U.S. adjusts H-1B visa program to allow American employers to fill jobs quickly - UPI.com

U.S. adjusts H-1B visa program to allow American employers to fill jobs quickly – UPI.com

Posted by Admin December 17, 2024 Jobs

1 of 2 | “These improvements to the program provide employers with greater flexibility to hire global talent, boost our economic competitiveness, and allow highly skilled workers to continue to advance American innovation,” Mayorkas added. File Photo by Yuri Gripas/UPI | License Photo

Dec. 17 (UPI) — The Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday announced a new rule further clarifying who may apply for a H-1B work visa to make attracting international talent less complicated.

The new rule expands the definition and criteria for a “specialty and better outlines requirements for H-1B visas by nonprofits or government research organizations.

American businesses rely on the H-1B visa program for “the recruitment of highly-skilled talent, benefitting communities across the country,” U.S. Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas wrote Tuesday in a release.

“These improvements to the program provide employers with greater flexibility to hire global talent, boost our economic competitiveness, and allow highly skilled workers to continue to advance American innovation,” Mayorkas said.

It was first proposed in October and will take effect 30 days following publication in the Federal Register.

Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., and Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., this month called on the Biden administration to fix a series of known gaps in the U.S. immigration system with the incoming Trump administration pledging mass deportations.

This arrived after years of lobbying for a more streamlined H-1B program. Among the requested changes was the codification of cap exemptions for the H-1B visa program to allow for visas to be sponsored year-round by nonprofits or other academic institutions.

The new rule updates old language such as “primarily engaged” or “primary mission,” that resulted in confusion over what organizations were exempt from the cap, allowing nonprofit and governmental research facilities to be defined as “fundamental activity.

It also will allow for foreign nationals to easily transition from a student visa to an H-1B.

Currently, visa applicants get picked by a random lottery system meaning chance is what stands in the way for many eligible applicants. The program has been criticized as susceptible to abuse by larger organizations which flood the application system thus lowering the odds of applicants subject to the cap.

The number of awarded H-1B’s is limited by DHS through USCIS to 65,000 per year. A further 20,000 are reserved for applicants with advanced college degrees. However, many nonprofits are exempt from the cap and the number of visa petitions often exceed the actual number of available visas issued at the start of a fiscal year.

“The changes made in today’s final rule will ensure that U.S. employers can hire the highly skilled workers they need to grow and innovate while enhancing the integrity of the program,” said USCIS Director Ur Mendoza Jaddou told The Hill.

Congress in 1998 temporarily raised the H-1B visa cap from 65,000 to 115,000 until 2002. At the time, high-tech worker demand still outpaced supply by 50,000 from 1999.

But the future of the programs remains unclear. The first Trump administration took a number of jabs at visa programs including a rule barring spouses of H-1B visa holders from seeking employment and suspending the government’s premium processing for H-1B visa applicants.

Trump in June 2020 signed an executive order suspending temporary work visas, which included H-1B’s, H-4’s, L and most J visas as well as some H-2B visas with an exception for food processing workers. It cited safety measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, immigration authorities criticized it as “counterproductive.”