Silicon Valley $162,000, Dallas $113,000: What’s in Trump’s new plan to raise wages for H-1B workers

The proposed wage levels for H-1Bs would prevent companies from hiring them.

Donald Trump’s administration is planning to raise the base wages of foreign workers who come to the U.S. on H-1B visas so they can’t easily be hired in place of Americans. Bloomberg reports that entry-level software engineers in San Francisco’s Silicon Valley need an annual salary of $162,000 to qualify for an H-1B visa, compared with $113,000 in Dallas and $132,000 in New York. Experts are cautious not to immediately call this good news for foreign workers, even though their wages will increase, because it will cost companies more to hire them — and they may become discouraged. In addition, anyone hired from abroad under the H-1B visa program will still be required to pay a $100,000 visa fee.The report, citing analysis from immigration data firms Lawly and Threshold, said this would cost the largest employer of white-collar foreign talent at least $18 billion in the first 12 months. Within three years, most existing H-1B visas will have to be renewed at a higher level, which could cost as much as $43 billion annually.The raise is subject to final approval from the Department of Labor.There has to be a way to “make sure you don’t distort the labor market,” said Ronil Sheila, associate professor of political science at Howard University. “The easiest way to do that is to make sure the people you bring in actually have the expertise, and the way that reflects that is through wages.”The Department of Labor issued a NPRM (Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) in March proposing new wage levels. As part of the H-1B, H-1B1 and E-3 visa sponsorship process, employers must obtain a certified Labor Condition Application (LCA) from the DOL. The LCA must contain the employer’s certification that it will pay the foreign worker the higher of the actual wage rate paid to all other similarly situated employees or the prevailing wage rate for the occupational classification in the intended field of employment.Likewise, employers sponsoring foreign workers in the second or third preference employment green card process (EB-2 or EB-3) through a PERM labor certification application generally must obtain a prevailing wage determination (PWD) for that job opportunity from the Department of Labor’s Office of Foreign Labor Certification (OFLC) National Prevailing Wage Center.