Reps. Darrell Issa, Zoe Lofgren have not yet introduced legislation.
AB Wire
Two U.S. House lawmakers, Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), might soon introduce legislation to eliminate the H-1B visa lottery, and also remove the country caps on Green Cards for advanced degree holders, which have led to long waiting lines for people from India and China.
The government sets a cap of 140,000 employment-based green cards a year, with no more than 7% from any single country. This has led to long waiting times for people from China and India, where demand is the highest.
The legislation by Issa and Lofgren has not yet been introduced, reported ComputerWorld. It’s uncertain whether it will be put forward anytime soon or whether this effort to reach a bipartisan agreement will stick. While staffers have met to discuss the bill, and Issa has indicated support for a joint effort, it has little chance unless Issa is firmly behind it.
Issa and Lofgren have been critical of H-1B wage rates. When it was disclosed that Southern California Edison workers were training their replacements, Issa said the case “appears to be an example of precisely what the H-1B visa is not intended to be: a program to simply replace American workers en masse with cheap labor from overseas.”
Lofgren has cited problems as well. “We can’t have people coming in an undercutting the American educated workforce,” she said at a hearing several years ago.
Because this is a work in progress, no one would speak on the record. But multiple informed sources have sketched out the broad outlines of the legislation, reported ComputerWorld.
Today, the U.S. distributes 85,000 H-1B visas through a lottery, with the odds of winning roughly one-in-three based on current demand. There were 236,000 visa petitions submitted this year.
This legislation envisions distributing wages in a way that won’t tilt the H-1B visa to high-wage regions, such as Silicon Valley, Seattle and the Northeast corridor. It would keep a four-tier prevailing wage system, which accounts for pay differences by region and skill.
For instance, the prevailing wage for a Level 1 database administrator in Los Angeles — someone with basic, entry-level skills — is $57,616. But the wage for a Level 4 employee, someone who is experienced and fully competent, is $108,992.
In comparison, the Level 1 prevailing wage for a database administrator in Louisville, Ky. is $45,115 a year, or about $12,000 less than a similar job in Los Angeles. At Level 4, the Louisville job pays $87,318 — nearly $22,000 less than in Los Angeles.
In the emerging proposal, what matters is the wage level and whether the employer is paying above it. Employers offering 100% or 200% over prevailing wage level will be in the strongest position to get a visa.
A Kentucky employer offering a Level 4 wage for a certain skill, for instance, will compete against other employers offering Level 4 wages for that same skill, regardless of geography. Otherwise, high-paying Silicon Valley firms would have an advantage in the distribution.
The bill’s authors hope that the legislation raises wages, overall, for H-1B workers. Fully half of the H-1B workers — 52% — are paid Level 1 wages, and 30% get Level 2 wages, according to a Government Accountability Office study.
This salary ranking approach might not eliminate the lottery in its entirety. Some percentage of visa petitions may offer similar salaries near the bottom of the distribution list. A lottery might be used to allocate those visas.
The bill would also raise the $60,000 salary that creates an exemption for H-1B dependent firms (mostly IT services firms that offshore work). The new wage level hasn’t been set. H-1B-dependent firms can displace U.S. workers, provided they pay at least that wage. A master’s degree also creates an exemption, but that would be eliminated.
1 Comment
My son Rouble Kapoors been in the USA for 20 years has not got a. Green Card.