The H1b
visa rules used prior to 1990 required BS Engineering Degrees and were
initiated by companies seeking to hire the best candidates, including foreign
students graduating from US universities. Companies had to pay these foreign
engineers at US market rates and provide documentation to prove that foreign
engineering hires were the “most qualified”. Most foreign engineering grads had
higher GPAs, more MS degrees and were paid accordingly. This policy worked well
and we called it the “brain drain”. Companies paid their law firms to file
these H1b visa applications for engineers they wanted to hire. In 1967, I hired
an Indian BSEE on an H1b visa. In 1977, I hired a Mexican
Corn Grinding Wheel Technician on an H2b visa. In 1993, we
hired Chinese MSEE Software Engineers on H1b visas.
After
1990, the H1b visa process became corrupted by adding foreign non-technical,
non-engineering candidates. The standards were relaxed to accommodate IT,
nursing and physician “shortages”. By
2000, the IT jobs didn’t require a BSCS degree and were essentially Technicians
that had been tightly controlled for the H2b visa system.
US
schools were not delivering graduates that could perform the technical work
after 1990. Rather than hire US citizens, companies hired whoever they could
find whether legal or illegal and Temp Services began to send resumes from
India for IT jobs and began paying below market rates for these Technicians. A
California Utility hired foreign temps to replace their US workforces to pay
lower rates. It looks like it will take some time to restore the H1b visa
system to restore our once robust engineering schools. The surge in government
subsidies for education corrupted the grade system, quadrupled the tuition cost
and lowered the standards. US citizen ASEETs couldn’t do the math.
H-1B Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 Cap Season
FY 2020 H-1B Cap Count
|
H-1B Regular Cap
|
65,000
|
|
|
|
H-1B Advanced Degree
Exemption
|
20,000
|
|
|
DHS has announced
a final rule amending regulations governing cap-subject H-1B petitions,
including those that may be eligible for the advanced degree exemption. The
final rule reverses the order by which USCIS selects H-1B petitions under the
H-1B regular cap and the advanced degree exemption, and it introduces an
electronic registration requirement for petitioners seeking to file cap-subject
H-1B petitions. The rule will go into effect on April 1, though the electronic
registration requirement will be suspended for the FY 2020 cap season. Read
more here: DHS Announces Final Rule
for a More Effective and Efficient H-1B Visa Program.
The H-1B
Program
The H-1B program allows companies in
the United States to temporarily employ foreign workers in occupations that
require the theoretical and practical application of a body of highly
specialized knowledge and a bachelor’s degree or higher in the specific
specialty, or its equivalent. H-1B specialty occupations may include
fields such as science, engineering and information technology, and fields such
as teaching and accounting. For more information about the H-1B program,
visit our H-1B Specialty Occupations Web page.
On April 5, 2019, USCIS
reached the congressionally-mandated 65,000 H-1B visa regular cap for fiscal
year 2020. USCIS will next determine if we have received a sufficient number of
petitions to meet the 20,000 H-1B visa U.S. advanced degree exemption, known as
the master’s cap. On April 10, USCIS used a computer-generated random selection
process to select enough H-1B petitions to meet the congressionally-mandated
regular cap and the U.S. advanced degree exemption for fiscal year (FY) 2020.
After completing the random selection process for the regular cap, USCIS also
determined that it has received a number of petitions projected as sufficient
to meet the 20,000 H-1B visa U.S. advanced degree exemption, also known as the
master’s cap.
USCIS
will continue to accept and process petitions that are otherwise exempt from
the cap. Petitions filed for current H-1B workers who have been counted
previously against the cap, and who still retain their cap number, will also
not be counted toward the FY 2020 H-1B cap.
Cap Eligible Petitions
This
is the number of petitions that USCIS has accepted for this particular type of
cap. It includes cases that have been approved or are still pending.
Cap Amounts
Congress
set the current annual cap for the H-1B category at 65,000. Not all H-1B
nonimmigrant visas are subject to this annual cap. Please note that up to 6,800
visas are set aside from the 65,000 each fiscal year for the H-1B1 program
under the terms of the legislation implementing the U.S.-Chile and
U.S.-Singapore free trade agreements. Unused visas in this group become
available for H-1B use for the next fiscal year.
H-1B
workers performing labor or services in the Commonwealth of the Northern
Mariana Islands (CNMI) and Guam may also be exempt from the H-1B cap (see the
Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008 (CNRA), Public Law 110-229). H-1B
workers in Guam and the CNMI are exempt from the H-1B cap if their employers
filed the petition before Dec. 31, 2029. Employers cannot file a petition or an
extension request for an employee more than six months before the intended
employment start date.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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