This year’s registration period for the H-1B visa lottery ends Monday at noon Eastern time. The current administration has brought chaos to almost every aspect of government, but—fingers crossed—that hasn’t extended into the H-1B process. Yet.
In 2020, President Trump tried to temporarily suspend new H-1B visas, saying that they should only go to highly skilled, highly paid applicants who didn’t replace American workers. When a judge struck down that decision, Trump attempted to change the rules for eligibility and force companies to pay more for the workers brought in with the visa. That too was struck down, but those efforts suggest the president’s perspective on the H-1B visa.
In a recent article at Forbes.com, Stuart Anderson reported that Ohio Representative Jim Jordan plans to bring immigration legislation to the floor once the budget reconciliation process concludes, and the H-1B visa would be addressed at some level in that bill.
The direction legislation would go isn’t clear. In January, the president’s constituencies clashed over the H-1B visa as America First fans wanted the number of H-1B visas throttled back, while the tech sector that gave Trump financial support during the presidential campaign rely heavily on H-1B visas and don’t want to see them limited.
Anderson reports that another complication could come from Senator Bernie Sanders, who tried unsuccessfully to introduce an amendment that would have changed the way H-1B visa recipients would have to be paid to a bill in January.
Currently, they must be paid at least the prevailing wage for the job in the area of employment, but the independent from Vermont is worried about the H-1B visa affects American workers. His amendment would have instead required employers to pay the median local wage level, which would raise the wages of H-1B recipients to at least 72 percent more than the prevailing wage standard.
The median local wage would not take experience into effect, so that standard could factor people with 20 or more years’ experience into the process of determining the wage of someone just out of college.
“As a result of the H-1B guest worker program, major corporations are now importing hundreds of thousands of low-paid guest workers from abroad to fill the white-collar technology jobs that are available,” Sanders said in a statement. His amendment was intended to create a disincentive for companies to use H-1B visas to import foreign talent.
If there is an upside in these competing visions of legislation intended to limit the H-1B visa, it is that the thin majorities in the House and Senate decrease the likelihood of anything passing.
It also helps that the H-1B visa aligns well with America’s preference for highly skilled foreign workers. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that 42 percent of Americans say that scientists, doctors, nurses, computer programmers and other highly skilled workers should be the top priority to immigrate to the United States. Forty-six percent thought legal immigration should remain at its present level at the time.
Those who have yet to register to enter the H-1B visa lottery need to do so ASAP since they’re running out of time. After that, we’ll all watch to see what happens next.
Photo by Alejandro Garay on Unsplash.
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