US senators urge Joe Biden administration to implement H-1B reforms issued by Donald Trump

A bipartisan group of two US Senators urged President Joe Biden administration to implement the reforms issued by Donald Trump for the H-1B visa programme. Under the former president’s reform, the H-1B visas would be issued on the criteria of wages and not by a computerised draw of lots. Trump administration had sought, in a notification issued on January 8, to issue H-1B visas to employers, who offer the highest wages in the area of employment before being allocated to other petitioners.

However, after Biden took over the office, on February 4, he announced a delay in the effective date of the H-1B selection rule from March 9 to December 31, 2021. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security has announced going back to the drawing lots system.

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In a letter to the Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Senator Majority Whip Dick Durbin, the chair of Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senator Chuck Grassley, Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee said, “We were disappointed to learn of this delay, as the H-1B visa programme is greatly in need of reform.” 

“The practical effect of this delay is that outsourcing companies will continue to game the lottery system and secure thousands of new H-1B visas for financial year 2022 since the H-1B filing season begins in a few weeks. This will facilitate these companies’ efforts to continue outsourcing American jobs,” they said. 

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“Employers offering high wages to international graduates of American universities often lose out in the H-1B lottery, while thousands of new H-1B visas are issued each year to outsourcing companies offering below-market wages and seeking to offshore American jobs,” they added.

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“We believe the H-1B visa programme must be reformed to stop abuse. Implementing a reasonable allocation of visas as the H-1B selection rule would do is a meaningful step toward reform to protect American workers. We urge you to expeditiously implement the rule,” the two Senators said.

The Senators put forward an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute dated May 4, 2020, which said that a majority of H-1B employers use the visa programme to pay migrant workers below-market wages and half of the top 30 H-1B employers use an outsourcing business model. Stating that this is unacceptable and not the way Congress had intended the visa programmed, the said Congress should pass legislation to overhaul the H-1B visa programme. 

DHS, and the Department of Labor should use their robust regulatory authority to reform the H-1B programme to protect American workers from displacement and migrant workers from exploitation, the Senators said. 

In January, Trump had extended the ban on issuing of new H-1B visas till March 31 saying that the US is having a very high unemployment rate and the natipn cannot afford to have more foreign workers.

Indian IT professionals, most of whom are highly skilled and come to the US mainly on the H-1B work visas, are the worst sufferers of the current immigration system which imposes a 7% per country quota on allotment of the coveted Green Card or permanent legal residency.

The H-1B visa, the most sought after among Indian IT professionals, is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. Technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.