The announcement last week that US companies requesting H-1B visas for foreign employees would be levied a $100,000 fee for each has thrown immigration lawyers and the government of India into fits of alarm. Used to bringing in relatively low-priced workers — the great majority of whom happen to be Indian — to perform routine labor instead of hiring Americans, the corporations must now pay a price for what they previously got for a pittance.
The details of the fee were incompletely spelled out initially, and since the announcement, a couple of issues have had to be, more or less, straightened out. One, the fee is for new visas only; the employers of those already covered are not liable. Two, a debate is still underway over whether the fee is annual — as Commerce Secretary Harold Lutnick said last week — or is one time only, as a White House spokesman said over the weekend.
Saying that “all big companies” were on board with the change, Lutnick also said the result would likely be that far fewer H-1B visas than the 85,000 annual cap would be granted, because “it’s just not economic anymore.” In a conference call with reporters, Lutnick continued:
If you’re going to train people, you’re going to train Americans. If you have a very sophisticated engineer and you want to bring them in … then you can pay $100,000 a year for your H-1B visa.
As for the Indian government, which simultaneously cozies up to both the US and its fellow BRICS members, it predicted “humanitarian consequences” caused by family disruption if the measure goes forward. Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal met with U.S. officials on Monday, afterwards taking a rather pugnacious tone:
They want to increase trade with India. They want to improve relations. They are also a little afraid of our talent. We have no objection to that either.
That much-touted “talent” the Indians are so proud of and of which we are supposedly “afraid” primarily fills entry-level positions in this country, positions that pay salaries inadequate to the needs of American workers. Indian workers, on the other hand, hail from a country whose per capita income is only $2,878, so to them $50K or $60K looks heaven sent.
The Trump administration needs to take notice of displays such as the recent Tianjin Summit, where Indian PM Modi hobnobbed with Xi and Putin, and ask itself who its friends are — and who they aren’t.
For more, see Breitbart News.