China Daily Global Edition (USA)
CHANGES TO H-1B VISAS PRESENT HURDLES
Fo r the past two months, Faye Yang has felt like she’s been on a roller coaster. US President Donald Trump’s changes to the H-1B visa process are the reason. Yang, who is Chinese and uses her English name, holds a master’s degree from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. She has been working for about a year at a New York-based culture institution that promotes understanding and relations between China and the US.
And at the end of April, she was lucky enough to win an H-1B visa processing lottery for skilled foreign workers. The lottery is capped at 85,000 visas each year (including 20,000 reserved for master’s degree holders). This year, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) received 190,098 H-1B petitions during the filing period.
For most foreign students and workers, the H-1B is a much sought-after nonimmigrant visa that allows them to work in the US for up to six years. According to a report by the USCIS, of the H-1B petitions approved in the fiscal year 2017, 75.6 percent of all applicants were born in India, and China was second, representing 9.4 percent of applicants.
Yang recalled that she celebrated winning the lottery with her family. “But just a few weeks after, I received the notice of the Request for Further Evidence (RFE) from immigration authorities,” she said. “I heard last year there were many people who received the RFE last year, and many of them had to wait for months for the result. Now I’m really frustrated.”
The RFE is a notice that the USICS sends to H-1B winners requesting more information to justify why they deserve the visa. However, during the time it can take to process that requested information — from 10 to 13 months — a worker can’t work. Some of those asked for more information could lose their jobs during the waiting process even though their H-1B visas were approved.
“Since last year, we are now getting more unwarranted requests than the past, and also in much bigger numbers,” said Fang Peng, a Chinese immigrant lawyer with more than 20 years’ experience of representing H-1B applicants. “In 2017, we see much more strict rules on H-1B visas after President Trump took the office. The approval rate of RFEs of last year might be the lowest in the past decade.”
Between January and August last year, the number of H-1B petitions increased by 3 percent compared to a year earlier, but the jump in RFEs was 45 percent, data from USCIS show.
This year, the number of applicants for H-1B visas decreased by 9,000. with a master’s degree in quantitative finance, Wanfung Tsui hasn’t been picked in the lottery for an H-1B visa. Now her parents want her to return to China.
“My lawyer just sent a checklist with requests of 15 additional pieces of evidence, which even asked our company to provide the transcript and degree certificates of all previous employees in my position,” Yang said.
According to Fang, the information being sought in the RFEs includes details of wages being paid to the applicants, proof of skill sets to ensure the workers truly are engaged in a specialty job and details of why the company needs a master’s degree — or higher.
“The higher-level scrutiny of H-1B visas is one of the indicators of Trump’s restriction on immigrant visas,” Fang said, indicating the changes were part of Trump’s directive to federal agencies to implement a “Buy American, Hire American” strategy.
“I think this year, the scrutiny will only be more strict and intense,” Fang said. “Surely it will have a very negative impact on the Chinese students and workers who are willing to stay in the US and on US companies who rely on special skilled foreign workers.”
Amanda Chu, an office manager at a Chinese company, said the increased uncertainty of H-1B approvals is “making trouble” for her company’s recruitment.
For fiscal 2019, Chu’s company sponsored four H-1B visas. None has received approval so far.
“Our business mainly targets young Chinese students who are studying in the US. So, our employees should be someone like our customers — speaking fluent Mandarin, well-educated, and deeply understand the Chinese culture. Those good candidates are usually H-1B visa holders or appliers from China,” Chu said.
H-1B sponsorship also contributes to the staff’s loyalty, said Chu, who has eight years of experience in recruitment.
“In terms of work efficiency, H-1B visa holders are usually more stable workers than green card holders and US citizens. For instance, recent graduates are usually more productive and hardworking when they learned about possible sponsorship for their positions. They will try their best to contribute to the company to fight for the sponsorship.”
The unpredictability and restrictions on working visas have also created anxiety, uncertainty and fear within the international student community, especially for those who are willing to work in the US after graduation, or just recently graduated, like Yang.
“Many of my friends and people I know were very frustrated by the changes made to the H-1B visa process,” said Wanfung Tsui, a digital marketing specialist based in New York who graduated from Rutgers University with a master’s degree in quantitative finance. “Some of them received RFEs last year, and even after providing extra information, they were still denied.”
Tsui qualified to work in the US because she is a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) graduate, which allows working in the US for three years.
“This year, many of my friends have said that it would be last year of applying for H-1B visas, and they’ve been prepared to go back to China if they didn’t get approvals,” Tsui said. “Our choices are very limited because we want to stay in this country, but our status issue is just so complicated and uncertain at this moment.”
Many of my friends and people I know were very frustrated by the changes made to the H-1B visa process,”
Wanfung Tsui, graduate of Rutgers University
The lingering questions on work visas and other immigration visas not only raise concerns and fears among international students and foreign workers but may also harm US competitiveness for global talent and its innovation ability, say those who deal with international students.
“There is a lot of compelling evidence that immigrants — who often come as students and stay on H-1B visas — are involved in founding high-growth, innovation-driven startup enterprises and that they make strong contributions to innovation inside large corporations,” said Fiona Murray, associate dean for innovation, a professor of entrepreneurship and co-director of the MIT Innovation Center, in an email to China Daily. “Patent data, for example, shows that innovation rises when there are more H1B visas provided.”
“US relies heavily on foreign-born STEM talent, particularly highly educated foreignborn STEM talent,” said Nicole Smith, a research professor and chief economist at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. “Foreign born workers already make up 17 percent of the domestic STEM workforce with levels reaching 18 percent in computer occupations and 25 percent in life and physical sciences occupations.”
“Despite all the rhetoric of foreigners “stealing American jobs”, there is a lot of evidence that they make a lot more than they take,” Smith added. “Our fairly open economy, superior economic and technological infrastructure and our relatively higher salaries for STEM workers have, in the past, given the US a competitive advantage in attracting global STEM talent.”
“We also know that increasing Chinese wages have been attracting Chinese workers back home in the most recent past,” Smith said.
“With the billions of dollars that we invest in higher education, for both national and international students, we seem to be uniformly shooting ourselves in the foot in an attempt to close our borders while continuing to feed this burgeoning xenophobic atmosphere.”