Foreign workers looking for US jobs have almost guaranteed visa success in fiscal year 2024, with immigration authorities approving more than 97% of H1-B visa applications, the National Foundation for American Policy reports.
This was the second-highest approval rate in more than a decade. But according to immigration lawyers, the exceptionally high success rate could soon end if President-elect Donald Trump’s team revives the restrictive immigration policies of his first administration. They warn that this could result in a significant impact on US businesses and other institutions that rely on highly skilled foreign workers, particularly workers from India.
“I think it’s becoming harder, and it’s becoming more complicated to get things approved,” said Sharvari Dalal-Dheny, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and a former U.S. citizenship and immigration attorney. Is.” Services (USCIS).
Critics say companies exploit the program
Created in 1990, the H-1B program lets U.S. employers hire foreign talent in specialty fields such as technology, engineering and health care with 85,000 visas issued by lottery. In recent years Indian workers received more than 70% of the slots, followed by Chinese nationals.
This program has been a subject of controversy for a long time. Supporters point to its role in attracting top foreign talent to the US and filling critical jobs. A 2016 study by the National Foundation for American Policy found that nearly one-quarter of America’s billion-dollar startups had a founder who first came to the US as an international student.
But critics see the program as a weapon against American workers. Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) pointed to Disney’s controversial move a decade ago to fire hundreds of American staff members, requiring them to hire foreign replacements as a condition of their discharge. Forced to train.
Although Disney denied any wrongdoing and dismissed subsequent lawsuits, the case became a rallying cry among anti-immigrant groups.
FAIR says American companies take advantage of this system to hire cheap foreign workers, driving down American wages.
“There are a lot of tech workers available in the United States, and this should be the first recourse for these companies to go there and hire American citizens,” Mehlman, FAIR’s media director, said in an interview with VOA.
Mehlman said the program has strayed from its roots as a temporary foreign worker program, with foreign nationals using it as a backdoor to U.S. citizenship.
“It should be a program that says you’ll be here for a specified amount of time, the length of your visa, and then you’ll return home,” Mehlman said.
This criticism is shared by many congressional Republicans as well as Trump, who campaigned in 2016 to end the “cheap labor program.”
This did not happen, but the Trump administration moved quickly against the program after issuing the Buy American, Hire American executive order within months of Trump taking office. Immigration officials tightened degree and salary requirements for foreign workers.
Most of those rules were ultimately blocked by the courts. But immigration officials found other ways to suppress the program. He approved some visa requests for one year instead of three, rejected automatic extensions, and stepped up workplace inspections. According to immigration lawyers, visa applicants were hit with increased demands for evidence to process their petitions.
Strong action was taken. New visa refusals increased to 24% in 2018 and decreased to 21% in 2019 before decreasing to 13% in 2020. That’s a sharp departure from the Obama era, when less than 1 in 10 petitions were denied.
“What we saw under the Trump administration was a system working effectively,” said Dalal-Dheny, who previously served as a special counsel at USCIS during the Trump administration.
Trump’s visa plan uncertain
While changing rules and regulations is cumbersome and time-consuming, immigration advocates warn about a possible return to the strategy previously used by the Trump administration to limit the number of visas issued to foreign workers.
Kathleen Campbell Walker, head of the immigration practice at the Dickinson Wright law firm, said she is particularly concerned that increased scrutiny by federal anti-fraud agents could slow things down and potentially “change the status of your H-1B visa.” “It may be more difficult to get approval.”
“It concerns me,” Walker, former national president of AILA, said in an interview with VOA.
The incoming administration’s plans for the visa program remain uncertain. The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to VOA’s request for comment, but a campaign spokesperson said in a statement Washington Post Said earlier this year that Trump would “reinstate all his previous [immigration] Policies” immediately upon returning to the White House.
While Trump’s new administration is expected to focus on cracking down on undocumented immigrants, immigration lawyers say the new administration could target legal as well as illegal immigration, which Trump’s incoming White House deputy Points to the appointment of immigration hardliners like Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. ,
Yet the signals are mixed. Trump has floated the idea of giving green cards to foreign graduates of American colleges and universities. And key Trump ally Elon Musk is a staunch supporter of the H-1B program, with Tesla hiring 742 new foreign workers in fiscal year 2024, ranking 16th among US companies with the most H-1B visa approvals.
While it’s unclear what impact Musk will have on Trump’s immigration policies, Walker said she’s “hoping he’ll be there to try to help turn things around from a positive outlook for the H-1B category.” Will be.”