Concern raised over worker visas

Attorneys say process for skilled foreigners being disrupted

NEW YORK — Foreigners with specialized skills are being denied work visas or seeing applications get caught up in lengthy bureaucratic tangles under federal changes that some consider a contradiction to President Donald Trump’s promise of a continued pathway to the U.S. for the most talented people from abroad.

Getting what’s known as an H-1B visa has never been a sure thing — the number issued annually is capped at 85,000 and applicants need to enter a lottery to even be considered. But some immigration attorneys, as well as those who hire such workers, say they’ve seen unprecedented disruptions in the approval process since Trump took office in 2017.

“You see all these arguments that we want the best and the brightest coming here,” said John Goslow, an immigration attorney in Ann Arbor, Mich. “Yet we’re seeing a full-frontal assault on just all aspects of immigration.”

For American businesses, there is a bottom-line effect.

Link Wilson, an architect who co-founded a firm in Bloomington, Minn., said finding enough qualified workers within the U.S. has been a problem for years. That’s due to a shortage of architects, but also because his firm needs people with experience developing housing for senior citizens. He said employers who turn to international applicants do so as a last resort, putting up with legal fees and ever-ex-

panding visa approval times because they have no other choice.

“We’re just at the point where there’s no one else to hire,” said Wilson, who hired an architect under an H-1B visa last year after enduring a long wait.

He estimates his firm turned away about $1 million in projects in 2018 because it didn’t have enough staff to handle them.

Three months after taking office, Trump issued his “Buy American and Hire American” executive order, directing Cabinet officials to suggest changes to ensure that H-1B visas are awarded to the “most-skilled or highestpaid” applicants to help promote the hiring of Americans for jobs that might otherwise go to foreigners.

Subsequent memos have allowed for greater discretion in denying applications without first requesting additional information from an applicant, tossed the deference given to people seeking to renew their H-1Bs, and raised concern that the government would revoke work permits for the spouses of H-1B holders. One order restricted companies’ ability to use H-1B workers off-site at a customer’s place of business, while another temporarily rescinded the option of paying for faster application processing.

Attorneys who handle these applications say one of the biggest shifts is an increase in requests for evidence from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. A request can delay a visa for months or longer as applicants and employers are forced to submit additional documentation over things such as the applicability of a college degree to a prospective job or whether the wage being offered is appropriate. If the responses are unsatisfactory, a visa may be denied.

Caught in the cross hairs of all this are workers like Leo Wang.

Wang, 32, spent six years after college in his native China learning all he could about data and analytics. He got into the University of Southern California, interned at a major venturecapital firm and wasted no time after finishing his master’s degree before starting on another degree.

He couch-surfed, passed up an enticing foreign job offer and amassed educational debt all in pursuit of the dream that ultimately came true: a six-figure Silicon Valley job.

As long as it took Wang to achieve his goal, it disappeared in record time.

Wang was working at Seagate Technology under an immigration provision known as Optional Practical Training, which gives those on student visas permission to work.

But that expired last year, and because his H-1B application was in flux, he was forced to take a leave from Seagate and withdraw from the master’s program he was pursuing at Berkeley. He says he and his company dutifully responded to a request for evidence, compiling examples of his work at Seagate. But on Jan. 11, Wang got a final answer: He was denied an H-1B.

“All I wanted was to be able to see my American dream,” he said.

“They’re just blocking the avenues so that employers will get frustrated and they won’t employ foreign nationals,” said Dakshini Sen, an immigration lawyer in Houston whose caseload is mostly H-1B applications. “We have to write and write and write and explain and explain and explain each and every point.”

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data released on Friday shows an increase in the number of completed H-1B applications receiving a request for evidence, from about 21 percent in the fiscal 2016 to 38 percent last fiscal year.

The number continued to rise in the first quarter of this fiscal year, to 60 percent.

Sandra Feist, an immigration attorney in Minneapolis, said talented foreigners discouraged by the visa process are beginning to look at opportunities in other countries, and she questions what that means for America’s future, especially if top-tier researchers who could contribute to science and medicine are turned away.

Chief executives for companies including Apple, Ford and Coca-Cola penned a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in August, saying immigration policy changes were undermining economic growth. “At a time when the number of job vacancies are reaching historic highs due to labor shortages,” they said, “now is not the time to restrict access to talent.”

AP Leo Wang, a native of China who has been working at a technology firm in California, is looking for work outside the U.S. because the government has denied him renewal of his H-1B visa for skilled workers.