Hellish life for H-1B Visa holders |
Donald Trump came into office promising a restrictive new approach to immigration and there has been little question about his intention to follow through - with one seeming exception. Despite its enthusiastic rhetoric about the H-1B program, which provides temporary visas to high-skilled workers, the administration failed to make significant changes in time to impact the program`s annual lottery this April, leaving some who had anticipated action fuming. It has also declined to take up any of the legislative proposals for H-1B overhaul. But a crackdown has been in the works, albeit more quietly. Starting this summer, employers began noticing that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services was challenging an unusually large number of H-1B applications. Cases that would have sailed through the approval process in earlier years ground to a halt under requests for new paperwork. The number of challenges - officially known as "requests for evidence" or RFEs - are up 44 percent compared to last year. The percentage of H-1B applications that have resulted in RFEs this year are at the highest level they`ve been since 2009, and by absolute number are considerably higher than any year for which the agency provided statistics. The H-1B program is controversial largely because IT firms based in India have used it to hire for rote computer programming jobs.
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