H1-B visa holders may get higher salaries

Washington, November 16 

A key Congressional committee has passed a legislation that proposes to increase the minimum salary of H-1B visa holders from $60,000 to $90,000 and imposes a number of restrictions on the work visa that is popular among Indian IT professionals.

The Protect and Grow American Jobs Act (HR 170), introduced by Darrell Issa, the Chairman of the Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet subcommittee, was passed by the House Judiciary Committee during a markup hearing yesterday. The Bill now heads to the full House for necessary action. A similar version of the Bill needs to be passed by the Senate before it can be sent to the White House for the US President, Donald Trump, to be signed into law.

Given the sharp differences that the Democratic and Republican lawmakers and the White House have on various aspects of immigration reform, including H-1B, the Congressional passage of the Bill and its becoming a law as of now appear to be a tall order.

The Bill prohibits H-1B dependent employers from replacing American workers with H-1B employees. It also lengthens the no-layoff policy for H-1B dependent employers and their client companies for as long an H-1B employee works at the company, which means they cannot layoff equivalent US workers.

For H-1B dependent employers to be exempted from the requirement that US workers be recruited first, the Protect and Grow American Jobs Act dramatically increases the salary requirements for H-1B workers.

“They must pay the lower of $135,000—which is indexed for inflation—or the average wage for the occupation in the area of employment, but with a floor of $90,000,” said a media release.

NASSCOM president R Chandrashekhar, in a statement, said that HR 170, as adopted by House Judiciary Committee, would harm US businesses and impose an extraordinary amount of bureaucratic red tape on a programme that contributes greatly to US prosperity.

“It also could disrupt the marketplace, threaten thousands of US jobs, and stifle US innovation by unfairly and arbitrarily targeting a handful of companies who used just 16% of the new H-1B visas in the financial year 2016 while imposing no new requirements on the vast majority of companies that use the visas to do the same exact same things,” Chandrashekhar said. — PTI