There have long been complaints that there aren't enough Americans to fill jobs that require technical skills.
That's led companies, including a number of fintechs, to hire talented individuals from abroad and help them come to work in the U.S. on H-1B visas. The process can be difficult and expensive but employers who have taken this step laud the benefits of it.
"If you find talent, don't just say 'no' because of the visa," said Adwait Joshi, CEO and co-founder of DataSeers, a fintech that provides software to banks for client onboarding and to fight fraud. "Be a little bit bold."
The purpose of the H-1B visa program is to allow American employers to fill gaps in talent, mainly in the math, engineering, technology and science fields, with highly skilled workers from abroad, according to the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit immigration advocacy group. Some of the most popular fields that hire foreign workers include information technology, life sciences and medicine, said Leon Rodriguez, a partner with Seyfarth Shaw in Washington, D.C.
To apply for an H-1B visa, the employer must file a labor condition application with the Department of Labor that attests that the company will comply with the program's requirements, including notifying U.S. workers of the application and attesting that the foreign employee's working conditions that will not adversely affect U.S. staff members, said Eileen Lohmann, a senior associate in the Washington, D.C., office of Berry Appleman & Leiden. Working conditions generally include hours, shifts and vacation time.
The employer must also get what's called a "prevailing wage" determination from the Department of Labor, Rodriguez said. This ensures that the worker the employer is looking to hire will be paid a salary commensurate with Americans doing the same job. This discourages employers from underpaying American workers.
Prior to 2020, companies had five days to file a full petition for each worker they wished to sponsor on an H-1B visa after the process opened on April 1. The visa recipients were selected from that pool via a lottery.
However, during the Trump administration, the process was changed. Now in mid-March, employers can submit a registration for those they wish to sponsor. The lottery is then completed, and companies now only file full applications for employees who were selected. Under the old system, companies had to pay thousands of dollars in filing fees for each application. Though these fees were refunded if an applicant wasn't selected, it still required companies to front the money.
Under the new system, it only costs $10 to enter each registration, and the company only completes a full petition for an employee selected through the lottery for an H-1B visa.
"This is better in a lot of ways," Lohmann said. "You are not spending all of this time and energy on applications that won't get selected. You only petition for someone who will get their petition decided by the government."
The program is incredibly popular with applications far outpacing the number of visas available to workers. Currently, Congress has set the annual cap at 65,000 H-1B visas for those with a bachelor's degree and another 20,000 for those with at least a master's degree from a U.S. university. For fiscal year 2024, registrations surged almost 60%, to roughly 780,000, from the prior year.
Experts said that Citizenship and Immigration Services is investigating potential issues where employers submitted multiple registrations for the same foreign workers in an effort to bolster the chances of that individual being selected. That, at least partly, explains the significant jump in registrations, Lohmann said.
Additionally, a number of technology and fintech companies have announced a slew of layoffs over the last few months. Interest in H-1B visas tends to wane during difficult economic times, Rodriguez said. Despite these issues, overall the program is likely to remain popular, experts said.
There are no caps related to countries in the H-1B visa program. India, followed by China, are the top two countries where H-1B visa workers come from, said Julia Gelatt, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank focused on immigration policy issues. Obtaining an H-1B visa can cost thousands and even more if the employer hires an attorney or another expert to help with the process.
But many employers are willing to pay this. For one, they may not be able to fill a critical position with an American worker. Last year, the unemployment rate for the tech industry dipped below 2%, indicating that there was a lack of available talent.
"Generally, employers would prefer not to go through the H-1B visa process if they can find U.S. workers, but there is a skills mismatch between what open jobs demand and the training of U.S. workers," Gelatt said. "There are many people who are born outside of the U.S. who are studying in fields like engineering who have the skills to fill these positions."
Additionally, some companies, including fintechs, find that workers on H-1B visas are more likely to stay with their current jobs longer. The visa is tied to the job so switching can be difficult, said Manish Mohan, chief global talent officer at
An H-1B visa is valid for up to three years, and a worker can renew it once for a total of six years. After that, many of these workers look to stay in the U.S. and may seek their employer's help with that, Mohan added.
"Fintech companies are very innovative. And if you won't even consider hiring a large percentage of the [world's] population, it's hard to be innovative," Mohan said.
DataSeers, based in Alpharetta, Georgia, has hired workers from all over the world through H-1Bs and various other visas, including one for spouses and children of workers in the U.S on H-1Bs. Foreign workers add an important layer of diversity, something Joshi greatly values. This not only brings different viewpoints to the table but also helps DataSeers land potential clients. For instance, if the firm has someone on staff who can speak the client's native language, then that can give them an advantage.
"We have a very diverse workforce from religions, countries, languages, gender, young people and old people," Joshi added. "Diversity doesn't stop at any one thing. We want different individuals."
