Tougher H1B Visa Rules Proposed By US Govt Come As Blessing For Indian IT Professionals 

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration moved on Thursday to make permanent a new questionnaire that asks some U.S. visa applicants to provide their social media handles and detailed biographical and travel history, according to a public notice.

The questionnaire was rolled out in May as part of an effort to tighten vetting of would-be visitors to the United States, and asks for all prior passport numbers, five years' worth of social media handles, email addresses and phone numbers and 15 years of biographical information including addresses, employment and travel history.

The new rules for H1B visa propose to replace lottery system for allocation of visas with the assessment of candidate’s education and skillset, which could favor Indian software professionals.

A State Department official declined to provide data on how many times the form had been used or which nationalities had been asked to fill it out since May, only stating that it estimates 65,000 visa applicants per year "will present a threat profile" that warrants the extra screening.

The new rules for H1B visa propose to replace lottery system for allocation of visas with the assessment of candidate's education and skillset, which could favor Indian software professionals.

A bipartisan group of influential lawmakers has urged US President Donald Trump to stop the abuse of H-1B and L-1 visas by outsourcing firms to replace American workers with cheap foreign labour.

The lawmakers have opposed allocating visas by lottery. This does not allow the government to determine how it awards the 85,000 visas and outsourcing companies are thus able to secure tens of thousands of H-1B visas annually to offshore American jobs.

"Our bill creates specific categories of H-1B workers to give preference in the allocation of visas based on education, training, and economic value. Further, our bill amends the law to provide the Secretary of Homeland Security with discretion to allocate H-1B visas within this framework in any manner or order the secretary deems appropriate," the lawmakers added.

In a letter dated July 27, which was released yesterday, the group said a legislation introduced by them close these loopholes and overhaul these visa programmes to protect American workers and crack down on outsourcing companies which deprive qualified Americans of high-skill jobs.

"We write because, for far too long, the H-1B visa has been abused by some corporations as a way to displace American workers with cheap foreign labour. We urge you to use your authority as president to the greatest extent possible to stop H-1B abuses, but we believe reform also must happen legislatively because of loopholes in the law," the lawmakers said in the letter to the president.

"This bipartisan bill will restore the H-1B visa programme to its original in original intent, protect American workers, and preserve the limited H-1B visas for high-skilled foreign workers," the letter said.

The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise in specialized fields. H-1B visa is the most sought after by Indian IT professionals.

L-1 visas are available to employees of an international company with offices in both the US and abroad. The visa allows foreign workers to relocate to the corporation's US office after having worked abroad for the company for at least one continuous year within the previous three prior to admission in the US.

Current law allows the payment of below-market wages to H-1B workers across industries and geographic areas and even allows H-1B-dependent employers and employers who have previously wilfully violated H-1B programme requirements to avoid obligations to recruit US workers and not displace them simply by paying a USD 60,000 annual wage.

Instead, the bill would end the "exempt" H-1B worker loophole and would peg H-1B salaries to current wage levels by requiring employers to pay the highest wage applicable to each occupation and geographic area from three categories.

The three categories are -- locally-determined prevailing wage level for the occupational classification in the area of employment; median wage for all workers in the occupational classification in the area of employment; and median wage for skill level two in the occupational classification found in the most recent OES survey.

Noting that the current law makes it easy for outsourcing companies to circumvent the intent of the H-1B visa by bringing in guest workers to displace American workers, the lawmakers wrote the bill prohibits the outsourcing or leasing of H-1B workers to other employers and prevents an employer with more than 50 employees in the US from hiring additional H-1B workers if the employer's US workforce is more than 50 percent of the H-1B and L-1 visa holder workers.

President Donald Trump ran for office in 2016 pledging to crack down on illegal immigration for security reasons, and has called for "extreme vetting" of foreigners entering the United States. On Wednesday, he threw his support behind a bill that would cut legal immigration to the United States by 50 percent over 10 years.

The Office of Management and Budget, which must approve most new federal requests of information from the public, initially approved the form on an "emergency" basis, which allowed its use for six months rather than the usual three years.

The State Department published a notice in the Federal Register on Thursday seeking to use the form for the next three years. The public has 60 days to comment on the request.

The questions are meant to "more rigorously evaluate applicants for terrorism, national security-related, or other visa ineligibilities," the notice said.

While the questions are voluntary, the form says failure to provide the information may delay or prevent the processing of a visa application.

Trump ordered a temporary travel ban in March on citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. After months of legal wrangling, the Supreme Court in June allowed the travel ban to go forward with a limited scope.

The form does not target any particular nationality.

Seyed Ali Sepehr, who runs an immigration consultancy in California serving Iranian clients applying for U.S. visas, said that since late June, all of his clients who have been referred for extra security checks have also been asked to fill out the new form.

Kiyanoush Razaghi, an immigration attorney based in Maryland, said he knows of Iraqis, Libyans and Iranians who have been asked to fill out the form.

Immigration attorney Steve Pattison said one of his clients, who is not from one of the six travel ban countries, had been asked to fill out the new form when applying for a visitor visa, indicating that consular officers are using it broadly.

"It could be that everyone is missing another consequence of the use of the form – its deployment in a far wider sense to cover all sorts of individuals," Pattison said.