In the latest action taken by the Trump Administration to revamp the H-1B visa program to eliminate alleged abuses, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has published a proposed rule that would eliminate the current randomized lottery selection process in favor of a system that would prioritize the highest paid H-1B applicants first in descending order until the annual cap is reached.
According to USCIS, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agency that administers the H-1B Visa program, giving higher wage earners priority in selection would ensure that H-1B visas are more likely to go to the best and brightest workers rather than relatively lower-paid foreign labor at the expense of the American workforce.
The proposed rule comes less than a month after DHS and the Department of Labor (DOL) issued two interim final rules that, among other things, increase the required wages employers must pay H-1B employees and change who is eligible for an H-1B visa by narrowing the definition of a “specialty occupation.” Worth noting, the proposed rule comes only two years after the Administration overhauled the H-1B lottery process by changing the order of lottery selections and one year after launching a new lottery electronic registration requirement.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.