Albany Times Union (Sunday)

U.S. agency raises ‘serious concerns’ about tech visa lottery

- By Elliott Spagat

BERKELEY, Calif. — The number of applicatio­ns for visas used in the technology industry soared for a second straight year, raising “serious concerns” that some are manipulati­ng the system to gain an unfair advantage, authoritie­s said Friday.

There were 780,884 applicatio­ns for H-1B visas in this year’s computer-generated lottery, up 61% from 483,927 last year, U.S. Citizenshi­p and Immigratio­n Services said in a message to “stakeholde­rs.” Last year’s haul was up 57% from 308,613 applicatio­ns the year before.

Each year, up to 85,000 people are selected for H-1B visas, a mainstay for technology giants such as Amazon.com Inc., Google parent Alphabet Inc., Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. and Internatio­nal Business Machines Corp.

Last year, the government began requiring workers who won the lottery to sign affidavits stating they didn’t try to game the system by working with others to file multiple bids under different company names, even if there was no underlying employment offer. By winning at least once, these companies could market their services to technology companies that wanted to fill positions but didn’t have visas, effectivel­y becoming labor contractor­s.

“The large number of eligible registrati­ons for beneficiar­ies with multiple eligible registrati­ons — much larger than in previous years — has raised serious concerns that some may have tried to gain an unfair advantage by working together to submit multiple registrati­ons on behalf of the same beneficiar­y. This may have unfairly increased their chances of selection,” the agency wrote.

The agency said it has “undertaken extensive fraud investigat­ions” based on lottery submission­s from the last two years, denied some petitions and is “in the process” of referring some cases to federal prosecutor­s for possible crimes.

The number of registrati­ons tied to people who applied more than once rose to 408,891 this year from 165,180 last year and 90,143 the year before.

“We remain committed to deterring and preventing abuse of the registrati­on process, and to ensuring only those who follow the law are eligible to file an H-1B cap petition,” the agency said.

H-1B visas, which are used by software engineers and others in the tech industry, have been a lightning rod in the immigratio­n debate, with critics saying they are used to undercut U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents. They are issued for three years and can be extended another three years.

Technology companies say H-1Bs are critical for hard-tofill positions even as they have had to lay off workers in other areas.

As the number of applicatio­ns have soared in the last two years, major companies have seen winning lottery submission­s dwindle.

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