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    US Visa: Two new rules just made it harder for firms to hire H-1B workers

    Synopsis

    According to certain studies, while most tech firms do pay H-1B workers higher than the prevailing wage rate. “This is not a minor increase in wages. They’re fairly substantial and could be a serious deterrence,” said immigration attorney Greg Siskind.

    Donald Trump moves to tighten visa access for high-skilled foreign workers
    Pune: The US on Tuesday issued two new rules that make it harder for US companies to employ people on H-1B non-immigrant visas.

    The move, with less than a month to go for the US Presidential election, is likely to hurt Indian technology professionals and could face scrutiny from courts, legal experts said.

    As per the Interim Final Rules, which have been issued without any notice period or right to comment, the US Department of Homeland Security and Department of Labor (DHS) have changed the definition of specialty occupation and employee-employer relationship, as well as limited the validity of an H-1B visa to one year - instead of three earlier - for a tech worker placed at a third-party worksite.

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    The rules allow for increased workplace monitoring to improve compliance, while the minimum wage levels at which H-1B employees can be hired have also been increased significantly.

    “This is not a minor increase in wages. They’re fairly substantial and could be a serious deterrence. However, the rule has been so poorly crafted and rolled out that it almost seems like the agency wanted to please their extremist political constituencies and didn’t care if it would survive litigation,” said Greg Siskind, founding partner, Siskind Susser, PC- Immigration Lawyers.

    Acting Deputy DHS Secretary Ken Cuccinelli told reporters that about one-third of the people who had applied for H1-B visas in recent years would be denied under the new rules, which will also limit the number of specialty occupations available under the programme.

    Last week, a US Court overthrew President Donald Trump’s June Proclamation barring the entry of people holding non-immigrant work permits like the H-1B and L-1 visas till end of the year.

    Another court blocked a proposed hike in visa fees a few days before they were to come into effect.

    However, the new H1-B rules will impact US companies as well as Indian services and staffing firms who often place workers on projects at third-party locations.

    Indian nationals have received over 70% of the H-1B visas issued over the last few years, even as the share of Indian tech companies in the top 10 visa recipients has been dropping steadily in favour of American tech companies such as Apple, Amazon and Google.

    Industry watchers have said that restricting the H-1B visa programme would lead to an increase in outsourcing.

    Most tech companies hire employees at salaries higher than the minimum wage level, but the increase in slabs as per the new rules is large enough to impact the recruitment plans of companies.

    “Companies will have to pay much higher salaries and the criteria to qualify an employee for an H-1B will be much harder,” said Poorvi Chothani, managing partner at LawQuest, an immigration law firm.

    IT industry lobby Nasscom said the changes to the H-1B programme will harm the US economy by restricting access to talent and slowing research and development into solutions to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic.

    “These regulations seem to be based on misinformation about the programme and run counter-productive to their very objective of saving the American economy and jobs,” Nasscom said.

    “This is particularly relevant at a time when US businesses continue to face a huge deficit of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) skills: overall US unemployment rate grew from 4.1% in Jan-2020 to 8.4% in August-2020; while unemployment in computer occupations declined from 3% to 2.5% in this period,” it said in a statement.
    ( Originally published on Oct 07, 2020 )
    The Economic Times

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