on only hiring leftists who agree with your politics then you just cut your hiring pool in half.
I don't ask nor want to know the politics of my employees. I can't stop them from discussing politics at work but it's better when they don't. Keep your bullshit to yourself and your company will run better and have an easier time hiring.
In my younger days I didn't accept an offer because the hiring manager made it clear during the interview that having the correct politics was critical to my role as sysadmin. Needless to say they were out of business a year later. And good riddance.
Could it be your not getting many applications because you've set your standards too high? And could it be you're able to do that thanks to the H1-b program? Having a pool of 1.3 billion desperate people is a great way to reduce labor costs...
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Fucking clown traitor.
How is higher wages for local earners a bad thing? "Just Do It! already"
Then the co. will shape the "requirements" to fit the applicant. The auditor may ask, "You listed Java, but your org doesn't use Java." The co. can then say, "well, we plan to." It's hard to audit people's heads to see what they plan. There's a lot of tricks one can pull, and head-hunters perfect them over time.
Yes, I agree they should focus more on the rejected citizens: are there any that are pretty close to fitting current needs. If the co. asks for 5 years of MS-MVC but the rejected citizen only has 3, that should be considered a good-enough fit: learn on the job. You cannot get experience without getting experience.
Further, limit the rejection reason to say the top 2 or 3 skills. Otherwise, the head-headers will load it up with a long list of "required" skills as a way to reject citizens. There's no practical way a gov't auditor could even test the visa applicant on a long list of skills to verify.
Table-ized A.I.
Cheap labor or not, H1B visa holders are residing in the country, paying taxes, buying homes and spending their money here. They are adding a lot to the US economy. The amount of work that will get outsourced to foreign countries will cause a dent in the US economy and the reverse brain drain of highly qualified individuals out of here.
The federal government should do two things:
1) Add $50K per year, per worker, to the employer's cost of hiring an H-1B. That money would go into a national "Train America" fund.
2) Use the "Train America" fund money for two reasons:
a) Train American citizens in skills that are in short supply in the US, and
b) Pay the salaries of these trained people for the first year of their employment (internship, apprenticeship, entry-level employee, whatever).
The extra $50K charge of per year, per worker would discourage employers from hiring H-1Bs. And the training and subsidized salaries from the Train America funds would help build a pool of Americans who had training and experience in skills that are in short supply in the US.
Maybe it would be a good argument if they didn't also force local applicants to apply by fax by a small classified ad among other tactics used to "prove" that no locals were interested
The currently set up lottery allows big companies to buy up loads of tickets. Each one being cheap, so they can put a cheap replacement person into that spot.
Small companies that only need a couple people get frozen out.
If it was a lottery, the small companies could bid up to get the Phd they need.
The price for each slot would go with what the market could bear. The spots would be too valuable to use for a Jr applicant.
set the minimum wage for an H1-B to 300% of the prevailing wage in the industry. Then levy a 300% tax on their wages. If they're that critical to your business you'll pay it, since you won't have a business without them. Take that 300% and give it to the Americans put out of work by the import of cheap labor.
You've got to watch it so subsidies don't creep in to keep the effective costs down (like they do with Tobacco, where we tax cigarettes then subsidize tobacco growth). But it's a start.
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You're _lucky_ if they do positive work.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
There are two things i see happening in the job market.
One is that businesses are not offering enough money for people to leave their current place of employment, this applies to workers that have the exact skills that a new business wants. Seems like employers want to tighten budgets more and more and do not understand that in order to make money, you have to spend money.
This is one of the main reasons why I've stayed at my current company for so long, every time I've looked around and interviewed I keep getting lowballed, then they wonder why I don't want to jump ship anymore and gasp when I tell them what minimum salary they need to at least beat.
This might have mattered 20 years ago, but it is all coming too late. Companies like IBM, Oracle, Microsoft and everyone else have already build massive presences and even headquarters overseas in these cheap labor markets. They no longer necessarily need h1bs in America. Theyâ(TM)ll just layoff from American staff and increase hiring IN India, China, Romania, etc. which is exactly what theyâ(TM)ve been doing.
Nothing changed. I support laws that excercise the constitutional authority granted to government.
Notice how some of those posts you referenced refer to powers that the Federal government has assumed - yet are not enumerated in the constitution.
1st post: Government providing services it has no authority to provide. I am opposed to unconstitutional laws empowering congress to provide services it has no authority to provide.
2nd post: Making your own guns - perfectly legal and I cited an ATF regulation source confirming as much. Here the ATF is actually protecting a constitutionally protected right. I support these laws/regulations since they are constitutional. I am opposed to any laws that violate the protections afforded by the 2nd amendment.
3rd post: Zoning - this one I'll give you. Zoning and planning is the right of local governments. We didn't agree with the ruling, but we also didn't bitch about it to the rest of the world. We took our lumps and moved to another space. We didn't oppose the ruling after the decision was made since it was a constitutional use of authority.
Immigration is clearly within the constitutional authority of the Federal Government:
"The Congress shall have Power To...establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization" ARTICLE I, SECTION 8, CLAUSE 4
In The Immigration and Naturalization Act congress gave broad authority to the president to regulate immigration:
"(f) Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate."
So I'm not sure what you are arguing. My posts clearly show I support the enforcement of constitutional law. President Trump's enforcement of immigration law is clearly constitutional and clearly within the scope and authority of his office.
Unless you adjust for inflation, "most money ever" records are stupid, because you should EXPECT them to get broken regularly.
My point is that you've already decided that there is a group that only likes enforcement of laws they agree with and that they are the problem. And you posted a rant about it without even bothering to ask yourself if you're any different. Other than not deriving a definition of "just laws" based on your same interpretation of the constitution, what's the difference between "liberals" as you have defined them and yourself?
The difference is adherence to the constitution.
I can't really make it any clearer than that.
If you still have the chops...
Do your part in developing system components that can fit in an iCE40 FPGA.
If we can get a northbridge implementation and a southbridge implementation that could interface with say Socket 7/SS7 and SDRAM/DDR/DDR2 dimms, we would have the first step in place towards building 'open hardware' desktops that weren't just cheap SBCs with limited IO options.
SDRAM, PCI, and even the GTL front-side busses are all out of patent protection now, so most of the technology needed should be freely implementable.