Trump admin seeks to overhaul H1-B visa lottery system

Just days after steeply hiking fee for H1-B visas, the United States now looks to change its selection process. The Department of Homeland Security has proposed that the visa lottery system should now be based on wage levels.

The proposal said: "DHS proposes to implement a weighted selection process that would generally favor the allocation of H-1B visas to higher skilled and higher paid aliens, while maintaining the opportunity for employers to secure H-1B workers at all wage levels, to better serve the Congressional intent for the H-1B program."

In simple words, the H-1B lottery will no longer be purely random. Instead, each applicant's odds will be weighted by salary level.

Anyone earning more than $162,528 will be in top slab and make them eligible to make four entries into the lottery.

Early career professionals with a smaller payout will now get only one entry -- making their chances even slimmer.

H-1B visas allow companies to sponsor foreign workers with specialised skills --- such as scientists, engineers, and computer programmers -- to work in the United States, initially for three years but extendable to six. US awards 85,000 H-1B visas per year on a lottery system, with India accounting for around three-quarters of the recipients.

Immigration expert Nicole Gunara explained to NDTV than "an engineer offered $150,000 at Meta might now have multiple lottery entries, while a junior developer at a startup earning $70,000 might only get one."

"A candidate in a top wage tier could receive multiple entries in the lottery, while someone at an entry-level salary may only get one. That means higher-paid, senior roles will have significantly better chances of selection, while recent graduates and early-career workers will face much steeper odds," Gunara added.

The H1-B visa tussle

US President Donald Trump announced the change in Washington on Friday, arguing it would support American workers.

The H-1B program "has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor," the executive order said.

Trump also introduced a $1 million "gold card" residency program he had previewed months earlier.

"The main thing is, we're going to have great people coming in, and they're going to be paying," Trump told reporters as he signed the orders in the Oval Office.

Tech entrepreneurs -- including Trump's former ally Elon Musk -- have warned against targeting H-1B visas, saying that the United States does not have enough homegrown talent to fill important tech sector job vacancies.