Trump backs H-1B reform bill, says US lawmaker
WASHINGTON: A senior Republican lawmaker on Monday said his bill proposing a massive hike in the minimum salary for those employed on H-1B visas to prevent outsourcing has the backing of President Donald Trump.
If enacted, the bill will hurt Indian IT firms in the US and all other consultancies whose business model was based on offering same services performed by temporary foreign workers on salaries lower than their American counterparts’.
“The president is supporting it,” Darrell Issa, a House of Representatives member from California, said in response to a question about the chances of the passage and enactment of the legislation he moved jointly in January.
Aides of the congressman have said he had been in conversation about this issue also with the president’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, who favours broader and other reforms of the visa programme.
Speaking at an event on Capitol Hill hosted by Washingtonbased think-tank Atlantic Council, the congressman insisted his bill did not target Indian IT companies in the US like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, but conceded that they will be impacted by it, adding that they “will have to up their game”.
The Protect and Grow American Jobs Act, the legislation Issa moved jointly with Scott Peters, a Democratic lawmaker also from California, proposes to raise the minimum salary for workers on H-1B visa for high-skilled foreign workers from the “absurdly” low $60,000 at present to $100,000 a year.
The bill also proposed to do away with the masters waiver provision of the current law to ensure only the best and the brightest are given H-1Bs.
Issa argued the salary cap of $60,000 was fixed in 1998 and a revision was long overdue to bring it up to current wages and salaries, which was help plug a “loophole” in the current law used by consulting companies to bring foreign workers on low salaries to replace local Americans and then eventually ship those jobs abroad.