H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies
&gt; The Department of Homeland Security wants to switch the order of these lotteries, it said in a notice of the proposed rule change, which would — somewhat counterintuitively — improve the odds for those highly educated workers<p>&gt; ... with a master’s or doctoral degree from an American college or university<p>This is a welcome change. But this biases the playing field in favor of those graduating from American degree mills. As a counter-measure against abuse from those, I hope DHS also intensifies scrutiny on the many American staffing companies who bend the H-1B rules to hire these foreign graduates. There is indication that they have started on it, for example [1].<p>Also,<p>&gt; The lottery change could be aimed at hindering those outsourcing firms’ applications, Rand said. Three Indian firms, Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro, have dominated H-1B applications since 2012, government data shows.<p>&gt; “Most of the visas are snapped up by these body shops,” said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR.<p>Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are <i>outsourcing companies</i>, not &quot;body shops&quot;. Body shops are staffing companies - they are mostly American and run out of places like Edison.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18425341" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18425341</a>