Denials of high-skill work visas are skyrocketing

Denial rates for visas for high-skilled workers have quadrupled since 2015, a trend that makes it much harder for companies that rely on these workers to find and retain talent.

According to data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, denial rates for first-time H-1B visa applicants increased from 6 percent to 24 percent between fiscal years 2015 and 2018. And the trend is growing.

Through the first half of fiscal year 2019, CIS denied 33 percent of initial H-1B visa applications, data shows.

H-1B visas are highly sought work visas for high-skilled workers such as computer engineers and programmers. Each April, CIS receives about 200,000 applications for only 85,000 of the visas. There are two types of H-1B visas: initial applications for new employees and continuing applications for renewals or employees who change jobs.

The reason behind this trend is new policies the Trump administration introduced to protect U.S. workers by preventing fraud. The new policies placed greater scrutiny on applications and raised the standards for awarding and renewing foreign worker visas, according to the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan nonprofit that recently analyzed CIS data.

“We had been hearing that companies had experienced more denials, but until you put the numbers together, it became clear how large a change in policy there had been and how big of an impact it’s having,” said Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy.

Anderson said the denials hurt companies in two ways. First, they limit growth because companies cannot hire new employees. Second, they jeopardize quality control because experienced employees who are denied their visa renewal have to stop working.

“And, on a personal level, it can really have a negative impact on an organization to lose people who have been working there for many years,” he added.

Some of the country’s most profitable and well-known companies have had more H-1B visa applications denied.

Microsoft, IBM, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Walmart, Google, Amazon and Facebook had their worker visa denial rates increase between 2015 and the first half of 2019, according to data from CIS.

The two accounting firms saw their denial rates increase by 40 percent between that time. IBM experienced a 30 percent increase, JP Morgan Chase saw a 13 percent rise, and both Walmart and Microsoft saw a 12 percent increase.

Google, Facebook and Apple also experienced an increase, albeit less dramatic. Their denial rates went from 1 percent in 2015 to about 5 percent in 2019, data shows.

Ron Hira, a professor at Howard University who has been looking at the H-1B visa program for years, says this is the first time since the program began 30 years ago that the government is actually enforcing standards.

Hira pointed to a 2015 scandal in which Southern Cal Edison’s American IT workers were laid off and asked to train H-1B visa employees who took their jobs as an example of how the program is in need of reform.

“The H-1B program is rife with abuse and exploitation, but prior administrations — both GOP and Democratic — essentially rubber-stamped petitions,” he said. “I’m sure employers don’t like the increased scrutiny, but that doesn’t mean the government is doing anything wrong.”

San Diego-based immigration lawyer Jacob Sapochnick has seen the trend firsthand for the past two years.

“We’ve definitely seen more denials for small companies,” Sapochnick said. “Not just San Diego, but across the states.”

Specifically, IT consulting companies seem to be receiving greater scrutiny in their applications, Sapochnick added.

CIS will question whether a company has enough work to justify the hiring or if the jobs being offered are complex enough to qualify as specialty occupations. Sapochnick has also heard from clients who receive on-site visits from CIS agents asking questions about who is working there, what their job title is and how much money they earn.

In February 2018, CIS published a policy memo outlining tougher standards specifically for companies that hire for “third-party workplaces” such as IT consulting companies.

“Based on the agency’s experience administering the H-1B program, CIS recognizes that significant employer violations — such as paying less than the required wage, benching employees (not paying workers the required wage while they wait for projects or work) and having employees perform nonspecialty jobs — may be more likely to occur when petitioners place employees at third-party worksites,” the memo states.

Sapochnick says each denial has real-world consequences.

One client was recently denied a continuing H-1B application. He had been with the same company in San Diego for eight years but had to go back to Bangladesh after his renewal was denied.