Silicon Valley H-1B visa scheme at risk under AG Sessions
With the selection of Senator Sessions for Attorney General, the Trump administration may crackdown on the tech industries reliance on H-1B visas to help promote American jobs.
- H-1B visas admit 65,000 workers and another 20,000 graduate student workers each year.
- Sen. Sessions in Feb: “Thousands of U.S. workers are being replaced by foreign labor.”
- Tech firms such as Microsoft and Google typically hire highly skilled, well-paid foreign workers.
- These foreign workers then secure green cards that allow them to work in the U.S. permanently.
- India based firms such as Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services use the visas to deploy lower-paid contractors.
- H-1B visas are assigned through a lottery once a year by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
- In 2016: Companies filed 236,000 petitions for the 85,000 available visas, a cap set in U.S. law.
- Bipartisan critics have argued that Walt Disney Co and Southern California Edison Co have used the program to terminate in-house IT employees and replace them with cheaper contractors.
- Sessions last year urged then-Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate Southern California Edison’s use of H-1B visas.
- The Justice Department in 2013 settled a visa fraud case with Infosys for $34 million.
- Federal investigators accused Infosys of using easier-to-obtain business travel visas to import foreign workers who were required to have H-1B visas
