U.S. President’ administration will first review the Trump administration’s proposal that demanded increased wages for new H-1B visa applicants. The anti-immigrant measures — strengthening wage protections for the temporary and permanent employment of some aliens in the U.S. — would have increased H-1B wages by up to 30% by the previous Donald Trump government. The Biden administration’s review is expected to provide relief to companies hiring engineers from India.
On January 14, the U.S. Federal Register published the new rules but now the Biden administration placed it under a “regulatory freeze pending review.”
The rule, will come into effect from May 14 which was supposed on March 15. What is remarkable here is that American tech companies are hiring Indian engineers to meet the shortage of local technical talent, which accounts for two-thirds of H-1B visa holders.
Last year, four out of the five top recipients of H-1B visas were U.S. companies. Amazon received the highest H-1B visa, followed by Tata Consultancy Services, Cognent, Microsoft and Google. The rules proposed by the Trump administration called for raising the pay levels of H-1B workers and employment-related green card applicants in phases over the next few years.
The H-1B selection process for fiscal 2022, for which companies will have to submit their applications in April, will remain unchanged though. “This rule was to take effect on July 1, 2021. Therefore, the 60-day stoppage will not have so much of a practical effect unless the 60-day pause will allow the DOL to reconsider putting this rule into effect. The 15-day comment period allows the public to send in comments and thus persuades the new administration to rescind the rule, business daily quoted immigration attorney Cyrus Mehta as saying.
