Bid to prevent H-1B visa fraud

WASHINGTON, April 4, (Agencies): The US Department of Homeland Security announced steps on Monday to prevent the fraudulent use of H-1B visas, used by employers to bring in specialized foreign workers temporarily, which appeared to fall short of President Donald Trump’s campaign promises to overhaul the program.

A White House official said Trump may still do more on the program.

Trump had promised to end the lottery system for H-1B visas, which gives each applicant an equal chance at 65,000 positions each year.

Lobbyists for businesses who rely on H-1B visas, commonly used by the tech sector, had expected Trump to upend the lottery in favor of a system that prioritized workers who are highly skilled and would be highly paid in the United States.

The lottery for fiscal year 2018 opened on Monday without changes.

The start of the lottery was seen by those watching the issue as the unofficial deadline for the Trump administration to enact H-1B visa reform, and the failure to meet that deadline signals that Trump’s promised overhaul of the system may be off the table or long delayed.

“More oversight is a good start, but employers can still use the program legally to depress wages and replace American workers. That falls short of the promises President Trump made to protect American workers,” said Peter Robbio, a spokesman for Numbers USA, a Washington-based group that advocates for limiting immigration into the United States.

The Trump administration has taken other steps to crackdown on H-1B visa abuse, such as issuing a Justice Department warning to employers and announcing plans to increase transparency on applicants.

“These are important first steps to bring more accountability and transparency to the H-1B system,” a White House official said. “The administration is considering several additional options for the president to use his existing authority to ensure federal agencies more rigorously enforce all aspects of the program.”

Tech companies rely on the program to bring in workers with special skills and have lobbied for an expansion of the number of H-1B visas awarded.

Proponents of limiting legal immigration, including Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller, have argued the program gives jobs that Americans could fill to foreign workers at a less expensive cost.

The measures announced by DHS on Monday focus on site visits by US authorities to employers who use H-1B visas.

In future site visits, US Citizenship and Immigration Services agents will investigate incidents where an employer’s basic business information cannot be validated; businesses that have a high ratio of H-1B employees compared with US workers; and employers petitioning for H-1B workers who work off-site.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration issued a stern warning to US companies as they began applying for coveted skilled-worker visas Monday, cautioning that it would investigate and prosecute employers that overlook qualified American workers for the jobs.

The message came on the opening day of applications for American employers seeking visas known as H-1B, which are used mostly by technology companies to bring in programmers and other specialized workers from other countries.

“US workers should not be placed in a disfavored status, and the department is wholeheartedly committed to investigating and vigorously prosecuting these claims,” Tom Wheeler, acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement.