The abuse of H-1B visas has been very much below the radar compared to more high profile immigration issues. But there is the first sign that things will be changing.
Meanwhile the government’s lawyers issued a warning to companies to try to hire Americans first before turning to the H-1B program.
“The Justice Department will not tolerate employers misusing the H-1B visa process to discriminate against U.S. workers,” said Tom Wheeler, acting assistant attorney general for the civil rights division.
He said the administration will investigate and “vigorously” prosecute any violators.
There's just something wonderful about the civil rights division at the DOJ vowing to fight discrimination against Americans. Something so right and so perfect.
As with many other things, this is a first step and no changes to the actual program have been made. And the real question will be whether enforcement will follow once companies like Disney abuse it to dump American workers and even outsource jobs. So we're going to see whether there are any consequences for companies that use it for cheap labor while dumping Americans.
Silicon Valley will sit up and take notice. But the question is will anything actually change? The lottery will get spammed like mad. And the spammers will be all the usual suspects. They won't be spamming the lottery because they intend to bring high level talent that can't be found in America to this country. Instead they'll be bringing cheap labor and shadowing for outsourcing programs.
Even though they've been warned.
Outsourcing firms are considered the worst abusers of the system, an impression that the tech industry has been happy to encourage. Monday’s USCIS announcement targets those firms, with the agency saying it will focus inspections on workplaces with the largest percentage of H-1B workers, and those with employees who do IT work for other companies. Shares of Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., Infosys Ltd., Wipro Ltd. and Accenture Plc each slipped more than 1 percent on Monday.
Microsoft Corp., Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc., Cognizant, Wipro and Accenture didn’t respond to requests to comment. Infosys declined to comment, while Tata Consulting Services Ltd. said it has reduced use of high-skilled H-1B visas, while creating more U.S. IT services jobs.
The new guidelines released Friday require additional information for computer programmers applying for H-1B visas to prove the jobs are complicated and require more advanced knowledge and experience. It’s effective immediately, so it will change how companies apply for the visas in an annual lottery process that begins Monday. The changes don’t explicitly prohibit applications for a specific type of job. Instead, they bring more scrutiny to those for computer programmers doing the simplest jobs.
Considering that the administration is still in its early days, I think that this is a good first step. It shows that while the emphasis is on deporting illegal alien criminals, the overall immigration program hasn't been forgotten. At least not as long as Sessions is on deck.