Gone are the days when Indian Vendors used to keep 100-200 H1 candidates on their payroll and churn them to make a killing. These were the times when any college IT graduate could specialize doing a course and apply for a visa on the basis of documents provided by the H1 company. They would land in US with little knowledge and lots of expectations. Some would survive and some would struggle but somehow everything was working in their favor and they would live in US by just running dummy payrolls.
With the change of guard in government H1 has become a Taboo. Politicians want to stay away from this category or workers, Consulting firms have become very cautious about sponsoring them and clients are wary of using them for the projects, fearing the wrath of the government. The processes which were involved in filing of H1, transferring H1 and processing of permanent residency have all become very stringent. Now even for a location change the H1 holder company has to inform the authorities. Not to mention the quadruple of filing charges, which has made transfer and filing all the more unattractive. The American Dream for these H1 holder candidates has become very uncertain as the USCIS has started rejecting more than 50% of fresh and transfer applications. Even the ones which are in the wait list for Green Card are seeing a very long processing window. Most are 10+ years US experienced candidates with i140 approved and waiting for the elusive Green Card. While recruiting we are now only focusing on trying to recruit non visa candidates, as that is the what clients want.
