H1b visa Corruption

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.

https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers/h-1b-specialty-occupations-and-fashion-models/h-1b-fiscal-year-fy-2020-cap-season

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader