SAN DIEGO – Participation in the draw of visas for workers with higher education fell 40% this year, authorities in the United States said Tuesday, stating that they have been successful against people who “took advantage of the system” by submitting many applications, sometimes dubious, to unfairly increase their chances of being elected.
Major tech companies using H-1B visas called for changes because the sharp increase in participation left their current and future employees with fewer chances of winning the lottery. Facing what it acknowledged as possible fraud and abuse, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said this year that each employee would have only one chance in the lottery, regardless of whether they have a single chance. job offer or 50.
The government received 470,342 applications for this year’s drawing, which was held the last week of March, a 38% reduction from last year’s 758,994 entries. The number of applicant workers changed little: about 442,000 this year, compared to 446,000 the previous year, indicating a sharp decline in the number of people participating simultaneously more than once.
The number of entries tripled from 2021 to 2023, after the government indicated it would no longer require people to submit a large number of documents to be eligible for the draw, saying that long and expensive task could wait until they got one of the 85,000 places granted each year. The only requirement was a $10 electronic registration fee, which removed barriers to participation but created an opportunity for businesses and employees to flood the agency with applications. USCIS said one person submitted applications for 83 job openings in 2022.
unfair advantage
The decrease in the number of applications this year “indicates that there were many fewer attempts to acquire an unfair advantage than in previous years,” USCIS said in a note to companies, applicants and their representatives.
H-1B visas were created in 1990 for people with a bachelor’s degree or higher in fields that are considered difficult to staff, especially science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Critics say these visas allow companies to pay lower wages with fewer labor protections..
Infosys, an Indian technology outsourcing company, was the top employer of H-1B visa staff in 2023. Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Meta and Google were in the top 10.
Graduate students at American universities can work for three years on an Optional Practical Training visa while applying for an H1-B visa. Because these applicants have stable jobs, they do not need to submit more than one application. But this puts them at a disadvantage against those who present several of them. Some leave the country to work in Canada or Europe.
Visa lottery reforms
Ur Jaddou, director of USCIS, said the agency worked quickly to reform the lottery to ensure that each worker had “only one ticket in their hat,” deciding that change could not wait another year. USCIS found that some companies were working together to submit applications for the same applicants.
“We want to make sure that this is in the hands of the people who will use it to help the nation, and we realized that taking advantage of the system was not useful to anyone,” Jaddou said at a public event held in March at the festival South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.
Many technology companies and business groups have lobbied for immediate change. Intel Corp. said in October that its win rate “fell steadily, hurting efforts to expand semiconductor design and manufacturing in the United States.”
“A system intended to help manage the H1B visa lottery process has become a source of frustration and disappointment,” the chipmaker wrote to USCIS.
Insufficient changes
Critics of H-1B visas generally welcomed the changes, but considered them insufficient.
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) wrote to USCIS that the change to this year’s lottery “includes steps in the right direction, but falls far short of the broad reforms that are required.” Like other critics, the group wants visas to be awarded to companies that pay the highest wages, rather than through a haphazard system, a change Donald Trump sought while in the White House.
Source: With information from AP
