Newly Revealed Statistics Show USCIS Quietly Nibbling Away at the H-1B Program

Center for Immigration Studies ^ | March 1, 2019 | David North

[Reeses]

Newly revealed government statistics show that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, on a case-by case-basis, is nibbling away at the H-1B program while not making any obvious major policy changes.

There are something approaching 750,000 H-1B workers in the United States, all here on a temporary, legal basis, most of them college grads (along with a few models), with most working in high-tech fields. Congress has set annual ceilings for new H-1Bs at 65,000 for alien college grads generally, and 20,000 for aliens with U.S. advanced degrees, mostly a master's. There are, routinely, more H-1B workers on extended visas than on new ones.

The new data, which eased onto the internet with minimal governmental explanation, shows three trends:

1. USCIS adjudicators are much less likely to rubber-stamp applications, and about two and a half times more likely to ask questions (called requests for evidence, or RFEs), in 2019 than in 2015.

2. As a result of presumably inadequate answers to those questions, the approval rates have dropped from 95.7 percent in 2015 to 75.4 percent in the first three months of this fiscal year.

3. A look at the approval rates for the top 30 H-1B users in FY 18, shows that the big Indian outsourcing companies, that provide workers to other firms, are much more likely to run into denials than the major U.S. high tech firms (e.g., Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple) that employ the foreign workers directly. For example, Cognizant, the biggest user of H-1Bs in that year, had an approval rate of 68 percent; meanwhile, Microsoft, the largest of the U.S. firms using these workers, and number six on the overall list, had an approval rate of 99 percent. These percentages, as we will show below, reflect the general treatment of these two groups of employers.

[Reeses]

Per the chart at the link it is apparent: starting in 2019 Trump is beginning to deliver on H1B reforms, with zero help from Congress.

[proxy_user]

I wonder if they ask the models for evidence....

[StolarStorm]

temporary? I’ve never known one to go home in my entire career. They eventually have an anchor baby and/or green card. They don’t leave.

[bobcat62]

Maybe USCIS is having some effect. I’m seeing tweets on how “unfair” that a number of tech jobs are being posted as US citizen or GC holder only.

[Starcitizen]

All, or most of the recruiters, are run from the same Indian body shop. Amazingly, they all have the exact same opt-out provision in email.

Found out they really try to at least pretend to go through the pre-screening process. It stops once I say I’m a US Citizen. Got tired of hearing so-called ‘English’ and seeing words like revert in e-mails.

My standard reply is that I’m now happily employed by an American company with American values that hires Americans.

I’M sure Microsoft and the other tech companies in Washington and the Bay Area will lobby to get the policies changed back.

[bobcat62]

The hiring process has broken down. Apu’s constant calls & e-mails are nothing more than symptom of a broken-down hiring process.

If I were you, I’d put Apu to work for you. Take a look at Apu’s e-mails. Apu cuts and pastes the employer’s job description into his e-mail messages. Once you filter the crap from Apu’s dispatches, you should be able to determine the job and employer from the few remaining e-mail messages. A little searching using Google, Indeed, & Glassdoor should find the job. You may find Apu has stumbled across companies you’ve never heard of before.

I strongly suspect most of Apu’s consistent-in-appearance dispatches come from dice.com.

Your best bet would be to abandon dice.com.

I am getting calls all day long from US-based recruiters for jobs in my area that have appeared out of nowhere. In some cases, the jobs have been posted for 5 months.

The US-based recruiters will tell you it’s a “candidate’s market.” If a US-recruiter tells you this, push back a little bit. Tell them you’ll need “some remote work” to consider the opportunity. You’ll quickly find out the market hasn’t changed from 24 months ago.

In a candidate’s market, you’d see flexibility in employer’s demands. You’d see higher wages, increased vacation, and training being offered to close the deal. Not happening… yet.