The White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has approved a proposed change to the way United States Citizenship and Immigration Services handles H-1B visas, according to a report.
The visa program allows employers to bring in specialty workers from overseas and is heavily used by certain industries, most notably the tech sector.
The number of visas granted each year is capped at 85,000 (65,000 plus 20,000 extra paces for applicants with an advanced degree from a U.S. university), with their distribution currently decided on a random lottery-style basis.
That approach has long been considered unsatisfactory and, according to Bloomberg Law, the OIRA moved on August 8 to give its ascent to a proposed rule change that would replace the present lottery system with a new “weighted selection process.”
Although USCIS, an agency under the wing of the Department of Homeland Security, has yet to share precise information on the revised regulation, it is widely expected that the reform would see H-1B petitions awarded “subject to a statutory cap on wages paid,” Bloomberg reports.
Such a change would in all probability incentivize businesses to offer higher wages to increase their chances of seeing their chosen hire securing a visa, a state of affairs that critics have already warned could disadvantage less experienced professionals or recent graduates lower down the career ladder.
Should it come into effect, the revision could fundamentally change which foreign workers ultimately obtain U.S. work authorization, compel employers to alter their recruitment strategies and, arguably, make the process more competitive.
The Institute for Progress, a nonpartisan think tank, argued earlier this year that the economic value of the H-1B program could be increased by as much as 88 percent if applicants were evaluated more methodically based on their seniority or salary, rather than picked at random.
A version of the weighted selection model was proposed at the tail-end of Donald Trump’s first term in the White House in January 2021, when a rule change was pitched seeking to rank and select foreign work visa applicants by their wages, which would have been subdivided into four tiers for assessment.
The administration claimed at the time its plan would yield an influx of more highly-skilled hires and put to bed concerns from Trump’s MAGA base that too many visas were being arbitrarily handed out to foreign nationals at the expense of American workers.
However, it was ultimately rejected and withdrawn by the succeeding Joe Biden administration.
Now that the OIRA has approved the proposal, the next step will be its publication in the Federal Register so that it can be reviewed by the public and feedback submitted before any final decision is made.
