The bill proposes to raise the fees on H-1B visas (for temporary skilled workers) for companies who have more than 50% of their employees on H-1B visas. Their fees will raise from $320 to $2,320.
The US House of Representatives today approved a key border security bill that would steeply hike H-1B and L-1 visa fees to fund new measures amid concerns by Indian companies, who are one of the main beneficiaries of the travel permit.
The House passed by voice vote the bill on border protection that would increase the H-1B and L-1 visa application fee by more than $2,000 in a bid to fund America's border protection measures with Mexico, which has been a source of a large number of illegal migrations.
The bill proposes to raise the fees on H-1B visas (for temporary skilled workers) for companies who have more than 50% of their employees on H-1B visas. Their fees will raise from $320 to $2,320.
It also raises fees on L visas (given to multi-national transferees) for foreign companies. Their fees will raise from $320 to $2,570.
A similar version of the bill was passed by the US Senate last week with unanimous consent.
Unveiled 90 days ahead of the key November mid-term elections, it seeks to add another 1,500 agents and put in place greater number of unmanned aerial vehicles that scan the frontier for undocumented immigrants or illegal drug runners.
The bill, first unveiled by Democratic senator Chuck Schumer and senator Claire McCaskill, would also pay for building forward operating bases along the border as well as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to patrol the border.
"I prefer our source, which is from these companies which are not, as I say — they are companies whose whole purpose is to bring people in on H-1B and the vast majority of them from other countries who go back to the other countries. That is a better funding source," said Senator Charles Schumer from New York, one of the co-author of the bill along with senator Claire McCaskill.
Schumer said he "liked the H-1B programme" as "it does a lot of good for a lot of American companies".
"In fact, in the immigration proposal I made, along with senator Reid and senator Menendez, as well as the outline with senator Graham, we expand H-1B in a variety of ways," Schumer argued.
A summary of a Senate version of the bill named Indian firms Wipro, Tata, Infosys and Satyam, which use hundreds of these visas for their employees coming to the United States to work at their clients' locations as technicians and engineers, a media report said.
India's National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) has expressed concern over the bill, warning it would stteply hike annual US visa costs for India's outsourcing industry by $200-250 million annually, the report said. The House passed its own version of the bill that would fund US-Mexico border protection by raising the visa fee of H-1B and L1 applications.
The Indian companies, which would be majorly affected by the visa fee increase, have raised their voice against the bill, a version of which was passed by the Senate last week.
However, the political conflict between the House and Senate and also between the majority Democrats and minority Republicans has ensured that it will take some time before the bill passes through the Congress and reaches the White House for US president Barack Obama to pass it into law.
Soon after the bill (H R No 6080) was passed by the House, two top Republican senators, John McCain, and John Kyl (both from Arizona) in a statement called for an urgent session of the Senate, which is now in recess.
This is because, the measure, passed by voice vote, by the House of Representatives will have to wait for final action by the US Senate, which is unlikely to act until it returns from recess September 13.
The border protection bill would give the Obama administration the $600 million it requested June 22 to beef up security along the southwest border.
The bill would also give millions of dollars in communication equipment to the border with Mexico to combat the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs.
"The refusal of Speaker Nancy Pelosi to take up and pass the Senate's fully paid for $600 million border security bill is another example of politics trumping policy.
"Today, the Democrats have made it clear that once again they are more interested in scoring political points than actually taking steps to pass strong policy and secure the border," the two Republican Senators said in a statement.
"The only difference between the Senate-passed bill and what the House passed today was the substitution of the words 'House bill' for 'Senate bill'. It raises the question whether House Democrats want the result or the credit," said McCain and Kyl.
They called on senator majority leader Harry Reid to end what they called the game of "political ping pong" and immediately bring the Senate back into session to approve the legislation and send it to the president's desk.
They said there is no reason $600 million for border security should be sidelined through the month of August simply because of political games.
"Arizonans and others living on the border deserve better, for some it's a matter of life and death," the two senators said.
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