USCIS announces strengthened integrity measures for H-1B program

It seems like it would be so easy to fix the H1-B program but no one wants to and I feel like I must be missing something. The purpose of the H1-B is to allow companies to hire foreigners with special skills that can&#x27;t be found amongst US citizens.<p>So why not just grant H1-Bs to the companies that are willing to pay their talent the most?<p>Let any company apply and list a salary which they have to agree to pay for at least two years, and then just issue them highest salary first until they hit the quota for the year. No country based quotas or any other kind. Just straight up salary. And make the visa transferrable if another company wants to take it over after say the first two years at the same or better salary.<p>If people are so skilled then they must be valuable, right? This would be good for both the employee and the country, bringing in the most highly paid people.<p>The only ones that would get hurt in this process are the companies that abuse the system to underpay people and then get them beholden to the company.

One thing I find really, really weird about the US immigration system is that immigrating illegally is trivial (apparently even more so nowadays than it was 15 years ago), and it even comes with a loophole that can make you a legal immigrant later, yet legal immigration is a very tedious and often impossible path.<p>I have a relative that 15-ish years ago simply overstayed their tourist visa and never left. Some 5 years later he found a chick and put a ring on it (and because he married a US citizen, all his overstay was instantly forgiven). Then he had a immediate US citizen relative who sponsored him for a green card, which he got a couple of years ago. In a couple of years he can apply for naturalization. Yes, he couldn&#x27;t leave the US until he had the GC in his hands, but I&#x27;d say it was a small price to pay for a massive shortcut.<p>For a married European that would love to live in the US, like myself, legal immigration paths are simply not viable. I would not accept a non-immigrant visa (like H1B), because it doesn&#x27;t come with any guarantees that I&#x27;ll be able to stay in the US, and legal immigration paths are basically limited to winning the DV lottery or coughing up $900k for the EB5, as no company in the right mind would sponsor me for an EB2&#x2F;3.<p>And for many people from oversubscribed countries (like India and China), marrying a US citizen is the ONLY viable path to a green card.<p>US immigration system is fundamentally broken.

When I looked into who is actually hiring H1-Bs, I was shocked to see it was mostly bodyshops. See: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mbacrystalball.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2022&#x2F;02&#x2F;07&#x2F;h1b-visa-statistics-sponsors-companies&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mbacrystalball.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2022&#x2F;02&#x2F;07&#x2F;h1b-visa-stat...</a><p>The majority of &quot;Top H1-B Recruiters&quot; are in the &quot;Professional and Technical Services&quot; industry. I think people imagine that most immigrants on H1-B visas are being paid princely sums directly by FAANG companies. Instead the reality looks like they&#x27;re being exploited by the same Indian bodyshops like Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, Tech Mahindra, etc. Of the companies in that list that <i>aren&#x27;t</i> bodyshops, the majority aren&#x27;t in IT.<p>Aside from all of the obvious problems with the system, and the political implications, I think many people really have the wrong impression about who the real beneficiaries of the H1-B visa system are.

&gt; The initial registration period for the FY 2025 H-1B cap will open at noon Eastern on March 6, 2024, and run through noon Eastern on March 22, 2024.<p>I know fraud prevention is whack-a-mole, and I know the system has been broken a long time, but this still works only for a certain segment of hires.<p>I was on the board of a &quot;foreign&quot; school. All instruction (except English) is in the home country&#x27;s language, and we of course want native speaking teachers familiar with the subject material. For years we used H-1s -- all the teachers qualify, as they all have master&#x27;s degrees or more and the specialized skills -- but when the big consulting companies started scamming all the H-1s in early October that became impossible for us. Teachers don&#x27;t tend to think about leaving until late in the school year, certainly not in March, and they need to know relatively quickly so they can move to the US and get settled before the school year starts. What a pain.

US immigration is an absolute nightmare especially for Indians.<p>In Europe its simple. Job offer above minimum salary? Apply and get a blue card yourself. Has been in the country for over 5 years and speak the language? You get citizenship.<p>In the US its nearly impossible to get a Green Card. Forget how difficult it is to get an H1B visa in the first place because of the lottery system.

FTA:<p>&gt; Also under the new rule, USCIS may deny or revoke the approval of an H-1B petition if it determines that the fee associated with the registration is declined, not reconciled, disputed, or otherwise invalid after submission.<p>The fact that they mention this suggests that they couldn&#x27;t do so previously... which is pretty mind-boggling.

Oh, so this looks like it&#x27;s correcting for that thing where companies were essentially using multiple contracting companies to all apply for a visa for the same person? e.g. double (triple? n-ary?) dipping in the lotto?<p>I still think a lot of the more wanton abuses in the H1-B system could be resolved by requiring the employee be a direct employee of the company they&#x27;re actually working for (e.g. you can&#x27;t get a contracting company to provide you with engineers), and to require compensation be - say - a minimum of say 20% above the average wage for the job they&#x27;re doing, relative to other employees at the company, other workers doing manifestly similar jobs in the same geographical area, etc.<p>If nothing else this will apply upwards pressure on wages even in shitty &quot;we&#x27;re abusing the h1-b process&quot; contracting companies, because every new h1-b employee they have necessarily increases the average wage at that company, which increases the minimum wage for the next h1-b, etc. The reality is that the set up of the h1-b program allows employers to abuse h1-b employees with relative impunity (including notably lowering wages), so a mechanism by which simply increasing the number of h1-b employees you have forces the wages up counters their ability to use h1-b supported abusive practices to undercut local workers.

Related: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;software.rajivprab.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;05&#x2F;10&#x2F;18-years-a-transient&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;software.rajivprab.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;05&#x2F;10&#x2F;18-years-a-transie...</a>

&gt; the registration fee during the registration period starting in March 2024, will remain $10.<p>Yeah, every single outsourcing provider is going to enter all their employees and market whoever is selected for on-site assignments to their customers. The cost of entry is way too low and this attracts frivolous registrations.<p>Previously, it used to cost thousands of dollars before to prepare a full petition and only those employers with serious job offers applied for H1B.

I think part of the issue is that H-1B is a non-immigrant visa.<p>It&#x27;s ridiculous for a country like the US to expect people to move their whole household for ... 6 years?<p>H-1B is actually slightly better than an L1*. At least with the H-1B you are allowed to change jobs if the new employer wants to do the paperwork. For the L1 you can&#x27;t do that. The visa is tied to the current employer. You leave? You&#x27;re out.

&gt;&gt; Under the beneficiary centric process, registrations will be selected by unique beneficiary rather than by registration.<p>Why do they think that&#x27;s a good thing? If you have more than one offer then you are more in demand on the job market, presumably being a better specialist, more deserving of getting a visa :D

In the previous H-1B registration system, employers could submit multiple registrations for the same beneficiary (employee). This increased the chances of selection for that beneficiary but potentially reduced the fairness of the process. So, this makes things fairer to an extent.

Actually they should be more strict. It is sad to see so many Indian agencies are abusing it.

sounds like fixing a bug in a software program. It should have always been unique.

I suspect it’s no coincidence that they announce this the same day Chita Rivera passed away:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=zI5c8qCff2w" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=zI5c8qCff2w</a>

The H1B program makes little sense in this moment. The major issues facing America are cost of living related. Importing high-pay workers just makes it that much harder for the regular Joe Schmo.

I find the entire H-1B program somewhat ridiculously designed.<p>0. There should be no cap for people who have received higher education degrees in the US. What&#x27;s the point of educating people and equipping them with everything they need to be successful in the US, advance the US (including creating lots of jobs) and then deporting them right after?<p>1. There should be no cap for people who are going into STEM, AI, or other jobs that are going to vastly develop the economy.<p>There is a cap-exempt H1B, but it&#x27;s for nonprofits. It makes no sense.

This is interesting. Does anyone know what tactics they’re trying to stop? Sounds like something specific.

the real immigrant threat

Food for thought, when Europeans arrived in there were no visa rules.