US Senate to Raise H1B Fees to Fund Border Security

There is steep hike of H1B visa fees after its approval by US Senate. The fee hike is aimed to offset a $600 million “emergency package” to improve security along the Mexican border. The raise will help new border patrol agents and drones or unmanned aircraft, as well as long list of agencies, including prisons. The Senate increases the visa fee to USD 2,000 per application on those companies who have less than 50 per cent of their employees as American citizens and the increase will also impact L1 visas. The legislation was introduced by U.S. Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and passed in the senate. The country received about 35,000 petitions for the 85,000 visa quota for this year.

The latest raise is going to impact major Indian companies like Infosys Technologies Ltd., Wipro Ltd., and Tata Consultancy Services, which use thousands of H-1B visas to cater U.S. customers. According to Sarah Hawk, head of the immigration practice at Fisher & Phillips LLP in Atlanta further commented that applicant may have to pay a $ 320 Filing fee on the top of  $2000 increase. There is also other add-on fees.  Any new H-1B and L-1 visa user is required to pay $500 Anti-fraud, and a fee for training U.S. workers that ranges from $750 to $1,500, depending upon the size of the company applying for a visa. Many companies  pay $1,000 extra for premium processing to speed up the Visa processing. And legal fees can range up to $2,000.

The $2,000 in additional revenue pays only a small fraction of the tax revenues lost due to the unemployment of underemployment “of American workers directly harmed by these visas,” said Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Hira also continued that the anti-fraud fee suggests the acknowledgement of legislature that there is malpractice in those type of visas. The H-1B fee increase is only going to cover a fraction of the $600 million fund that the Senate needs for border security. Infosys was the largest H1B visa user in 2008 and it accounted for 4,500 visas that year. So the increase of  $2,000 visa will add about $9 million to its visa bill.