The government of Donald Trump moved Tuesday to cut back H1 B visas for foreign experienced workers and tightened wage-based entry barriers citing data that more than 500,000 Americans have lost their jobs because of H1B non-immigrants.
According to the United States government, China and India account for the lion’s share of H1B visas. For most years India accounts for upwards of 70 per cent.
Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy DHS secretary told to the reporters on a call that about one-third of the people who have applied for H1B visas would be denied under the new rules.
With Donald Trump’s laid up with COVID-19, his poll numbers are tanking and less than 30 days to go before the US elections. The timing of H1B visa hammering is business as usual for foreign workers.
An H1B worker on-site at JP Morgan in New York City told IANS that “It would have been a surprise if this hadn’t happened,”. The worker asked not to be named. The salary requirement will be a “gamechanger” The worker told in favour of the Trump administration.
They’ve seen this movie before, it’s Trump’s all-base, all the time anthem to fire up his most vocal supporters, Many H1B workers expressed the version of the same sentiment, they said.
The most recent blow comes as the ducks line up across multiple departments that coordinate and monitor the crisscrossing elements of foreign worker visas: US Department of Labour (DoL), US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The Department of Labour’s updates to minimum salary requirements take effect Thursday and DHS’ and the H1B modifications will hit home in 60 days.
The United States Department of Labour announced: “When seeking to employ an H-1B, H-1B1, or E-3 visa, US employers must attest that they will pay non-immigrant workers, during the period of authorized employment, the higher of the prevailing wage or the actual wage paid to other employees with similar experience and qualifications,”.
On Tuesday the word Undercut was used multiple times in a round-robin of smoothly co-ordinated press-releases and telephonic briefings across DoL and DHS. The gaslighting of the “low cost H1B paycheque is a well-worn anthem and has grown louder in the Trump years.
The four salary tiers for the employees on H1B and other professional visas will be raised by the DOL rule. Which currently started at the 17th percentiles for each industry to the 45th percentile.
An excerpt from the DoL interim final rule read: “Under the existing wage levels, artificially low prevailing wages provide an opportunity for employers to hire and retain foreign workers at wages well below what their US counterparts – meaning US workers in the same labour market, performing similar jobs, and possessing similar levels of education, experience, and responsibility – make, creating an incentive – entirely at odds with the statutory scheme – to prefer foreign workers to US workers, and causing downward pressure on the wages of the domestic workforce.”
The Department is likewise tightening the screws on the meaning of “speciality occupation” to make it line up with what it calls the “verbatim” description.
In parallel, the definition of “speciality occupation” will be narrowed by the DHS, which will require companies to make real offers to real employees and turbocharge its own ability to ensure compliance before and during and after an H1-B petition is approved.
A statement from the Department of Homeland Security read: “Data shows that the more than a half-million H-1B non-immigrants in the United States have been used to displace US workers.”
