Possible changes to work visas fuel demand
When it comes to the annual H-1B visa lottery, Nikita Patwari — a talented graphic designer who left her family in India to create a life for herself in the U.S. — is nothing but a number.
The grades she received as a graduate student at Savannah College of Art and Design won’t help her secure the visa that allows skilled foreign workers to find U.S. employment, nor will the importance of her role at Shippo, a San Francisco startup. Instead, for 24-year-old Patwari and the hundreds of thousands of other H-1B visa hopefuls, it’s all about luck.
“I know it is a very slim opportunity, but I’m just hoping for the best,” said Patwari, who is currently in the U.S. on an Optional Practical Training visa, valid for three years. “All of my decisions are based on the H-1B.”
This year, the chances of securing the highly coveted work visa may be even slimmer. Immigration experts anticipate another recordbreaking year of applications. While some immigration attorneys attribute the expected uptick to a good economy and high demand for engineering jobs in tech hubs like Silicon Valley, they say many of their clients are filing more applications this year, believing this may be their last shot under a president who has promised to overhaul the much-debated visa program.
“There are a lot of companies that are saying, ‘Hey, this is my only opportunity to get in under the current H-1B situation,’ because everyone is expecting a change,” said Marcine Seid, an immigration attorney in Palo Alto. “And they don’t expect it to be for the better.”
H-1B visas allow highly skilled foreign workers to spend three to six years at sponsoring companies in the U.S. The number of applications, which overwhelmingly come from India, has nearly doubled since 2014. Yet, the number of visas granted to for-profit companies has remained at 85,000 per year.
Silicon Valley tech companies, ranging from Facebook to younger startups, have come to rely on H-1B visas to staff many engineering positions. For fiscal year 2017, the United States Citizens and Immigration Services received a record of 236,000 H-1B applications. When this year’s application period opens April 3, several immigration attorneys interviewed said they expect 250,000 to 300,000 petitions to be filed.
Jason Finkelman, an attorney in Austin, Texas, said he has personally filed nearly double the number of applications for H-1Bs than he did last year.
“There’s all this talk of how it might change and how it might be more restricted in the future,” he said, adding that clients “across the board” are filing more applications this year.
Other companies, however, are continuing with business as usual. Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, said at a Stanford University talk on immigration this month that his company has no “measurable change” in the amount of applications it will file this year.
Shippo, where Patwari works, will file six H-1B petitions this year, more than it has before. Spokeswoman Helen Phung said the number increased because the company has grown. But, she added, “Anyone that is affected or could be affected by the new administration’s parameters will have full support of the company.”
The visa program has been a constant point of contention between Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. The tech hub has long argued there are not nearly enough available visas to fulfill the demand it has for foreign workers.
For a number of years, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has received so many H-1B applications that it typically stops accepting them within a week. As recently as 2012, applications were accepted for nearly eight months.
While the chance of an individual applicant like Patwari landing an H-1B becomes slimmer as more people apply, many in Washington, including the current administration, argue that the program is rife with loopholes that allow big corporations to squeeze out American employees in favor of cheaper foreign workers.
President Trump’s views of the H-1B program have varied. Last month, for instance, he called for a merit-based immigration system that would value skilled immigrants over more traditional family-based immigration. That would seem to run counter to previous suggestions that he would limit the H-1B program to protect American jobs.
Another worry for those applying for the visa this year is a recent move by U.S. Citizens and Immigration Services to temporarily suspend premium processing, which allows applicants to pay to expedite their applications.
Nearly 60 percent of H-1B applications are ordinarily filed via premium processing because many employers rely on receiving a quick decision, to know whether the prospective employee can begin working by the visa’s Oct. 1 start date. Otherwise they will look to hire elsewhere.
But William Stock, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said he believes the real impact on the amount of H-1B applications will not be felt for a few years.
“People who are already in school here have made the choice of America, but people who haven’t yet chosen, they are looking at Canadian universities and Australian universities much more seriously,” he said.
Patwari has decided she wants to stay in America but, unfortunately, her ability to do so is not under her control.
She has three chances to secure an H-1B visa before she must either go back to India or find another country that will allow her to stay. However, depending on what President Trump decides to do with the program, this year might be her best and perhaps only opportunity.
“It’s very stressful,” she said. “It’s really, really stressful.”