The administration of President Donald Trump is promoting a regulation to replace the lottery-based allocation system for the controversial H-1B visa with a salary-based process, but the change may not take place under the new administration of President-elect Joe Biden.
US Citizenship and Immigration Services released the new rule on Thursday and is expected to officially publish it tomorrow.
It would issue H-1B visas – for jobs that require specialized skills – based on the worker’s salary, giving priority to better paid jobs.
The Trump administration has cracked down on the H-1B program, dramatically boosting visa denials for personnel companies and outsourcers who hire foreign workers. Critics have accused these companies and their client companies of using H-1B to replace US workers, reduce wages and send jobs abroad. Major technology companies, which employ H-1B workers directly and also through staffing companies, are pushing for the annual ceiling of 85,000 new visas to be extended, arguing that the visa is needed to secure the world’s best talent.
Research by the left-leaning Institute of Economic Policy and Professor Ron Hira of Howard University, studying H-1B, found that in 2019, IT staffing companies such as Infosys, Deloitte and Cognizant applied for a large number of H-1B workers at the second lowest wage level, while Bay Area technology giants Google, Apple, Cisco and Oracle had a combination of upper and lower levels.
A Biden spokeswoman said late last month that his administration would stop or delay all regulations issued by the Trump administration in its declining days.