The electronic registration system for the H-1B visa program, known as the Person on Specialty Occupation visa, introduced in 2021 by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), is seeing significantly increased demand, thus, amplifying fraud concerns.
According to a report by TechTarget, the H-1B electronic registration process is experiencing a notable surge in demand that is lowering the chances of winning a visa in the lottery, which decides which employers can sponsor international workers for H-1B visas VisaGuide.World reports.
Before the launching of this system, employers were urged to submit H-1B petitions for each prospective employee, also taking into account additional documentation before being entered into this H-1B visa lottery.
The TechTarget report revealed that eligible H-1B registration surged from 269,424 recorded in 2021 to 758,994 recorded this year, thus accounting for a 182 percent increase, and if the trend continues, the number of applications in the following year could reach one million.
According to immigration attorney Andrew Greenfield, managing partner at the Washington office of Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen, and Loewy, the chances of winning a visa in the lottery are abysmal.
“Many US employers were denied the opportunity to sponsor needed foreign professionals for work,” he pointed out.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services said that it aims to reduce fraud in the H-1B registration process.
Recently, the United States Federal Agency said that it detected fraud as well as abuse in the H-1B visa, while USCIS stressed that some companies committed fraud in order to boost their possibility of winning the visa for their international workers.
Director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, Daniel Costa, said that companies gaming the system and flooding the lottery to improve their chances have been going on for many years, especially by the IT outsourcing companies.
But, according to Costa, now, “the electronic registration process has made it easier and cheaper to game the system, which has, in turn, boosted the [registration] numbers.”
The Specialty on Occupation visa is a non-immigrant US visa that allows companies in the United States to employ workers from other countries engaged in specific fields, such as architects, IT specialists, and accountants, as well as doctors, lawyers, and professors, among others.
H-1B visa allocations are capped at 85,000 within a year. Of the total, 20,000 are dedicated to workers obtaining advanced degrees from US institutions, while 65,000 visas are approved on a lottery basis.
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