Respected President & Congress members,

We would like to apprise you of an area in United States Immigration which is largely abused by Outsourcing companies to employ cheap labors and apply for their legal permanent residency (green card) with a very short waiting time. We are referring to Employment-based Immigration First Preference category - multinational manager or executive subcategory, commonly referred to as EB1-C. The other two sub-categories of EB1 (EB1-A and EB1-B) demand stringent eligibility criteria to make sure only ‘best and the brightest’ can qualify for this visa category. On the contrary, the bar is too low to qualify for EB1-C. Unlike other two categories, this category (EB1-C) doesn’t require any international recognition / association / award and neither it requires minimum wage or experience or educational qualification. Primarily, all it requires is 1 year managerial experience outside USA. This gives outsourcing companies opportunity to retain cheap labors permanently that they bring from offshore using non-immigrant visa (H1B, L1, etc). Once approved under EB1-C, this workforce can be further utilized by outsourcing companies to replace American workers as they are no longer governed by non-immigrant visa regulations. This loophole further encourages more immigration by outsourcing companies following EB1-C route.

Please consider the following scenarios:

Person A holding advance degree in STEM from a well reputed university in USA joins a Fortune 100 company in a critical technology role commanding high salary. He/she is eligible to apply for LPR only in EB2 after minimum 5 years of experience. If he/she is from a backlogged country like India, he/she needs to wait indefinitely for receiving his/her green card. As of today, the wait time is around 10 years which increases significantly every passing year.

Person B holding any degree in any discipline from some university in India joins an outsourcing company. Within few years he/she can move onto leadership/managerial role with few direct reports under him/her. After one year he/she gets transferred to USA to work as a supervisor or onsite-offshore co-ordinator, while still having few direct reports under him/her. These outsourcing companies can assign managerial designation to this person B and apply LPR in EB1-C category. In this case, it will take less than a year for person B to receive his/her green card.

 As it is evident from the above scenarios, low eligibility criteria for EB1-C makes this extremely unfair for other employment based green card categories. It is unfair for exceptional applicants under EB1-A (extraordinary ability) and EB1-B (outstanding professor and researchers) who need to go through much difficult hurdles to prove their eligibility compared to applicants in EB1-C. It is also very unfair to severely backlogged EB2/EB3 category applicants who face a decade long wait in green card queue. Moreover, it is highly unfair for the American workers displaced by EB1-C applicants as this category doesn’t require any PERM (Labour Certification) to verify whether an American worker can fill-in the same position.

 We therefore earnestly request you to implement following changes:

Reserve EB1-C only for outstanding executives with eligibility criteria as strict as those applying in EB1-A / EB1-B. e.g. Top level executive of a global company.

The eligibility criteria for EB1-C should focus more on wage (e.g. minimum $200,000 per annum) to deter outsourcing companies from hiring cheap labor in supervisory role. This will also ensure the applicant is truly serving in critical executive role in his/her company.

Removal of the criteria that rquires 1 year managerial experience outside USA. It only helps outsourcing companies as they anyway hire in offshore and later bring their employees to USA. This puts the graduates from US universities or employees promoted to managerial role in USA in disadvantageous position.

Applicants working in mid-level managerial/supervisory role should be placed under EB2. They should meet mandatory educational qualification and work experience required at per with other EB2 sub-categories. This new sub-category should also be subjected to PERM (Labour Certification) evaluation to make sure there is no suitable American worker who can perform the same job. 

More transparency introduced for EB1-C category with publication of quarterly report showing which companies are primarily benefitting from this program. This report should clearly show Top 50 companies utilising EB1-C along with average wage paid to their applicants.

Request your kind attention in this regard.

Thanking you in advance,

Employment Based Legal Immigrant Community