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H-1B visa fraud alive and well amid anti-abuse efforts

theregister.com

111–120 of 230 posts

Re: H-1B visa fraud alive and well amid anti-abuse efforts

#111
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Easiest” way is probably getting married to a citizen. I don't think that's the case, anymore. I remember a notorious case, around here, where a guy had a Russian wife (I have no idea of the background -but they were married for many years), he was dying of leukemia, and required her around-the-clock care, and they deported her.

Dude, there must be something incredibly specific about this case for this to be a thing. Like the wife just said she was a tourist and never left instead of applying for a green card. If you just do the paperwork - enter the US under a K1 Visa (fiancé(e) visa), get married, and then apply for a green card once you're married - you won't be randomly deported when your spouse gets leukemia. It is actually is very easy…

I never read up on the details of the case. It may well be that she had some complication, that prevented the process from moving forward.

I knew a guy that had a Korean wife, legally in the US, but had been, many, many years earlier, swept up in a human trafficking thing.

That made getting citizenship difficult. Twice victimized.

Re: H-1B visa fraud alive and well amid anti-abuse efforts

#112

Why is there a lottery anyway instead of a salary ranking/salary threshold system? This'd disincentivize bad actors, ensure the US domestic labor pool is not undercut, and (more or less) lead to higher quality H-1B immigrants.

> instead of a salary ranking/salary threshold Because in spite of what the law actually says, the entire purpose of the H1B visa program is and always has been a way to get mostly adequate people who'll work cheap.

This is not even close to reality.

The reality is that the cap was set in the early 90s at a time where it far exceeded the need and hasn’t been touched since then.

And domestic needs have increased while Congress refuses to pass any reform and certainly not increase the cap.

A lottery is the only legal way USCIS can act to distribute the number of visas set in the early 90s to the obviously much greater need in the 2020s.

Re: H-1B visa fraud alive and well amid anti-abuse efforts

#113
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what numeric metric do you use to assess that it is "working well" in Germany?

https://www.bamf.de/EN/Themen/Statistik/BlaueKarteEU/blaueka... I haven't heard of any discontent with the program from locals or applicants. It's growing, too.

Did you know that you could have 15 years of working in the Bay Area experience and still be refused a German blue card because you majored in Physics or EE instead of CS? But mere work visas were easily obtainable a couple years ago with a signed contract.

Re: H-1B visa fraud alive and well amid anti-abuse efforts

#114

Something that I personally feel unfair about the H1B lottery is that it doesn't consider where you live and what you are currently doing. Students that graduate through a STEM degree get to work for 3 years in their OPT (Optional Practical Training). This extends then to them having 3 chances (one per year) at getting the H1B. Now what's unfair is that an employer in the US can apply H1B for employees living oversee…

If it were up to me there wouldn't be an h1b. People would be admitted via a points based system like Canada (but stricter) and would then be on a green card path and be granted perm residency after 5y, citizenship after 10. That's of course my pie in the sky 'we can get congress to agree on things' version. If I were president, I would simply make the h1b go to the highest bidder, so the people that enter the US are…

Why stricter than Canada? Why green card eligible after five years (Australia, NZ, Canada and others, you get the PR immediately long as you reach the points requirements) and citizenship after TEN? (again, other countries you become a citizen after four)

Re: H-1B visa fraud alive and well amid anti-abuse efforts

#115
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank You. I did not realize about the 3 year college graduate category. But does the law make these buckets? Or is there one H1-B bucket and you are categorizing the buckets by industry and types of companies that hire H1-B. Don't you think that the 3 year college student bucket, and the generally other buckets, would suppress jobs/salary of the local US population? They would be competing against US students gradua…

> Don't you think that the 3 year college student bucket, and the generally other buckets, would suppress jobs/salary of the local US population? Only if you can find somebody to hire--because it's important to realize that H-1B applies to more than just computer touchers. Before we got married, my wife was on an OPT. Her employer was not used to hiring foreign nationals, but they literally couldn't find somebody who…

It is easy to forget that H1-B applies to lot more than tech workers.

Is there any statistics on the break down between the jobs types?

I'd think with all the outcry over 'taking jobs'. That maybe the law should be adapted to have different quotas and rules for different industries.

Re: H-1B visa fraud alive and well amid anti-abuse efforts

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically you want to extend the luck/financial privilege that those people have had to be able to study in the US to extend to additional advantages for future visa applications. Not sure that I’d clasify that as fair, personally. As you mentioned, they already get multiple chances at a H1-B already. Side note: my understanding is that there’s already a secondary lottery for people who hold a US masters (the adva…

[flagged]

I went to a rural high school where 20% of the “senior” class every year was Chinese exchange students, a large portion of them continued to study in the US for their post-secondary education, exactly 1 of all the people I spoke to has a parent who is even an active member within the party and he is a mid level bureaucrat in a no-name city. It’s not nearly as common as you seem to believe. Many people go into debt to study in America, with their family’s homes used as collateral (which was the case for multiple students I met in college from India).

Re: H-1B visa fraud alive and well amid anti-abuse efforts

#118
post #30
post #26

Since H-1B says it is supposedly intended for high-value employees unobtainable in the US, why not auction the visas, with a reserve price that would prevent them being used to push down wages?

Because the system is really intended to drive down skilled worker wages and subsidize American universities that essentially sell American permanent residency to full-tuition paying foreign students.

this ^^^

Re: H-1B visa fraud alive and well amid anti-abuse efforts

#119
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be my naiveity, but, shouldn’t highly-skilled and in-demand professions be the highly valued ones? Something’s gone terribly wrong if there’s few teachers, it’s hard to get new teachers, but the price of teachers remains the same. It makes no sense from a labor standpoint.

>Something’s gone terribly wrong if there’s few teachers, it’s hard to get new teachers, but the price of teachers remains the same. It makes no sense from a labor standpoint. Its because the state has a near monopoly on hiring teachers, so they can keep wages artificially low.

The idea that private schools could serve anywhere near the amount of kids that public schools do and that would somehow result in higher wages for teachers is rather unserious on its face.

Re: H-1B visa fraud alive and well amid anti-abuse efforts

#120
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it were up to me there wouldn't be an h1b. People would be admitted via a points based system like Canada (but stricter) and would then be on a green card path and be granted perm residency after 5y, citizenship after 10. That's of course my pie in the sky 'we can get congress to agree on things' version. If I were president, I would simply make the h1b go to the highest bidder, so the people that enter the US are…

Why stricter than Canada? Why green card eligible after five years (Australia, NZ, Canada and others, you get the PR immediately long as you reach the points requirements) and citizenship after TEN? (again, other countries you become a citizen after four)

Because the lax immigration regs of the commonwealth countries are already causing significant issues.
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