‘Hike pay of H-1B visa holders to $80K’
labour secretary Alexander Acosta has called for increasing the minimum salary of foreign workers on H-1B visas, the most sought-after by Indian IT firms, from the existing $60,000 to at least $80,000.
Acosta told a Congressional panel that it would address to a large extent the problem of replacement of American workers by foreign workers coming to the US on H-1B visas.
“Congress has not updated that $60,000 threshold over time. If Congress were to update that simply for inflation, it would bring it up to well over $80,000 and many if not most of the situations like you have identified, would be eliminated because they would be below that $60,000 threshold,” Acosta told members of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labour, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies.
“And so perhaps when that was enacted way back one, that was appropriate threshold, but I would encourage the Senator to look at that issue because I can’t imagine how one explains to the American worker that they have to train their foreign replacement and it has happened again and again and again,” Acosta said responding to a question from Senator Richard Durbin.
Durbin mentioned the name of a pharmaceutical company in Chicago that told 150 of its IT workers, who had been with them for years, that they were being terminated.