President Donald Trump’s administration is pushing for regulation to replace the controversial H-1B visa lottery-based allocation system with a wage-based process, but the change may not take place under the incoming president-elect administration. Joe Biden.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services released the new rule on Thursday and is expected to officially publish it tomorrow.
Issue H-1B visas, intended for jobs that require specialized skills, depending on the salary of workers, with priority in the highest paid jobs.
The Trump administration has cracked down on the H-1B program, dramatically pushing for visa denials for companies and contractors hiring foreign workers. Critics have accused these companies and their client companies of using H-1B to impersonate U.S. workers, reduce wages, and send jobs overseas. Major technology companies, which hire H-1B workers directly and also through staffing companies, are pushing to expand the annual limit of 85,000 new visas, arguing that the visa is necessary to achieve the world’s maximum talent.
An investigation by the Institute for Economic Policy Guidance and Howard University professor Ron Hira, who studies the H-1B, found that in 2019 IT staffing companies such as Infosys, Deloitte and Cognizant had applied a large number of H-1B workers according to the lowest wage levels, while the tech giants in the Bay Area area Google, Apple, Cisco and Oracle had a combination of higher and lower levels.
A Biden spokeswoman said late last month that his administration would stop or delay all regulations dictated by the Trump administration in its waning days.