President Donald Trump’s administration is pushing for a regulation to replace the lottery-based allocation system for the controversial H-1B visa with a pay-based process, but the change may not go through under the upcoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden.
US Citizenship and Immigration Services posted the new rule Thursday and is expected to officially publish it tomorrow.
It would issue H-1B visas – intended for jobs requiring specialized skills – based on the employee’s salary, prioritizing higher-paid positions.
The Trump administration has cracked down on the H-1B program, dramatically increasing the denial of visas for staffing companies and outsourcers who outsource foreign workers. Critics have accused these companies and their customers using the H-1B to replace American workers, cut wages and send jobs abroad. Major technology companies, hiring H-1B workers directly and also through staffing companies, are pushing to expand the 85,000 annual limit for new visas, arguing that the visa is necessary to secure the world’s best talent.
Research by the left-wing Economic Policy Institute and Professor Ron Hira of Howard University, who studies the H-1B, found that IT staffing companies such as Infosys, Deloitte and Cognizant had applied for a large number of H-1B employees in 2019 after lowest wage level, while Bay Area technology giants Google, Apple, Cisco and Oracle had a mix of upper and lower levels.
A spokeswoman for Biden said late last month that his administration would stop or delay all Trump administration regulations in the last days.