Under new rules outlined by the Department of Labor and Homeland Security, Visa workers in the US will get a significant bump in pay and put them in the same ballpark as American workers.
“Under the new rule, the required wage level for entry-level workers would rise to the 45th percentile of their profession’s distribution, from the current requirement of the 17th percentile. The requirement for the highest-skilled workers would rise to the 95th percentile, from the 67th percentile,” according to a recent Washington Post story.
And it appears that what’s good for Indian workers will also be good for American workers too. The change will leave American companies with no motivation to replace US IT workers with foreign workers, simply on the basis of cost.
“We have entered an era in which economic security is an integral part of homeland security. Put simply, economic security is homeland security. In response, we must do everything we can within the bounds of the law to make sure the American worker is put first,” said Acting Secretary Chad Wolf.
This is great news for American workers, as the country struggles with the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression.
But with workers on both sides winning out in this new deal, it was only a matter of time before some in Washington tried to have it nixed
“While most Americans hail the White House’s action to improve U.S. workers’ standards of living, the usual suspects – immigration lawyers and advocacy lobbies – went ballistic, and threatened legal action, wrote Joe Guzzardi in a recent US Techworker article.
This is the latest in a series of wins for American IT workers brought about by the Trump administration. In August, Trump saved hundreds of Union jobs in Tennessee when he issued an executive order to prevent the outsourcing of hundreds of jobs at the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Perhaps it’s an irony that it took a Republican like President Trump to usher in changes that help average workers. After all, this is something the Democratic party used to champion.
But there is no denying that Trump has proven himself a friend of the American workers and gave props to him before the upcoming election.
“Three decades of U.S. worker displacement is an injustice that President Trump wants to end.”