The campaign against hiring foreign workers and replacing American workers with an international workforce is strengthening. Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has come out openly for introducing major reforms in the H-1B visa program and has called for the termination of the OPT program.
Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has shown its support for the voices calling for ending the misuse of the H-1B visa program. FAIR backed the American Tech Workforce Act, a bill that directly targets the loopholes enabling H-1B abuse.
H-1B Visa
Introduced by Sen. Jim Banks in September, the bill would implement crucial reforms to the H-1B program and incentivize hiring the most qualified U.S. workers.
Specifically, the bill aims to establish a wage floor for H-1B recipients of $150,000 per year and proposes to terminate OPT and any successor programs and end employment authorization for foreign students following their course of study.
The bill also requires that H-1B visa petitions be prioritized by those offering higher wages above those with lower compensation rates.
FAIR also submitted a public comment on a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) published by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in September that would replace the current H-1B random lottery with a system prioritizing higher-wage applications.
OPT Program
While the proposed rule takes steps to stop companies from replacing American workers with guest workers, FAIR recommended further reforms.
Specifically, FAIR’s comment outlines reforms to strengthen the proposed lottery system as well as anti-fraud measures and termination of the optional practical training (OPT) program that allows foreign students to work after graduating.
In the comments provided to DHS, FAIR suggested that the system should be dynamic, adjusting to the distribution of entries so that wage level III, and especially wage level IV, entries are consistently preferred over wage level I and II entries.