H-1B is the visa classification given to Professional employees to come work in US Companies. Although all types of professions use this visa, the vast majority of these visas are used by computer consulting companies for computer professionals. The end user is the place that the computer professional will actually work. Usually these are big companies. These companies contract out their work, and sometimes the intermediary companies enter into contracts with others. Thus very often the company employing the H-1B worker has one or more intermediaries between them and the end client. The petitioning consulting companies (hereinafter petitioner) often change the employees resumes to suit a job, although the employee may not have that skill. This can be stopped if the end client can have a testing requirement to before accepting someone for the job. Initially it will be a burden to devise these tests, but then, that will ensure that their work is done in an efficient way.

But the real problem is that there is a quota of 65,000 visas per year for H-1Bs (plus 20K for those who have US Masters) and there are more than 233,000 petitions filed on the first day in 2015. So the Citizenship and Immigration Service does a random lottery and the lucky 85 K get in. Then the Citizenship and Immigration Service takes a long time to adjudicate these cases, and often it’s January of the following year that the employee can get in and start working Thus employers have to calculate their need and apply with projected rather than actual figure. Since these visas lead to Green Card (Permanent Resident Card), they are coveted by employees. Thus many employees seek employers to enter the lottery. The employees often pay money to the employers to enter the lottery, which is of course against the law. The employers then file for the H-1B lottery for these employees. By the time the employee can make it to the United States, the project that was originally applied for has already been completed.
Do H-1B employees take American jobs? Please note that the Government fees for H-1B is 1575 to 4325 USD- per individual. Add attorney’s fees to that. The Employer has to pay the employee at least the Prevailing Wage, which is often higher than local employees’ pay. And even if it’s the same wage for three years, its still the same as an American worker. But we do have computer science graduates in this country. They do not want to lead the lifestyle of the computer consultant. The computer consultant is like a travelling Computer guru, who moves from project to project. They may stay in Memphis for 6 months, followed by Iowa City for 3 mts, followed by Houston for 5 mts. You get the picture. They cannot have roots anywhere. If they have families, the family has to be positioned in some place, and they usually go back for the week end. But to make up for it, they work 12 hour days from Monday to Thursday. It’s just a hard life that Comp Sci grads from this country simply do not want.

Thus the solutions to these problems are:
1. Do away with the H-1B quota and let the market dictate need:
The market is a much better predictor of demand than an artificial quota. The quota forces employers to project their need for a whole year and file accordingly. It also creates uncertainly because of the lottery and creates artificial demand. Very often the petitioner just has one or two big project and file 20 cases, even though the need maybe 5. They hope that at least 5 people get picked. This of course leads to fraudulent practices. And there can be no guarantee which employee will be lucky enough to get in. Without the quota the optimally qualified available personnel, rather than the lucky personnel will get the job.

2. Create a system whereby the HR director of the end user has to verify the employment of the employee
The Department of Labor, to end fraud in the Labor Certification program established a system where the Company has to verify that the Labor certification is a real job that does exist in the Company. The Citizenship and Immigration service is testing an employer verification system. But they need to create a simple program whereby the system sends out an e mail asking if this job exist. The adjudication (which needs to be done fast) will proceed upon a yes answer. If the e mail is fraud, then the petitioner will be barred from using the H-1B program again, and the end user will pay a fine.

3. Do Away with Control and Simeio issues:
The Obama administration created complex and useless rules to curb H-1B fraud which do not work. In 2010, the Citizenship and Immigration Service issued a memo that said these professional employees need to be “controlled”. The Government tried to say that if the petitioner does not control the employee, then they are not the Employer. The Government then proceeded to introduce this requirement ONLY to the computer consulting industry, and not to the healthcare industry, which employ the same model. Just a simple e mail from the end user should suffice. The “control” issue goes into the business model of this industry, over which the Citizenship and Immigration Service does not have jurisdiction.

Similarly in a 2015 case, Simeio, the ruling was that if an H-1B employee changes job location, the employer has to file an H-1B petition. As mentioned above these H-1B employees change job locations very frequently. Thus the Immigration Service is inundated with the H-1B petitions. The Government is taking almost a year to adjudicate these petitions. By then the employee has moved three times, making the adjudication of two of these petitions moot and a waste of time.
These two measures are quixotic and serve no purpose other than to harass employers and make attorneys rich. In order to curb fraud, the system should be made simple, hassle free and fast to keep pace with the for profit industry. Otherwise the Immigration code will quickly grow into something like the tax code, complex and filled with loop holes.

For more information contact Houston Immigration attorney, Annie Banerjee

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