Bill may likely end up being dead, if no action by end of September.
Republican Congressman Darrell Issa’s controversial bill to reform the H-1B visa, which included provisions like minimum salary of $100,000, is facing opposition, a committee vote has been delayed, and in practicality may end up dead.
The Protect and Grow American Jobs Act, as Issa’s bill is known, was touted for its bipartisan support. It was supposed to go to vote in the Judiciary Committee this week, but did not. Calvin Moore, a spokesman for Issa, said the vote was pushed back and the bill will continue to move forward, reported the San Diego Union Tribune.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, said the bill was pulled last minute without explanation. She is a committee member and opposes the bill.
Lofgren said she doesn’t think the bill has enough support or time to pass before the end of session. While she agrees that the H-1B program needs reforms to block abuse from companies that use it to hire foreign workers at lower wages than their American counterparts, she doesn’t think Issa’s bill is the way to do it.
“I don’t think it does anything, and in fact in some ways it could make it worse, at least for Silicon Valley,” Lofgren said by telephone, reported the Tribune.
Congress does not have much time left before the end of the session. At the end of September, it will recess until after election day. If the bill does not pass before the end of the session, it will be automatically dead.
The bill would adjust application requirement exemptions for companies that are “H-1B dependent.” For companies with more than 50 employees, that means at least 15 percent of its workforce is made up of H-1B holders.
Those employers are currently exempt from a process which first seeks Americans workers if the potential H-1B hire will earn at least $60,000 annually or has a master’s degree. Issa’s bill would raise the salary exemption to $100,000 annually and remove the master’s degree exemption.
The bill was crafted after Southern California Edison laid off several hundred employees in early 2015 and contracted workers through consulting firms that hire heavily through the H-1B visa program. Edison said in a statement at the time of the layoffs that it was “not hiring H-1B workers to replace displaced employees.”
Similar layoff controversies were reported in 2015 at Disney — which later which changed its mind about the layoffs — and recently at the University of California San Francisco.
The Tribune reported the bill has also received opposition from the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations and the Department for Professional Employees.