US Business Lobby files lawsuit against 'harmful, haphazard' H-1B rule

On October 19, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Nationwide Affiliation of Producers (NAM), and  17 other business firms and independent entities filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for changing the H-1B laws that now limit the pool of skilled international labour required for specialized skills. The Silicon Valley technology firms challenged the H1B visas Interim Final Rule issued by (DOL) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on wages within the Northern District of Columbia, alleging that the new guidelines were “dangerous and haphazard”,  and will devastate corporations the American based employees.

According to a release by US CIS, Trump’s new laws under the H-1B  visa program not only makes it harder to replace American workers but also realistically implements US President’s ‘Hire American’ pledges. The new rule shrinks the H-1B "body shops” and adjusts the wages for local skilled labour to much higher, also upgrading the skill levels of the H-1B and employment green card programs. The US Homeland Security Department regulations state that the federals narrowed the definition of "specialty occupation" as Congress intended by closing the overbroad definition that allowed companies to game the system. It closes the loopholes and now requires American companies to make "real" offers to "real employees,” prohibiting the displacement of the American worker. 

Attack on 'skilled immigration labours'

Department of Labour Regulation called the ‘Strengthening Wage Protections’ rule as a means to better reflect the actual wages earned by US workers, compared to foreign workers. This attacks the skilled immigration labours as Department of Homeland Security acting deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli said in a statement that a third of foreign applicants would be denied under the new rules. This would harm the tech industry in the Bay Area, where according to the federal government data, 5,500 new H-1B foreign workers applied for jobs at Google, Apple, and Facebook last year. 

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National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), National Retail Federation (NRF), American Association of International Healthcare Recruitment, Cornell University, and the University of Southern California, and several others filed a legal complaint on the pretext of H-1B visa program abuse against the acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, according to sources of The Hill. 

“Once again, defendants attempt to use the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext to fundamentally disrupt high-skilled immigration,” exactly reads the lawsuit filed in a federal court in California. “These rules are extraordinary: If left unchecked, they would sever the employment relationship of hundreds of thousands of existing employees in the United States, and they would virtually foreclose the hiring of new individuals via the H-1B program.”

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(Image Credit: AP)