Minimum H1B Salary Becomes Rs 1.5 Crore; Small Indian IT Firms Cannot Afford This 47% Rise In Salary

By Radha Joglekar On Nov 4, 2020

Minimum H1B Salary Becomes Rs 1.5 Crore; Small Indian IT Firms Cannot Afford This 40% Rise

The new H-1B rules implemented by the Trump led administration have garnered a lot of negative response from multiple organizations who hire H-1B visa holders.

The rules direct organizations to raise the minimum wage of H-1b visa holder by as much as 40%, which is not very affordable for Indian firms.

Read on to find out how this affects the Indian IT firms!

Minimum H1B Salary Becomes Rs 1.5 Crore

The president of America, Donald Trump had implemented two new rules for H-1b visa holders.

Under these rules, the wage levels of H-1B visa holders have been hiked by as much as 47% for some H-1B and green card applicants in some regions by the Department of Labor (DOL).

The increase in wages has been done so as to make it difficult for companies to hire H1B visa holders and turn them to hire their employees locally. Hiking the wages would imply that the profit margins of employers are reduced.

Tough For Small IT Firms To Hire H1B Employees

The second rule was to tighten the rules and put a sharp limit on the number of H-1B visas to be handed out to the employees so that there would be a preference to local hiring. As per the rules, the estimates of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have suggested that about one-third of the applicants should be denied the visa.

After these rules were announced, three lawsuits were filed against the administration. And now, business leaders have said that the increased H-1B visa wages will destroy the startup culture.

The new rules have been analyzed by the non-partisan National Foundation for American Policy who have said that foreigners will be paid much more than American citizens on market rates.

While this may not be a big issue for giants like Facebook and Apple, it would definitely impact smaller businesses such as Infosys. Also, it would hugely affect all organizations that rely on immigrant workers, along with small and medium-sized businesses.

However, all of these effects will happen if Trump is re-elected, but if Joe Biden wins in today’s elections, there is the possibility that these rules might be rolled back.