Changes have been announced to the United States’ H-1B visa program, allowing foreign entrepreneurs to self-sponsor

Joe Biden’s administration is proposing major changes to the H-1B visa program for highly skilled foreign professionals.

As reported in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and La Nación, it is known that the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has published a notice of proposed rulemaking to modernize the H-1B program.

The decision, WJS reports, was passed because the U.S. government “discovered earlier this year that companies had conspired to increase their chances of obtaining a visa.”

The proposal, which was published in the Federal Register by the Department of Homeland Security on Friday, October 20, would overhaul how the H-1B visa lottery is administered.

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News in the H-1B visa process

Currently, “if an applicant has a job offer, he or she can apply for this program and approximately 85,000 beneficiaries will ultimately be selected.”

However, it was discovered that up to 10 applications were submitted to increase the chances of winning for the same beneficiary. According to The Wall Street Journal, these people were sponsored by a group of little-known technology companies.

With the change, each person will only be able to have one procedure, regardless of how many records he or she presents.”

Another interesting change is that “for the first time Entrepreneurs could sponsor themselves to have this kind of visa.”

Until now, they had to be employees and not owners, La Nación reports, citing The Wall Street Journal.

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What the Department of Homeland Security says

On its website, DHS recalls that the H-1B nonimmigrant visa program allows U.S. employers to temporarily hire professional foreign workers in specialized jobs, which are defined by law as occupations that require highly specialized knowledge and a bachelor’s degree or a higher degree in the specific specialty. , or its equivalent.

The proposed regulations will change the way USCIS conducts the selection process, choosing based on individual beneficiaries rather than records.

Under the current selection process, an employer can only request to hire a beneficiary with H-1B status if its registration for that specific beneficiary is selected.

Under the proposed beneficiary-oriented selection process, any employer who has submitted a registration for a selected beneficiary will receive a selection notification.

DHS

This increases the likelihood that the registration is legitimate and thus significantly reduces or eliminates the benefit of submitting multiple registrations for the same beneficiary for the sole purpose of increasing the chance of being selected.

This could also provide beneficiaries with more variety in legitimate employment offers, as each applicant who has filed a registration for a selected beneficiary would have the opportunity to file an H-1B petition on behalf of the beneficiary.

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How the H-1B program is expected to improve

The proposed regulations, DHS says, will improve the H-1B program by:

DHS will also extend certain flexibilities for students on F-1 visas when seeking to change their status to H-1B and establish new H-1B eligibility requirements for entrepreneurs; And

(JO)