anyone else in IT notice a huge influx of calls from recruiters/companies?


Apparently the order is likely to be signed in few days.
http://perchingtree.com/trexorder.pdf
Trump Uncertainty Principle H1B Visa Impact on Guest Workers & Students

Assessment of various economic factors including the lifecycle yield curve assessment of the tech industry combined with the motive to govern of the new president-elect provides a better indication of how the new policies will pan out soon. Personnel create processes and systems and looking at the recent appointment of immigration hardliner Senator Jeff Sessions as the Attorney General; it is likely that the legal immigration will go through a significant tightening and modification. In our view, the following changes will occur in the short term, medium term and long term. If you are affected by any of these potential policy changes, you may want to calibrate your choices carefully rather than be caught unaware suddenly. Advice for Investors is not included in this conclusion.

The OPT extension is likely to be canceled without much warning as soon as Donald Trump takes over the presidency. However, the one year OPT post-completion of a degree is likely to remain in force until the Congress approves legislative changes. Canceling the OPT altogether will be detrimental in the short term for the American colleges as students will choose to go to other countries instead of United States. In the medium and long term, the impact of OPT changes will be negligible. There is, however, a possibility that OPT extension may be replaced with an alternate visa over the long term to allow deserving STEM students to remain and work in the United States. American education is still coveted across the globe, and if the Trump administration decides to remove the one year OPT completely, the number of students to well-known universities are not likely to reduce in numbers. Some colleges have an application to admittance ratio of 20:1, so, colleges will eventually find a way to fill the seats. The number of students seeking admission in lesser known colleges will significantly drop as the motivation for seeking admission in these colleges is more to do with seeking long-term residency status, rather than getting an advanced degree.

Companies will be reluctant to apply for H1 and L-Visas for new/offshore employees as well employees under the OPT Visa. This will create a sudden drop in overall application numbers for H1B and L1Visas. Changes in OPT visas scheme will try and balance the benefit to American Students versus workforce availability, and it is possible that a quota system could be introduced for OPT Visas based on merit, education level as well as country of origin.

H1B visa in all likelihood be denied for Staffing Companies and sub-contracting of H1B workers to other companies for permanent onsite work will be rolled back. Sub-contracting of H1B workers for temporary project assignments (3-6 months) will likely be permitted under greater scrutiny. These changes will most negatively impact staffing Companies and Tech Consulting Companies.
Enforcement of H1B visas and scrutiny of L1 Visas will significantly increase, and one can expect to hear about increasing investigations into abuse of H1B and L-Visas visa retrospectively. One can also expect more scrutiny during the visa application process significantly delaying the visa process. We also expect “country of origin” investigations into resume fraud or experience embellishment. Currently, there is a minimal penalty for misrepresentation of work experience. It is our premise that misrepresentation on application forms both from employers and applicants will entail criminal penalties in the future.
H1B visa caps overflows into L1 visas, and both L1 and H1B visa limits overflow into misuse of B1 Visa both by established companies, staffing companies and by “Incorporated Employees.” While the GAO report does not directly address the misuse of B1 Visas and fails to highlight L1 visa abuse in great detail, the congressional committee entrusted with immigration reform will most definitely address the abuse of B1 Visa as well. One can expect more denied entries at various borders as well as continued investigation of companies where employee visits on B1 Visa are considered suspect.

Wage Levels of H1 B Levels from I to IV will most likely be increased by atleast 30% to bring the wages at par with local wages. Any rise in the wage levels with increased scrutiny (which translates into more legal costs) will discourage employers from importing workers from outside the country. The businesses will shift to hiring from the pool of recently graduated STEM students and will have to pay higher wages for hiring foreign workers.

The H1B currently accepts most students from India followed by China. There may be a quota system introduced where approved numbers of H1B's from Indian and China will be reduced, and other countries increased. If Tech workers are entering the United States on a guest worker visa from Europe, they will likely command higher salaries and may act as an alternative highly skilled worker pool. NAFTA agreement allows workers from all participating countries to work without visa special visas to work in the United States and vice versa. It is possible that President Trump will reduce the number of foreign workers allowed under the NAFTA Visa by unilaterally canceling or reducing the TN-1 Visas. Expect a lot of Canadians and Mexicans to return home.

Tightening of immigration for visitors, refugees and family reunification immigrants into the United States will have a carry over effect into visa processing for guest workers. Increased wait times, more stringent administrative checks (secondary multi-agency checks) will bottleneck inflow of foreigners to the country. The tightened procedures will be under the guise of improved national security, and it is unlikely that any lobbying pressure will work to change the "Follow the Book" practices. At the second line of defense, the CBP officers will get more powers and number of refused entries are likely to increase in numbers.

There will be an increased demand from Department of Labour and Department of Justice for all companies with more than 50 employees to set up Compliance Hotlines to enable Whistleblower complaints. It is also possible that the DOL and DOJ will appoint special monitors to monitor compliance on a quarterly basis.

As per critics, the largest abuse of visas occurs at entry points to the United States in Mexico and Canada. Many IT consulting companies employee “Incorporated Employees” in these countries to bypass regulations (Read the article to understand how “Incorporated Employees” function). Most of these incorporated employees frequently enter the United States under the guise of business visits and work on projects illegally. We already hear about increased scrutiny at CBP entry points and even some cases of denied entries for professionals across Canadian Borders.

E-Verify system is likely to be rolled out through a bill in the congress making it mandatory for all employers. Mandatory compliance will cause processing delays for legal immigrant workers again forcing the employers to either outsource work or hire American Workers. E-Verify is an Internet-based system that compares information from an employee’s Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, to data from U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Social Security Administration (SSA) records to confirm employment eligibility.

In the current framework, H1B workers can apply for a Green Card before completing their six years on H1B Visa in the United States. They can also stay indefinitely in the United States on H1B with yearly extensions till a decision is made on the Green Card. Currently, it takes around 7-10 years from the date of application for an H1B worker to get the green card. If green card related extensions are removed, workers will have to go back as employers may not be willing to renew H1B visas at the new wage rates. The H1B program was initially conceptualized as a guest worker program, but paths to permanent residence and citizenship have been created in the recent years. It is very likely that the administration will roll back the provisions that allow for an easy path to permanent residence or citizenship unless the employer keeps on renewing the H1B visa on its accord.

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) processes around 200 K work related visas every year, and visa filing fees can be anywhere from 2000 to 4000 USD per application The H1B workers also contribute to Social Security. Reduced taxes for corporations and curtailing of guest worker program entirely will lead to a massive deficit for USCIS and the government. This is the reason why the legislation team will seek a middle path and offset H1B reduction with discretionary visas for STEM students.

How will Trump force companies to hire within the United States and not outsource the work to foreign countries? There is already a precedence of “Inverted Domestic Corporation” within the legal framework where there is a complete prohibition of awarding any government work to Inverted Corporations. As soon as a tech company inverts itself, a ban will come into force. We expect the Donald Trump administration to issue significantly large government contracts and any company cited as “Domestically Inverted” will miss out on bidding on these contracts. Currently, the “Domestic Inversion” clause applies to companies who shift their headquarters overseas. We expect that a new legislative framework including companies with significant outsourcing ratios as “Domestically Inverted” will be discussed and debated in the near future.

The “Buy American Act” mandates that all Federal Entities must buy above the micro-purchase threshold value (3000 USD) should buy products only from American companies. Based on these two precedent laws and combined with taxation disadvantage of outsourcing more than a threshold level of consulting work, Trump administration would most likely come up with a new legislation framework. Companies complying with the framework could get significant relief from the government. We expect the “Buy American Act” to be expanded for private companies or industries marked as “High Risk” by the Trump Administration.

It is unlikely that H1B program will be rolled back in its entirety and it is more probable that it will be significantly reformed over time allowing for more Level III and Level IV workers (see GAO Report in the Article) to be hired. In the short term, increased fraud detection, compliance checks and rollback of executive orders will send a shrill through the tech industry. Increased scrutiny of initial applications, higher costs and fees of applying and enforcement of applied and approved application will create a higher compliance burden on employers. Compliance failure under the United States litigation system can translate into millions of dollars in fines. Many employers will rather choose to hire American workers or foreign workers already in the country on legitimate visas.