Trump administration toughens H-1B visa renewal process

[IronLionZion]

http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/25/technology/business/h1b-visa-renewal-uscis/index.html

The U.S. government is toughening up the process for renewing a popular foreign work visa. This week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services advised its officers to "apply the same level of scrutiny" to extension requests for the H-1B visa, among other sought after visas. In other words, officers are instructed to review requests for renewal as thoroughly as they would initial visa applications.

The H-1B is a common visa pathway for high-skilled foreigners to work at companies in the U.S. It's valid for three years, and can be renewed for another three years. It's a program that's particularly near and dear to the tech community, with many talented engineers vying for one of the program's 85,000 visas each year.

The directive rescinds the previous guidance, which gave "deference" to previously approved visas "as long as the key elements were unchanged and there was no evidence of a material error or fraud related to the prior determination."

"This updated guidance provides clear direction to help advance policies that protect the interests of U.S. workers," said new USCIS Director L. Francis Cissna, who was sworn in this month. President Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Cissna last spring.

[brer cat]

1. H-1Bs are also used to bring in scientists.

Can't have that in trump America!

[IronLionZion]

2. H-1Bs are often used to pretend Indian-Americans don't exist

so if they do end the H-1B program and use actual documents like birth certificates and passports to define who is American, a certain type of person is going to wonder why 4 million of us are still here.

But even more than that is the increasing practice of contracting out more types of jobs on a temporary basis instead of hiring and keeping permanent full time employees. Most Americans don't like being temporary contractors because it blows. Other types of people will take whatever they can get.

Companies whose IT is a cost center not a revenue generator, don't really care who does it and just go with whatever is cheapest.

[sarah FAILIN]

3. I work with a lot of Germans....

Because they own the company... Kick the management out and say goodbye to 1700 jobs.

[metalbot]

5. Your German management is not here on H1-B's

They are here on management visas, which are relatively straightforward for multinational companies to get.

H1-B's are designed for "we need a guy with a particular skillset", not "We need to move our VP of Sales to the US"

[sarah FAILIN]

8. What about..

People like engineers and supervisors? We don't have a local VP of sales with us, just the tech guys that keep everything running.

[IronLionZion]

4. I work with a lot of Americans

some of whom have parents or grandparents who immigrated to America from other parts of the world.

The ones whose grandparents came over from Italy, Poland, Romania, Germany, UK, etc. are assumed to be "real Americans".
The ones whose grandparents came over from India, China, South Korea, Egypt, Ethiopia, Colombia, Nigeria, etc. are assumed to have stolen jobs away from "real Americans".

The worst kind of H-1B is the type who was born and raised in America and has legal documents to prove it.

Funny how that works.

[Lee-Lee]

6. H1-B Visas get abused a lot just to get cheaper labor

It's often not that they can't find the person to do the job here, it is just that they don't want to pay for the person to do the job here.

A friends dad did IT work for Disney until they fired the entire staff and replaced them with a contractor who used mostly H1-B labor. The reason for H1-Bs is supposed to be to bring in workers when you can't find Americans qualified, but here that blatantly wasn't the case because they laid off all the qualified Americans to replace them.

[IronLionZion]

7. Americans can apply for contracting jobs

The contracting firms would rather hire locals instead of the significant costs associated with bringing in foreign visa workers. Americans don't really like that kind of work. I hate it because it's a rough life to always be temporary and disposable instead of stable full time employment. So if you're into that, apply for the jobs.

I get contacted by headhunters all the time for the wrong type of work that I have no interest in doing, and always in rural parts of red states that I don't want to move to. Ironically, Trump country is where they have the biggest demand for this type of contracting work since there is less supply of qualified labor.

That's how the economy has been changing for the last several decades now. More companies contract out their cost centers to focus on their revenue generators. IT is a cost center for Disney.