Testing abilities instead of lottery for H1-B visas

    No one hides that the current state of affairs with the issuance of H1-B work visas for foreign programmers who want to work in the USA has actually turned into profanity. Employer firms fill out applications for their potential employees, and then the entire annual visa limit is issued within a few days. This is ridiculous.

    Obviously, such an unhealthy situation needs to be somehow corrected. The largest IT corporations, including Microsoft and Google, offer the most logical solution to the problem: simply increase the H1-B visa limit. But for obvious reasons, the US government is not ready to take such measures. Instead, they found another “solution” to the problem. Instead of the traditional issuing of visas on the list, they hold a lotteryamong the candidates. A lottery similar to the one held for those wishing to enter a permanent place of residence under the "green card" program.

    This year, the blind lot will determine 85,000 lucky among the 163,000 profiles submitted.

    Some experts are already perplexed about this way of solving the problem. After all, it contradicts the very idea of ​​H1-B visas, which were conceived as a way to bring the most talented, most capable specialists to America. As a result of the lottery, mediocrity can accidentally get a visa, and real talent will be left overboard. But you can select the winners according to a more fair principle.

    According to some experts, it would be more logical and more correct to introduce clear criteria by which it would be possible to select the most talented specialists or conduct testing.

    The problem is that experts cannot develop such criteria, for example, for programmers. How to distinguish a talented, creative master from an ordinary apprentice? Maybe, according to the size of the proposed salary, and then only the highest paid specialists are allowed in America? Or give an advantage to foreigners graduating from American universities (among engineers about half of graduates of American universities are foreigners), and if this is to be guided by the average mark in a university?

    Interestingly, according to statistics, it is the emigrants who are the main driving force of IT entrepreneurship in the United States. According to a study by Duke University, among all the American technology startups created in 1995-2005, 25.3% were founded by foreigners, and in Silicon Valley, 52%.

    However, holders of H1-B visas are not allowed to establish their own companies and can remain in the United States for a maximum of six years. If they apply for the registration of another visa, then they are completely enslaved by the employer and cannot quit for the entire period while their documents are considered by the state commission. The wives of programmers who own H1-B visas do not have the right to work anywhere else. They are not even given social security cards, without which it is usually not possible to obtain a driver’s license or set up a bank account.

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