🔒Denial rates for skilled-worker visas skyrocket in CT

Ten years ago, a Connecticut employer petitioning federal immigration authorities for permission to hire a skilled foreign worker was successful more than 97 percent of the time, on average.

Not so today. Since 2010, denial rates in Connecticut for new H-1B visa hires — which increasingly target foreign graduates of U.S. colleges, including those with master’s and doctoral degrees — have skyrocketed approximately 10-fold to 25 percent as of the final quarter of calendar 2018, federal immigration data show.

That means some employers in this state are having a harder and costlier time tapping into a foreign labor pool with skills they say can’t easily be found in the U.S.

Connecticut’s experience tracks a national spike in visa denials since 2017, which some have tied to the Trump administration’s protectionist stance on immigration.

The H-1B is one of the most common types of nonimmigrant worker visas in the U.S. Nearly three in four applications come from Indian nationals, with China being the next biggest source.

Matt McCooe, CEO of the state’s quasi-public venture capital arm, Connecticut Innovations (CI), said the latest denial rates are worrisome on a number of fronts.

He has a dog in the fight, since CI’s mission is to invest in promising startups and boost the state’s overall employment and economy.

Immigrants, he said, can help on all those fronts.

For example, a 2017 study by The Center for American Entrepreneurship, found that 43 percent of companies in the Fortune 500 that year were founded or co-founded by an immigrant or the child of an immigrant. Among the top 35 companies, the rate was even higher at 57 percent.

Overall, immigrants have higher business ownership rates in the U.S. than people born here.

McCooe says discouraging immigration will exacerbate Connecticut’s population stagnation, and that erecting unnecessary barriers, for skilled immigrants in particular, will hurt the state’s economy.

“I think we just need to get more immigrants into the country,” McCooe said. “They’re great for the economy and startups.”

While U.S. Census data show that about one in six Connecticut workers were born in a foreign country, publicly available data do not reveal exactly how many H-1B workers are in the state in any given year.

However, data from U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services, which oversees the nation’s immigration system, show the agency approved 1,162 new H-1B visas for Connecticut companies in 2018, as well as 2,264 “continuing” H-1Bs, which include visa renewals.

Last year, Yale University, Quest Global Services, Cyient Inc., Aetna Resources, UConn, and FactSet Research Systems were awarded the most new H-1B visas, which are capped nationwide at 85,000 per year. (Colleges and hospitals are exempt from that cap.)

The number of Connecticut-based H-1Bs approved in 2018 was actually the highest it’s been in years, following a dip in 2017. That’s because, despite rising denial rates, application volume has also grown, though it’s not clear exactly why.

An attorney’s viewpoint

Dana R. Bucin, a Hartford-based immigration attorney and partner at Murtha Cullina, said her experience over the past few years tracks closely with the spiking denial rates seen in USCIS data.

Bucin, who is also the honorary consul of Romania to Connecticut, mostly represents small and mid-sized employers seeking to hire engineers or others skilled in STEM disciplines. She’s practiced immigration law for 14 years, and handles hundreds of visa applications annually. She said her batting average with visa petitions used to be nearly perfect.

It may sound like bragging, but it’s not really: The denial rate for Connecticut companies applying for H-1B visas for new hires used to be just 2.5 percent a decade ago, according to USCIS data, so everyone did pretty well on average.

Now, many of Bucin’s clients petitioning for H-1B visas are receiving a so-called “request for evidence” notice from USCIS, which come late in the application process — only after the applicant has managed to win a coveted spot in the H-1B lottery — and require companies to further justify the need for a foreign worker as opposed to hiring a U.S. national.

She’s not alone. In the final three months of last year, 60 percent of completed H-1B cases across the country had requests for evidence, which delays the final visa approval process and can tack on costly fees for more legal and other work.

“The amount of effort it takes to respond to an RFE is enormous,” Bucin said.

Bucin said it’s also been frustrating because USCIS seems to be targeting the types of jobs that it never batted an eye at in the past — highly skilled engineering, medical and law occupations that she said the H-1B program exists to fill.

“It’s very disconcerting,” she said.

Bucin said the apparent heightened scrutiny belies the fact that the law and regulations that govern how USCIS is supposed to review H-1B applications have not changed.

Attorneys for H-1B employer petitioners have sued the federal agency over denials, alleging it has unilaterally changed the rules, while USCIS insists it’s not doing anything different, Forbes recently reported.

While some say President Trump’s rhetoric about “America first” and blaming illegal immigration for a loss of manufacturing jobs has ginned up anti-immigrant sentiment, Bucin is careful not to be overly critical or political.

But she said in general, she has no patience for anti-immigration stances. One allegation she’s heard plenty of in her line of work is that companies want H-1B visas so they can replace U.S. workers with cheaper labor.

Bucin said federal law requires an employer that’s hiring a foreign worker to pay the prevailing wage for that position, as certified by the U.S. Department of Labor.

The fact that a company is willing to pay that wage ($95,482 in Connecticut last year on average), plus thousands of dollars more for a lawyer, immigration fees and responding to RFEs, proves her point, she said.

“It’s not about the cheap labor,” she said. “What sane employer would pay a $7,000 premium to get a foreigner if they could just have an American?”

“They just want talent … and they want [skilled foreign workers] because they can’t find them in the general population,” she added.

Mark Soycher, human resource counsel for the Connecticut Business & Industry Association, agrees.

CBIA’s member companies want access to more talent, whether it’s an international student graduating from a local university with an advanced degree, or a skilled worker coming here from abroad for the first time.

“I would say generally what I’m hearing from employers is that they’re struggling to find qualified workers,” Soycher said.

He said higher visa denial rates are likely to discourage some employers from pursuing foreign workers, even though that may be a mistake on their part.

“It may be a very worthwhile investment,” he said of the added time and expense of pursuing an H-1B.

Read more

Countering U.S. trend, international students still flocking to CT schools