Thread by @ericfan_journo

Every year, a lottery determines who gets an H-1B visa to work in the US. The game, it turns out, is rigged.

Outsourcing and staffing firms are exploiting loopholes, crowding out US employers and immigrants who play it fair.

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Congress created H-1B in 1990 to help American businesses get the world's top talent. Instead, outsourcing and staffing firms flooded the system.

They bring in lower-level workers and pay lower wages. They game the lottery to gain unfair advantages.

Say you're a regular American business that wants to hire a foreign graduate from a top US university.

You would lose the candidate to lottery most (70%) of the time.

That's what happened to Sandeep Maganti, a talented engineer from India who founded his own startup.

An outsourcing firm, however, can draw from its vast workforce in India and put in 3X number of tickets.

It doesn't care who gets selected as long as somebody gets selected.

@USCIS rules require a "legitimate job offer" for each lottery entry, but don't require any proof.

We then identified 3000+ IT staffing firms, often called Body Shops or Desi Consultancies. Many cheated on a massive scale to submit multiple entries for the same candidates.

The government called it fraud. Yet there's little consequence. Many kept winning new visas this year.

One group of staffing firms entered each candidate as many as 15 times.

The government flagged them in a damning report last year but didn't name the companies. We matched details in their data to reveal the owner behind them.

@USCIS says it cannot sanction companies.

This April, @USCIS changed lottery rules to remove the incentives for multi-reg. But that's only part of the problem.

Staffing firms continue to flood the lottery with dubious entries. Even among their single-reg candidates, staffers fail to file a petition half of the time.

Experts say any lasting change will likely have to come from Congress.

It's been thirty years since the US last overhauled its visa system, which has been overshadowed by fights over illegal immigration and border security.

But the impact on US workers and economy is immense.

We obtained data on H-1B lottery registrations, selections, and petitions for fiscal years 2021 through 2024 after bringing a lawsuit against @DHSgov @USCIS under the Freedom of Information Act.

We're sharing this data freely with the public. github.com/BloombergGraph…

We will keep reporting on the US immigration system and bring attention to much needed reforms.

If you have a tip or a story to share, contact me at: [e-mail]

Shout out to my amazing reporting partner @zachmider, graphic colleagues @DeniseDSLu @mariepastora, and editors @jasongrotto @John_Voskuhl @YueQiu_ @amandacox

Special thanks to @JasonLeopold and the Bloomberg legal team for helping fight the FOIA battle, a pivotal contribution!