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The Department of Homeland Security announced a rule change Wednesday that will transform the lottery that decides who gets the 85,000 H-1B visas granted to for-profit companies every year.
Previously, an initial lottery granted 20,000 visas only to those holding advanced degrees granted by U.S. institutions — master’s degrees or doctorates — and then a general lottery granted 65,000 visas to all qualified applicants.
The Department of Homeland Security switched the order of these lotteries, it said in a notice of the final rule change, which will bolster the odds for highly educated foreign nationals. The change reduces the likelihood that people with just a bachelor’s degree will win in the general lottery, said Lisa Spiegel, an attorney at Duane Morris in San Francisco and head of the firm’s immigration group.
The program shift could hurt technology staffing companies, also known as outsourcers, who have a reputation for flooding the lottery with applications. Three Indian firms — Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro — often account for a majority of the H-1B applications, an analysis of government data shows.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by toddestan on Saturday February 02 2019, @12:30AM
The thing you're missing is that H1b isn't about immigration. H1b is a work visa. The people who are brought over through H1b don't get to stay, at some point the visa runs out and they have to go home. Sure, some do decide they want to stay and get off the H1b bus and successfully immigrate to America, but that's a minority.
Now, I'm not completely opposed to the idea that if a company needs a certain skillset, and they really and truly can't find an American to fill the job, then they can bring someone in. But that's not what the H1b visa is about - there's actually other visas that can be used in those kind of situations like the O1 visa. Most H1b visa holders are hired for junior entry level jobs, and that actually hurts the people you mention. If they work hard and make it through college, they suddenly find that they are competing with a bunch of cheap imported labor for all those entry level positions.
Ultimately, while the companies benefit from the cheap imported labor, in the end it hurts them and it hurts America too. Because when those people with their work visas eventually go home, they take their knowledge and experience with them. Already we have companies complaining they can't fill senior level positions. Well, all those senior level people were once junior level people, and if no one hires local junior level people, soon there won't be any local senior level people either.
I'm not at all opposed to immigration, but programs like H1b either need to be seriously curtailed or ended entirely.