The regulation change is huge because it will allow hundreds of thousands of young Americans to get starter jobs in the software and accounting sectors, said reform advocates. Under current rules, most young Americans are excluded from the sectors because Fortune 500 companies can import and exploit many H-1B gig-workers on short term, low-wage contracts.
The draft regulation says that each year’s supply of 85,000 H-1B visas will be given to the companies that offer the highest salaries, and it says all H-1B employees must be paid above median wages.
That draft regulation is being fought tooth-and-nail by Fortune 500 companies because it will deliver a huge pay increase to American graduates. In 2017, for example, 65 percent of H-1B workers were paid fair below-median wages for working jobs in New York, according to federal data collected by SAITJ.org.
“Basically, we’re going to get rid of the 17 [percentile tier] and 30 [percentile tier] and set it at the 50th percentile … [or] tier three. And the intent here is to eliminate the bottom two tiers from a pay standpoint to open up those jobs for Americans,” Cuccinelli told Breitbart News June 22.
The policy also tells the Department of Labor to rewrite the Labor Condition Application (LCA) regulatory process. This is important because companies must get an approved LCA before they can request H-1B visas from DHS.
The new rules will require that companies who ask for H-1B visa workers must show that the foreign workers will not bump Americans out of jobs — even when the Americans are employed by other companies.
For example, Disney hired an Indian company in 2012 to take over various jobs, including Disney’s software jobs in Orlando. The Indian company, HCL, asked for and got the H-1Bs for Disney by swearing only that the new H-1Bs would not displace other HCL workers in the United States — regardless of the intended harmful impact on Americans.
“We’re going to bring that to an end, to a screeching halt,” Cuccinelli said. “The president has ordered us to close that loophole. We’re going to do that by regulation. Again, this will be a permanent change.”
