{"id":15724,"date":"2017-11-21T14:44:56","date_gmt":"2017-11-21T19:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-immigrationreform.pantheonsite.io\/?p=15724"},"modified":"2018-12-28T12:30:57","modified_gmt":"2018-12-28T17:30:57","slug":"tale-two-visas-asleep-pizza-wheel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2017\/11\/21\/tale-two-visas-asleep-pizza-wheel\/","title":{"rendered":"Tale of Two Visas: Asleep at the Pizza Wheel?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, the holder of a nonimmigrant H-1B work visa<\/a> complained that federal enforcement practices amount to a penalty on small businesses using the program.<\/p>\n

Violet Tran, employed at what she describes as a \u201cboutique digital-media and public-relations consultancy in New York,\u201d related that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services questioned whether her employment was necessary.<\/p>\n

The USCIS request for evidence (RFE) was one of some 85,000 challenges the agency ordered in the first eight months of this year.<\/p>\n

Ms. Tran resents the intrusion, calling it the \u201cfunctional equivalent of a small-business tax.\u201d She says the inquiry will cost her company \u201cthousands of dollars in legal fees and countless hours to marshal additional evidence\u201d about the firm\u2019s business and her role in it.<\/p>\n

She blames President Donald Trump\u2019s talk of \u201cextreme vetting\u201d for the increase in RFEs.<\/p>\n

As long as we\u2019re sharing anecdotes, let\u2019s review the H-1B case of a pizza cook named Subhash Tehlan. The foreign national also holds one of those visas supposedly reserved for highly skilled, college-educated workers said to be in short supply here.<\/p>\n

Somehow, the pizza chef ducked the heavy-handed USCIS to work for years at a small pizzeria in Pennsylvania. According to the Center for Immigration Studies<\/a>, those also missing their cues were:<\/p>\n