As per a new study of the National Foundation for American Policy, the H-1B visa program for top skilled overseas professionals, presently under the excessive scrutiny of the US administration, earned $4.9 billion in employer-paid fees for the US since 1999. This was sufficient to pay 90,000 the expenses of college scholarships and training.
The Details
The figure reflects the collections from $1,500 processing fee charged by the government for employers related to new H-1B or its renewal. Moreover, the total increases to $7 billion, after adding $500 as the anti-fraud fees.
The US gives 65,000 H-1B work visas to overseas workers every year. It also issues them to 20,000 foreigners in US institutions of advanced education. Indians receive these visas with a share of around 70% and the beneficiaries are Google, TCS, Infosys, and Facebook.
The 2020application process after some changes started on Monday and end in a matter of days based on high demand. The USCIS received 190,000 applications in 2018 and 199,000 in 2017. The fees collected from each H-1B visa holder funds the scholarships and job training for the local persons.
Finding of the Report
The report says that the role of H-1B fees paid by the employer has not received attention in the immigration policy debate. People recognize that training and educating is beneficial to Americans in the STEM fields, but the policymakers, do not note that company-sponsored H-1B petitions provide sufficient money to carry out the training in STEM education since 1999. The data obtained from various sources like the US labor department, the National Science Foundation, and the USCIS, the report mentions that 87,890 students pursuing courses in engineering, mathematics, and computer science received scholarships of one - four years in the range of $10,000 per year.
The collected money also funded the training of 1.5 million school teachers and students in fields related to STEM. Finally, $2.5 billion of this collection was used by the labor department for training US workers. The H-1B fees were immensely helpful to American students in science and engineering.
