Obama to sign H-1B visa fee hike bill

Washington, Aug 13: United States President, Barack Obama is ready to sign for sanctioning the visa fee hike bill into law, completely ignoring India and corporate America's concern.

The bill, which was termed 'discriminatory' by the Indian and American companies, would raise H-1B and L-1 visa fee mostly for Indian companies to generate funds for the USD 600 million to secure the US-Mexico border.

"The bill will make an important difference as my administration continues to work with Congress toward bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform to secure our borders and restore responsibility and accountability to our broken immigration system," said Obama.

White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said Obama will sign the bill on Friday, Aug 13.

US-India Business Council, representing 300 top US firms doing business with India, had warned that the law could hurt burgeoning India-US economic ties.

A summary of the bill named Indian firms Wipro, Tata, Infosys and Satyam, which send thousands of employees each year to the United States to work at their clients' locations as technicians and engineers.

The US legislation proposed to raise the fees on H-1B visas for companies who have more than 50 percent of their employees on such visas for highly skilled professionals from 0 to $ 2,320.

Similarly the fee on L visas given to multi-national transferees is hiked from $ 320 to $ 2,570.

OneIndia News