By By Jerick Sablan Pacific Daily News
Copyright guampdn
It’s unknown what the impacts of a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas will mean for Guam or how many workers are currently on the island under the program.
President Donald Trump on Friday signed a proclamation imposing an annual $100,000 fee for H-1B skilled worker visas.
“The main thing is, we’re going to have great people coming in, and they’re going to be paying,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
Guam Department of Labor Director David Dell’Isola said the local agency doesn’t have numbers of how many workers are under H-1B visas as the program falls under the U.S. Department of Labor.
He said the U.S. Department of Labor doesn’t share that information with Guam Department of Labor.
“They control the program,” he told the Pacific Daily News on Saturday.
Guam Department of Labor spokesperson Janela Carrera said H-1B visas are not processed by the local agency and deferred questions to the U.S. Department of Labor.
“We don’t handle that at all. That’s all U.S. DOL,” she said.
Adelup spokesperson Krystal Paco-San Agustin said the administration would provide a response on Sunday.
H-1B visas allow companies to sponsor foreign workers with specialized skills like scientists, engineers, and computer programmers to work in the United States, initially for three years, but extendable to six years.
H-1B visas are meant to bring the best and brightest foreigners for high-skilled jobs that companies find difficult to fill with qualified U.S. citizens and permanent residents.
According to the proclamation, high numbers of relatively low-wage workers in the H-1B program undercut the integrity of the program and are detrimental to American workers’ wages and labor opportunities, especially at the entry level, in industries where such low-paid H-1B workers are concentrated.
“These abuses also prevent American employers in other industries from utilizing the H-1B program in the manner in which it was intended: to fill jobs for which highly skilled and educated American workers are unavailable,” the proclamation stated.
Trump told reporters that the move will keep people in the U.S. that are going to be “very productive.”
The fee will be required for those seeking entry into the U.S. under the H-1B visa beginning Sunday, with the Homeland Security secretary able to exempt individuals, entire companies, or entire industries.
The order expires in a year, though Trump can extend it.
The president also signed an order creating a new expedited pathway to U.S. residency for people who pay $1 million, or for corporate sponsors to pay $2 million.
“I think it’s going to be tremendously successful,” Trump said.
Pacific Daily News managing editor Haidee Eugenio Gilbert contributed to this report.
