Reveal: “Trump administration’s denials of H-1B visas are being overturned at record rate”

After President Trump issued the Buy American and Hire American executive order, where he promised reforms for the H-1B program, US citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) began issuing a record number of H-1B petition denials, despite no changes to US immigration law. The denial rate for first-time H-1B petitions increased from ten percent in 2016 to twenty-four percent in 2019. Figures show that a record number of those H-1B denials have been overturned on appeal, which suggests that USCIS officers may have wrongly rejected some H-1B petitions. “Previously, deniable cases were being denied and approvable cases were being approved,” William Stock of Klasko Immigration Law Partners said. “What we are seeing now is that approvable cases are being denied, so what the [appeals office] is saying is, ‘This is an approvable case, it shouldn’t have been denied.’” 

Between the 2014 and 2017 fiscal years, the Administrative Appeals Office reversed about three percent of the H-1B decisions it reviewed. In 2018, however, it overruled USCIS in nearly fifteen percent of H-1B appeals and remanded more than seven percent of decisions, sending them back to be re-evaluated (compared with four percent in the previous four years). A federal immigration agency spokesperson noted that only one percent of all H-1B denials are appealed and that the figures are consistent “with a series of agency reforms designed to protect U.S. workers, cut down on frivolous petitions, strengthen the transparency of employment-based visa programs, and improve the integrity of the immigration petition process.” Steven Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration at Cornell University, says it’s not clear if the figures show a one-year flip or actual trend. He said: “It remains to be seen whether that continues or whether the [appeals office] also starts to toe the administration line and goes back up to the 90 percent level of agreeing with the initial denials.”

The Washington Post: “Trump’s order will deny visas to immigrants who lack health-care coverage”

Last Friday, the White House issued a proclamation stating that effective November 3, 2019, the government will deny visas for immigrants who “will financially burden” the U.S. health-care system and will now require that foreign nationals demonstrate that they have health insurance or sufficient funds to cover health-care costs on their own before entering the United States. President Trump said he is issuing the proclamation to “protect the availability of health care benefits for Americans,” and that immigrants “who enter this country should not further saddle our health care system, and subsequently American taxpayers, with higher costs.”  

To obtain a visa, foreign nationals must prove they will be covered by “approved health insurance,” including a family or employment-based policy, within thirty days of entering the US, unless they have sufficient funds to cover their “reasonably foreseeable medical costs.” Doug Rand, a former Obama-era White House official tasked with immigration policy, said Trump’s proclamation will likely affect immediate relatives of US citizens waiting for permission to enter the US, including parents, spouses, and siblings (with children being exempt). Analysts predict that the proclamation could reduce legal immigration by up to sixty-five percent. The proclamation, Rand noted, does not appear to affect foreign nationals arriving on temporary work visas, refugees, or those seeking asylum at the Mexican border. Rand said that as “a matter of policymaking, this is an incredibly flimsy document” and called the new rule “a gigantic, sweeping change to the legal immigration system.”