Immigration Reform News 2017: New Measures to Crack Down on H-1B Visa Fraud and Abuse Cases
The Trump administration has begun to deliver the president's campaign promise to crack down on work visa programs that allow the employment of thousands of skilled overseas workers in various companies in the country's technology industry at the expense of American citizens.
On Monday, April 3, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued a press release announcing that it would commence "targeted" visits to sites across the country that award H-1B visas to skilled foreign workers.
"The H-1B visa program should help U.S. companies recruit highly-skilled foreign nationals when there is a shortage of qualified workers in the country," USCIS said. "Yet, too many American workers who are as qualified, willing and deserving to work in these fields have been ignored or unfairly disadvantaged."
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USCIS will be focusing on cases where the agency cannot validate the employer's basic business information using commercially available data; those employers who have a high ratio of H-1B workers compared to its U.S. workers; and companies that petition H-1B workers working off-site at another organization's location.
"Targeted site visits will allow USCIS to focus resources where fraud and abuse of the H-1B program may be more likely to occur, and determine whether H-1B dependent employers are evading their obligation to make a good faith effort to recruit U.S. workers," the agency continued to explain.
USCIS also clarified that the site visits they will be arranging are not intended to "target non-immigrant employees for any kind of criminal or administrative action." Instead, they are meant to pinpoint employers who are taking advantage of the visa system.
As a result of this announcement, tech giant Google has assured its employees that the Trump administration's crackdown on the H-1B visa program should not affect them.
The company told its workers that its software engineering roles do not fit in the job categories identified by the USCIS in the agency's new guidance. However, they also guaranteed their employees that they will "continue to watch the H-1B visa space closely."
