The rumblings I've heard is that the administration is dragging its feet almost anywhere they can, wrt immigration.

It's not just H1Bs from India, but nearly all visas from all countries. Events that are supposed to take place in 6 weeks are at 6 months, and it doesn't seem to be documented or reported anywhere. I've only heard about it through some friends going through it or otherwise involved in the processes.

It’s probably pretty difficult to square their anti immigration stance with their claim of being business friendly if you consider that most businesses love cheap immigrants. Hard to shape this into a coherent policy.

Immigrants are not necessarily cheap. H1B problems do bind some employees to their employers removing their leverage. I'm an immigrant, I can tell you I do not come cheap.

The question is whether you come cheaper than a similar locally sourced employee who isn't bounded by H1B, not cheaper than a barista.

As mentioned, US immigration resources are being consumed by dealing with the flood of illegal immigrants at the southern border. Persons are being re-tasked to handle the asylum-claim processing and dealing with all of the unaccompanied minors.

> the Trump USCIS seems to have a special hatred towards Indians

What exactly do you mean by that? Do you have some knowledge to share about Indians specifically having a harder time than others with USCIS recently?

It's hard to come by rigorous numbers. But RFE's (request for evidence) are now the routine (approx 70% of cases) in all immigration cases. I haven't even heard of an acquaintance having their immigration (H1B, OPT, L1, permanent residency) being approved without an RFE in recent times. RFE's used to be the exception rather (where the lawyer/applicant genuinely made a mistake) than the norm. Now it's the other way round. They find a minor technicality to issue an RFE.

Yes, but what about Indians in particular? I don't think it would be that hard to make a FOI request for the particular stats about that, so I'd like to know what led ramraj07 to believe that Indians are specifically targeted by USCIS, and specifically during the Trump administration. Presumably you could see that as a sharp line, marking a policy change, in the number of requests for evidence (your measurement) particularly for Indian applicants.

To me it seems reasonable that they determine their own criteria for triggering requests for evidence, but I've not heard about a particular policy or pattern for targeting Indian applicants.

I'm curious because similar claims have been made here in Canada as of recent; but it's hard to tell since we have a quite strict and inquisitive immigration system to begin with.

Late to reply, but there ARE numbers - need to find the timestamp but this lawyers talk shows the fraction of RFEs is significantly higher for Indian applicants in this lecture - https://youtu.be/i8nljUVzOiw

Kudos for taking a rationalist approach, this is far too rare.

L. Francis Cissna was tremendously good at quietly making the legal system as hostile to immigrants as possible while technically staying within the confines of the law.

Trump likes showmanship over substance, though, so he's out. Guessing the new guy will keep the legal system slowdowns in place while upping the fireworks.