H-1B Lottery
On January 30, 2024, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced an overhaul of the processes relating to the lottery system for H-1B applications, along with significant fee hikes. The move, according to USCIS Director Ur M. Jaddou, is “to strengthen the integrity of and reduce the potential for fraud in the H-1B registration process, including by reducing the potential for gaming the registration system and ensuring each beneficiary would have the same chance of being selected, regardless of the number of registrations submitted on their behalf.”
A beneficiary-centric process rather than a registration-centric one
Under the new “beneficiary-centric process”, applications will be selected according to unique beneficiaries – identified by their passport numbers – rather than by registration numbers. “The improvements in these areas should make H-1B selections more equitable for petitioners and beneficiaries,” the USCIS statement added.
Why was this change necessary?
In the last few years, there has been a lot of fraudulent activity in the H1B application process noticed by the USCIS. In 2023, there were close to 800,000 applications filed for 85,000 visas, and about 50% of them were duplicates. Weeding out these applications and investigating the fraud – which deprives more deserving candidates of an opportunity to be selected in the lottery – is a time-taking and cost-intensive process for the USCIS.
As Arjun Verma, an SF Bay Area-based immigration attorney explains, “The USCIS figured it out. They would grant the visas pending investigations, but when these people went for extensions and stampings, they would be denied.” For other law-abiding candidates, however, the chance was lost and the damage done. “In one of the cases that came out, a candidate got numerous companies to file for him, and several other people had multiple filings like this. Unfortunately, most of this fraud was coming from India.”
A welcome move
This move is welcomed by people from various sectors like applicants, attorneys, and immigration advisors. For Pratibha Seth (name changed on request) who recently completed a Master’s program from a California University and is now preparing to file her application for the H-1B visa, “this reduces my anxiety about getting picked in the lottery. As much as I understand the desperation of some people for this much sought-after visa, it’s a wholly random process. To have fraudulent elements rig it in their favor is very unfair. I welcome this move by the USCIS.”
Reducing the influence of illegal staffing firms
Soundarya Balasubramani, creator of a community for talent visa aspirants and co-author of the book “Unshackled“, agrees that this will give everyone a fair chance in a very unfair system. “It will curb the illegal practices that a lot of IT staffing companies indulged in last year, where they would take money from immigrants and then enter 10 applications on behalf of one person; there’s a cottage industry of these consulting firms that have come up. So this move will reduce the influence of those staffing firms.”
A fee hike to recover USCIS operational costs
The second part of the USCIS statement announced a hike in Immigration and Naturalization Fees. The hike, the first since 2016, was in the offing for several months and is now finalized and come into effect from April 1, 2024. It will allow USCIS to “recover a greater share of its operating costs and support more timely processing of new applications”. It will also help with supporting humanitarian programs like visas for survivors of human trafficking (T visa), domestic abuse and/or other crimes (U visa), special immigrant juveniles and families pursuing international adoption, additional staffing requirements, and other process improvements. The current fee hike is expected to contribute to the agency’s annual cost recovery by about $727 million.
Verma elaborates that the USCIS, unlike other government entities, is not funded by taxpayer money. “All their operations are funded through these fees. There have been a lot of processing delays in recent times and if additional funding helps them streamline their processes, then it’s probably ok.”
