A big question these days in everyone's mind is that .."Is the future of H 1B visa safe or not?" All the H-1B immigrants are worried about their future in US due to the staggering economy, unemployment and the most recent USCIS Guidance Memorandum on establishing the "Employee-Employer Relationship" in H-1B petitions.
We all know the new USCIS Memorandum of January 8, 2010, has already generated a discussion with its newly-proposed standard for “employee-employer” relationship applied to third-party H-1B employee placements, which are very common for consulting companies.
Memorandum snippet says.....
"The USCIS guidance memorandum also lists a variety of factors to be considered when evaluating the petitioner’s right to control the beneficiary, including the manner and extent to which the petitioner actually supervises the beneficiary; the petitioner’s right to control the beneficiary’s daily work and work product;and the petitioner’s right to hire, pay and fire the beneficiary. Accordingly, adjudicators must review the totality of circumstances when making a final determination of whether the employer-employee relationship exists. "
Legit Online Jobs!!Now the question arises "Does this Memorandum will really improve US economy and to what extent? In my opinion 'No'. This memorandum is an attempt to curb H-1B petitions. It is an attempt to stop the H-1B immigrants coming to US who cannot show the existence of 'Employee-Employer' relationship according to the Guidance Memorandum.
Another questions which comes into my mind is " How this Guidance Memorandum can really help the H-1B immigrants to stay in US? ". Answer is really simple. The US should grant permanent residency to anyone who graduates from a qualified four year university with a computer science degree.
Since the strength of U.S. companies lies largely in the quality of their employees. Many U.S. based employers actively recruit professionals worldwide in all sectors such as Information Technology (IT) specialists, accountants, and market research analysts, to professors and scientists.
The faltering economy in US has created unemployment even among highly trained professionals. In addition, companies have curbed applications in the face of anti-immigrant sentiment in Washington and rising costs associated with hiring foreign-born workers.
Due to sagging economy, the U.S. unemployment gone below 10%, resulting in reducing expansion in the technology sector, traditionally the biggest user of the H-1B program. Not only this, the political pressures have prompted a cutback in applications. Undoubtedly, the recession has reduced technology budgets at their U.S. clients; at the same time, Washington has scrutinized hiring from abroad more closely amid high unemployment at home.
Instead of bringing over Indian engineers, most of the companies are hiring American employees who otherwise might have been let go by clients. There is a growing shortage of software engineers in the US that is getting worse with every passing year. I don’t understand why there would be any logical resistance to such issues – after all, wasn’t the United States built on immigrants?
Inferring, I see the role of innovation from consulting firms will continue to increase, not only in adding value for our clients, but also how we structure our day to day work to successfully practise the Guidance Memorandum and other innovative strategies. However, we do not know yet what steps will be taken by USCIS in response to this memorandum. We will continue to discuss more on this topic as it is of great interest to all the clients, readers and employment-based immigration community.
