DHS Pauses Fast-Track H-1B Approvals for Six Months

Officials at the Department of Homeland Security have announced they are temporarily closing a fast-track process for companies seeking to hire foreign professionals via the controversial H-1B outsourcing program.

The decision by officials working for DHS chief John Kelly to shut the “premium processing” loophole for six months will likely delay approval of H-1B visa requests for months, say employers and some immigration lawyers who make their living by importing foreign replacement workers into the United States.

The bureaucratic maneuver is not a full reform of the program, which now allows at least 650,000 lower-wage foreign professionals to work throughout the United States in jobs sought by young American graduates and by experienced professionals trying to get their own teenagers into college.

The maneuver may not even reduce the annual inflow of foreign workers, but it buys time for President Donald Trump, who repeatedly promised to reform the program during the 2016 campaign. “I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program,” he said in a March 2016 statement. “No exceptions,” he added.

The new decision comes a four weeks before April 1, when Trump’s deputies were required by law to quickly distribute roughly 65,000 more H-1B visas to U.S. and foreign companies eager to import cheap white-collar contract-workers into the U.S. labor market.

The H-1B program is politically unpopular among ...Read More HERE