Winners and losers are emerging in Trump's new H-1B visa landscape

"Trump's overhaul of the H-1B visa program slaps a $100,000 fee on new petitions for workers living abroad, and includes a proposal that would tilt the lottery in favor of the highest-paid applicants. Instead of giving every applicant a single, equal shot, the lottery would give workers in the top wage bracket four chances. Suddenly, a machine-learning researcher promised a pro-athlete-sized paycheck looks like a slam dunk in the lottery compared to a junior developer at a midsize company."

"The written comment period on the wage rule ended in late October, and the Department of Homeland Security is now reviewing comments and preparing the text of the final rule. The Trump administration holds that employers have abused the H-1B as a way to hire IT talent cheaply. A September executive order announcing the new fee framed the issue as a raw deal for American workers, saying the program had been "deliberately exploited" to replace them with lower-paid foreign labor. The fee is now facing multiple legal challenges in federal courts."

"In a statement, Matthew J. Tragesser, a spokesman for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, told Business Insider that the agency is working closely with the Department of Labor and the State Department to reform the H-1B program to "root out fraud." "The proposed rule will protect American workers, encourage employers to offer competitive wages, and ensure that H-1B visas go to top-tier talent filling critical, high-skill positions as the law intended," Tragesser said."

The H-1B visa lottery allocates 110,000 new visas annually and attracted nearly half a million applicants last fiscal year. The administration implemented a $100,000 fee on new petitions for workers abroad and proposed weighting the lottery to give top wage bracket applicants multiple entries while lower-tier applicants keep a single chance. The change would advantage high-paid specialists and disadvantage junior or lower-paid technical workers. The Department of Homeland Security completed a comment period and is preparing a final rule. The administration contends employers exploited the program to hire cheaper IT labor, and the fee faces federal legal challenges. USCIS states reforms aim to root out fraud and prioritize top-tier talent.

Read at Business Insider