The US Department of Homeland Security has proposed a new rule to select H-1B registrations based wage levels instead lottery process to protect jobs of AmePreviewrican workers.
The changes will be applicable to the 85,000 H-1B visas issued every year using lottery. This would give the American tech companies an edge over Indian IT firms as their wage levels are much higher than that of IT services companies.
According to data provided in the h1bdata.info, median salary offered by social media major Facebook based was $167000. The data provided by h1bdata.info, median salary offered by Infosys Limited was $82763 in 2020.
According to brokerage firm HDFC securities median H-1B wage offered by IT services firms stood at $89,000 in FY19.
he proposed changes will be open for comment before implementation.
“Modifying the H-1B cap selection process by replacing the random selection process with a wage-level-based selection process is a better way to allocate H-1Bs when demand exceeds supply,” the agency said in a statement.
If finalised as proposed, this new selection process would incentivise employers to offer higher wages or petition for positions requiring higher skills and higher-skilled workers instead of using the program to fill relatively lower-paid vacancies, the agency further added.
The move comes a week before elections and nearly three weeks after the Trump administration implemented wage hikes and tightened the current H-1B rules. The two rules would have a significant impact on Indian tech workforce in the US.
“With this proposed rule, the Trump administration is continuing to deliver on its promise to protect the American worker while strengthening the economy. The H-1B program is often exploited and abused by U.S. employers, and their U.S. clients, primarily seeking to hire foreign workers and pay lower wages,” said Acting DHS Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli in the statement.
“The current use of random selection to allocate H-1B visas makes it harder for businesses to plan their hiring, fails to leverage the H-1B program to truly compete for the world’s best and brightest, and hurts American workers by bringing in relatively lower-paid foreign labor at the expense of the American workforce.”Interested parties will have 30 days to submit comments relevant to the proposed rule and 60 days to submit comments relevant to the proposed information collection. The department will review all properly submitted comments, consider them carefully, and draft responses before issuing a final rule.