Immigration & businessCompanies gaming the system to get their H-1B visa applicants approved

Many foreign applicants for the 65,000 yearly available H-1B U.S. work visas, which allow U.S. companies temporarily to employ foreign workers in specialty positions, are finding that their paperwork is not even being considered due to the fact that many companies are using various behind-the-scenes schemes better to control their own employment interests, disrupting the system while also highlighting the inefficiency of the current registration process.

As USA Today reports, many qualified immigrants find the highly coveted visas even less attainable  as a result of some companies using little-known immigration fixing techniques in order to guarantee their own employee’s acceptance. These include expecting a candidate to wait two to four years for an opening with the promise of tuition perks, or bypassing immigration rules by hiring outside of the U.S. and then flying the individual in on a tourist visa.

In some cases, companies have even gone as far as to relocate any targeted candidates – along with the entire U.S.-based team that they manage – overseas.

“We are bringing people in and then telling them to go elsewhere,” said William Stock, the vice president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “Companies can’t plan this way.”

The companies, which must spend between $4,500 to $14,000 per H-1B applicant, are aware of the size of the applicant pool and the willingness of visa candidates to cooperate with the different circumstances, have devised ways of working around the application process.

Some immigration lawyers are arguing that the government’s restrictions of the H-1B process are exactly what is leading to the fixing strategies. The tech industry alone is so short on talent that it is expected to create roughly 70,000 jobs annually that cannot be fulfilled by the 51,000 estimated STEM graduates in the United States, a figure so low it leads to a shortage of qualified workers.

Additionally, much of this behavior is secretive, because of fear of reprisal from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“There is staggering fear,” says Javier Pico, an immigration lawyer at the Boston-based firm Pico Law.

In one case, a candidate was selected for a “cultural exchange,” which included business training, development, and startup capital for a project. Once the individual was denied an H-1B, however, the man was left to start his own company in Madrid, which is now negotiation with several Silicon Valley investors to raise the capital which would allow it to compete against the company which originally tried to hire him.

“This situation is very negative for the U.S. and very positive for other countries,” added Monica Martinez, the CEO of Columbus Global Solutions, a Boston-based tech consultancy.