The report says that the Trump administration is issuing costly and time-consuming challenges
According to a Reuters report, H-1B applicants could be going through the most difficult period of the past 10 years as stats show that the Trump administration is more inclined to challenging H-1B applications.
According to the data analyzed by Reuters, the total H-1B visa petitions received between Jan. 1 and Aug. 31, 2017, is close to 316.45 K, out of which USCIS wanted 85.27 K applicants to furnish evidence, which is the highest average of requests received in the past nine years.
The data says close to 308.32 K applications for H-1B visas were received in the year 2016 and the USCIS had only sent 58.92 K requests for further evidence, which means there has been an increase of close to 27% in the requests for evidence in the last one year.
The report also says that in 2017 26.9 requests for evidence were sent per 100 H-1B visa petitions received, making the popular job visa for skilled foreign labors difficult than ever before.
The report says that the Trump administration is issuing costly and time-consuming challenges to the applicants, a majority of whom are the American tech, education, healthcare and other industries.
Since the Trump administration took charge of the White House, there has been a witch-hunt on H-1B visa with many bills placed in the Congress wanting to change the current policy that is adopted to hire foreign skilled workers.
In addition to this, through his Buy American, Hire American, executive order, Trump made clear that he will restrict to the H-1B program to the highly skilled and highest paid, thereby opening jobs to Americans. The federal agencies are currently in the process of drafting policy reforms to abide by the executive order.
Scrapping the visa policy followed by Obama administration was one of the election promises of Trump, and his recent policy on the same seems to prove that he is fulfilling what hardliners voted him for.
Immigration hardliners are of the view that the skilled visa program is being misused rampantly by technology firms to replace American workers with the low paid foreign workforce.
The current move of the administration was condemned by major tech companies, universities and hospitals as they claim that there are not enough talents in the US to fill vacancies that are currently filled by H-1Bs.
According to USCIS data Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple, Intel, Oracle, and Facebook are the highest beneficiaries of H-1B visas.
When USCIS request for further evidence on an H-1B application filed it typically ends up in employer not getting the approval for the visa unless the employer with the help of its lawyer furnish the proof requested by USCIS and prove their eligibility.
This means that the applicant will have to incur an additional cost of more than $2,000 or more as it’s the standard fee for lawyers in the US. Adding that fees for H-1B visas can run upwards of $2,500, the total expense for the applicant could reach $4,500.