Biden rescinds Trump memo denying H-1B visa to programmers
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Following an adverse court verdict, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has rescinded another Trump-era memo that had said computer programmers didn’t qualify as an H-1B visa (specialty occupation).
On 16th December, the US Court of Appeals overturned the USCIS’ denial of an H-1B visa petition. As discretionary and whimsical in the Innova Solutions Inc. v Baran case. A week ago, the USCIS canceled the memo and said it should not be applied to any new or pending visa requests.
Also, numerous H-1B visa petitions of Indian residents are filed for computer programmer roles. In FY20, this was among the main 10 occupational roles for which an H-1B/H-1B1/E3 petition had been filed.
Innova Solutions had filed an H-1B petition for an Indian resident with a bachelor’s degree as a computer programmer. Also, establishing that a “baccalaureate or higher degree or its equivalent is normally the minimum requirement for entry into the particular position.”
The USCIS rejected the petition because the US Department of Labor’s Occupational Outlook Handbook doesn’t express that at least a bachelor’s degree. Or its equivalent in a specific specialty is normally the minimum required, which the panel said was a misrepresentation.
H-1B Visa to Computer Programmers
The USCIS also said it would begin registrations for the FY22 H-1B visa lottery on 9th March 2021. And this will stay open till March 25th, 2021.
Every year, the US issues 85,000 new H-1B visas, including 20,000 saved for candidates holding a Masters’s degree. A year ago, the agency got 275,000 petitions for these 85,000 visas. Indians receive about 70% of the new visas issued. With a large share going to American technology firms like Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. The share of Indian IT services organizations has been slowly decreasing, and they receive about 6% of the new visas issued every year.
[Republican Senator opposes Biden admin’s move to revert to a lottery system for issuing H-1B visas]
On Thursday, US President Joe Biden’s government said it was postponing the implementation of another Trump-era rule. That called for giving H-1B visas based on wage levels. Immigration trackers had said that this would have had a detrimental impact on the visa program. As well as for students and smaller organizations. The rule, which was to be implemented in March, has now been delayed to 31 December. Moreover, it will open for public comments for a 30-day period beginning Monday.
