'H-1B Visa Updates'

The Department of Labor will be revising the prevailing wages in June and there is a high chance of 5-8k increase in wages that need to be paid to H-1B employees.

The current Level 2 wage for the most commonly used H1B job title “Software Developer, Applications” (used for Java, .Net and other developers) is $102,669 for San Francisco area and $92,768 for Jersey City.

For employers with more than 50 employees it costs $9000 in government fees plus attorney fees to sponsor a H-1B employee. Health Insurance and other benefits cost another $7000 to $8000 per employee. This roughly translates to $65 per hour in salary per employee just to maintain the payroll and benefits.

Any H-1B employee earning less than $85 per hour in billing from an end client and working for a big 5 consulting firm or an implementation partner is at the risk of layoff.

Owners of small IT consultancies are being targeted by CBP and USCIS. Revocation of green cards and denaturalization of US citizenship of these company owners is common now when these employers fail to comply with immigration rules for their sponsoring employees and make material misrepresentations in sponsoring employee petitions.

Many smaller IT consulting companies do not have the knowledge to deal with boilerplate RFE’s on specialty occupation, employer employee relationship and education for H-1B employees. Non-computer science graduate H-1B petitions are being denied if the evaluation of IT work experience plus education is not documented properly.

Many employees who are subject to layoff are planning to return to their home country due to the current immigration rules. Changes in administration and policies are very common. A newer administration can be immigration friendly again.

The decision of going back is a personal but one should try to get a job in IT consulting with a medium sized company to file their Perm and I-140 to obtain a priority date or green card cutoff date before they leave. They can transfer this date to a new petition once they come back to USA later or obtain the green card through consular processing.

We request H-1B employees who are subject to an imminent layoff to send their resume to [email protected] and we will help them find a new employer who can sponsor them.

Press note released by: Indian Clicks, LLC