Proposal for increasing pay for US visa holders

United States, 7th October: A proposal for introducing a hike in the current wages for US visa holders has been made by the US Labor Department.

The proposal has been made in a recent report published by the department.

The report highlights the need for increasing basic pay for immigrant workers in the US on temporary US work visas.

The new rules of pay for H-2B temporary immigrant workers in the US will also offer better protection to Americans by reducing the risk of their replacement by low-paid foreigners, the department asserts.

The US allows a fixed number of H-2B visas for temporary or seasonal workers in the country for short-term work during peak season.

Such workers are usually employed for agricultural jobs in the US.

Such jobs in the US can be given to the US H-2B visa holders only when there is no suitably qualified candidate available within the nation and the employment for such immigrant workers needs to be limited to a period of one year.

According to Hilda L. Solis, the US Labor Secretary, it is very important to ensure that the US H-2B visa program extends fair pay to both the immigrant workers and US workers. And this new proposed legislation is aimed at making such a thing a possibility, added Solis in the recently released statement by the US Labor department.

Every year, the US government allows a total of 66,000 US H-2B visas for immigrant workers to live and work in the US for a period of not more than one year.

Some of the jobs for the US H-2B visas include working at resorts, hospitality industry, theme parks, retail stores, landscaping, and warehouses. If the proposed increase in the wages for work in the US is introduced, then there will be an increase of $4.38 an hour.

And such a move will also result in increased number of US work visa holders as well as US citizens coming up to work for seasonal jobs in the US.

Currently, an immigrant working as a dishwasher in Philadelphia state of the US gets around $7.90 an hour and the hourly rate of such workers will go up to $9.24 an hour after the approval to the legislation proposed by the US labor department.

Also, the wage of landscape gardeners will go up from the current $9.84 an hour to $13.88 an hour while roofers will get an increase in their present wages of $14.12 an hour to $21.387 an hour.