USCIS Needs a Better Approach to Verify H-1B Visa Participants

We determined that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) site visits provide minimal assurance that H-1B visa participants are compliant and not engaged in fraudulent activity. These shortfalls exist for various reasons. USCIS does not ensure that petitioners who previously abused the program are denied new petitions. USCIS could also do more to prevent approving petitions for recurring violations and collaborate more with external stakeholders. The agency does not provide comprehensive guidance for how USCIS personnel resolve site visit findings. USCIS does not have a process to collect and analyze key data elements to help guide the H-1B site visit program. The agency lacks performance measures to show how site visits contribute to improving the H-1B Program. We recommended that the USCIS Deputy Director: (1) develop processes to collect and analyze H-1B site visit data, (2) share appropriate site visit data with external stakeholders, (3) re-assess the H-1B ASVVP, and (4) develop policies to ensure adjudicative action prioritizes fraudulent or noncompliant results from H-1B ASVVP and targeted site visits. We made four recommendations that will help USCIS improve the H-1B site visit program. USCIS concurred with all four recommendations and has begun corrective actions to address the findings in this report.