One of Donald Trump’s campaign platforms was that he would either change, or eliminate if necessary, the H1B Visa Program in order to end real or perceived abuses that have seen tens of thousands of US jobs being filled by employees brought in from other countries, sometimes at a salary lower than would be required by a comparably skilled US-based employee. Though the program, first launched in 1990, was implemented to ensure the US had adequate supplies of highly skilled resources in the sciences, technologies, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, today’s H1B visa applicants are more likely to be computer programmers or other IT workers, working under contract with large Indian-based outsourcing firms. In fact, the fees paid by H1B visa holders to these outsourcing firms are reported to make up as much as 10% of India’s annual GDP. Since its inception, the program rules required that any H1B visa holder must be paid an salary equivalent to a similarly skilled US-based employee up to $60,000 year. However, that cap has not been increased since then, meaning that a while a US citizen might make $120k/year as a DBA or senior programmer, a similarly skilled H1B resource could be paid
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