News about Immigration related topics

< Back to Previous Page Examine Labor Department Enforcement Of H-1B Visa Protections H-1B visas are non-immigrant visas mainly available to employers to bring temporary workers to the United States who are in “specialty occupations.” To qualify for an H-1B visa, the employee must have a college degree or its equivalent; thus, the H-1B program is most frequently utilized by the hightech industry. A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report will reveal that 99 percent of all employer attestations to the Labor Department are approved despite numerous errors such as invalid employer identification numbers. The GAO found that 3,229 attestations were wrongly approved despite the fact that the wage rate listed was lower than the prevailing wage for that occupation in that specific location. T Many American high-tech workers have alleged that some employers abuse the H-1B program to hire cheap foreign labor, and that the Labor Department has not vigorously enforced the program’s requirements. This Hearing Will Examine: If the Labor Department is doing an adequate job enforcing the H-1B worker protections as well as protecting the job opportunities of American workers. If the Department of Labor is devoting enough resources to ensure employer compliance with the H-1B program. The effectiveness of the Department of Labor’s new electronic system to review the employer attestations and whether some applications are approved despite errors or violations. If the H-1B program is being abused by some companies in order to bring cheap foreign labor to the U.S.