> Aegis applied for a half-dozen visas this spring, and only one of them made it through the lottery. The year before, Aegis secured a visa for someone filing a type of job he’s filled with H-1B workers in the past. So Narayanan set up a client project for the prospective new employee, a woman who was living in Dehli, India, at the time.

Sounds like they are exactly the type of consulting firm the administration is attempting to crack down on.

> USCIS challenged the application in August, which irked Narayanan because he had provided everything the agency had asked for. Narayanan was doubly annoyed because, without someone else to handle the new contract, it fell to him directly. For the last month, Narayanan has been spending four or five hours each morning doing the work himself, forgoing his own primary responsibility, which is to bring in new clients. “We might not make the profit we were expecting because of these issues,” he said. “We are afraid of on-boarding new H-1B employees, because of the unknown world.”

My heart weeps for him. If he could do the work himself, is it really so specialized he required H1B for it? Or was it more he just didn't want to pay the local rates?

That said, having hired through the H1B program I sure hope it remains viable. Reforms based on salary instead of lottery seem like a good compromise, reducing outsourcing and low salaries endemic with H1B mills. I'd much prefer a floating high salary floor (say top 25%) and uncapping H1B entirely.