US okays bill to hike visa fee

Amid protests from India, the US House of Representatives has passed a bill to steeply hike US visa fee for skilled workers to raise $600 million in emergency funding to help secure the US-Mexico border.

Senators passed a similar plan last week. But since the House version passed in a voice vote on Tuesday is slightly different, it will go back to the Senate for final Congressional approval before being signed into law by the President, Mr Barack Obama.

The measure proposes to raise the fee on H-1B visas for companies who have more than 50 per cent of their employees on such visas for highly skilled professionals from $320 to $2,320. Similarly, the fee on L visas given to multi-national transferees would go up from $320 to $2,570.

The additional fee from the popular H-1B and L visa programmes would be used to build operating bases and deploy unmanned surveillance drones to better secure the US-Mexico border, one of the rare issues both Democrats and Republicans have agreed on.

The legislation targets companies that lawmakers say exploit the US visa programmes. A summary of the Senate version listed Wipro, Tata, Infosys and Satyam as such firms, saying that they fly thousands of employees to the US to work for their clients.

US firms too use these visas but would escape the hike as it targets only companies with more than 50 per cent of employees on H1B or L visas.