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On June 30th, 2018 the Department of Labor increased the H-1B prevailing wages without much fanfare. IT consulting positions should be offered a minimum of Level 2 wage or H-1B amendment and extension petitions are being denied.
USCIS is giving only one-year extensions for H-1B Petitions filed by IT consulting companies in most of the cases. DOL is now cornering these H-1B Employers by increasing wages between $4,000 to $10,000 on July 1st of every year.
The Level 2 wage for the most commonly used H-1B job title “Software Developer, Applications” (used for Java, .Net and other developers) is $121,077 per year for San Francisco area and $96,366 per year for Jersey City from July 1, 2018.
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.
H-1B employees with low billing from end clients will be laid off soon and the employers will adjust the salaries of the employees according to the new prevailing wage rate for amendments and extensions.
The new administration is indirectly enforcing a six-digit minimum salary regulation for H-1B employees without any bill or legislation being passed by congress.
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.
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.
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
