{"id":34349,"date":"2018-10-30T17:08:42","date_gmt":"2018-10-30T11:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=34349"},"modified":"2018-10-30T17:08:42","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T11:38:42","slug":"u-s-makes-h-1b-visa-renewals-tougher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/u-s-makes-h-1b-visa-renewals-tougher\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. makes H-1B visa renewals tougher:"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/todays-paper\/tp-international\/us-makes-h-1b-visa-renewals-tougher\/article19921317.ece\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">U.S. makes H-1B visa renewals tougher<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: <\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Context:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fresh changes in rules notified by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for renewal of non-immigrant visas will severely impact H-1B visa holders.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>New Rules:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The new rules are in line with the Donald Trump administration\u2019s Buy American, Hire American Policy.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An H-1B worker goes to the USCIS for three types of changes to his status- amendment, transfer and renewal.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Amendment are sought when an H-1B employee changes the location within the same company, transfer is sought when he moves from one company to another; and a renewal is sought at the expiry of the visa, which is usually issued for three years at the beginning.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>What is H1B Visa?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The H1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows companies to employ foreigners for a period of up to six years.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This visa is aimed at helping companies employ foreigners in positions for which they have been unable to find American employees.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">H1B visa holders are allowed to apply for permanent residency in the US as well as buy or sell property in the country.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The H-1B is a visa in the United States under the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows U.S. employers to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If a foreign worker in H1B status quits or dismissed from the sponsoring employer, the worker must either apply for and be granted a change of status, find another employer or leave the United States.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Effective January 2017, USCIS modified the rules to allow a grace period of up to 60 days but in practice as long as a green card application is pending they are allowed to stay.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The regulations define a \u201cspecialty occupation\u201d as requiring theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge in a field of human endeavor.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Criticisms:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The aim of the H1B visa programme was to supplement the US workforce with high-skilled workers to do jobs that Americans are not skilled to do, not to replace the US workers.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many companies use the H1B visa to replace American workers with foreign ones, as the latter can be hired at lower salaries without compromising on the skill sets.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In few cases, American employees have alleged that they were made to train H1B holders to do their own jobs, and then fired.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>The new H1B reform bill proposals:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Proposes a radical overhaul of the process, increasing the minimum salary for visa holders, more than double the current minimum.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The H1B visa bill removes the \u2018per country\u2019 cap for employment-based immigrant visas.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It sets aside 20% of the annually allocated H1B visas for small companies and startup employers to ensure small businesses have an opportunity to compete for high-skilled workers.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Bill encourages companies to recruit American workers. This provision would crack down on outsourcing companies that import large numbers of H-1B and L-1 workers for short training periods and then send these workers back to their home country to do the work of Americans.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It explicitly prohibits replacement of American workers by H1-B or L-1 visa holders.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Bill seeks to give the Department of Labour enhanced authority to review, investigate and audit employer compliance as well as to penalise fraudulent or abusive conduct.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Impact of H1B visa reforms:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Among the biggest recipients of H1B visas each year are Indian IT firms, such as Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL, Igate, Cognizant, as well as global giants IBM, Accenture, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, among others.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If this bill passes, they will to bear significantly higher costs for employing highly-skilled foreign citizens.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It may even \u00a0create a gap in demand and supply for talent for smaller companies that cannot afford incurring high costs to employ skilled workers.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It will eliminate the Master\u2019s Degree exemption for employers.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The new rules may bring back restrictions on the spouses of H1B visa holders who until recently were not allowed to work in the US.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>How is India responding?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Indian government appears to have taken notice of the reports but it is unclear if it\u2019s going to escalate the matter as a diplomatic issue. India has been largely silent on Trump administration\u2019s recent immigration ban barring foreign nationals from seven Muslim-dominated countries.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, India\u2019s interests and concerns have been conveyed both to the US administration and the US Congress at senior levels.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>U.S. makes H-1B visa renewals tougher: Context: Fresh changes in rules notified by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for renewal of non-immigrant visas will severely impact H-1B visa holders. New Rules: The new rules are in line with the Donald Trump administration\u2019s Buy American, Hire American Policy. An H-1B worker goes to the USCIS&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/u-s-makes-h-1b-visa-renewals-tougher\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">U.S. makes H-1B visa renewals tougher:<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704823951},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}