H1B Employee Rights – Wages, Salary and Benefits explained

H1B employees come to the US with a lot of dreams! Some of these employees are exploited by their employers while the truth is that just like your home country, America does offer you a number of rights even though you are on an Immigrant Visa status. Most of the H1B visa immigrants do not know about this and I plan to explain their rights in a series of articles titled H1B Employee Rights.

Wages/Salary

An H1B employee should be paid equally by the employer! You are supposed to get financial compensation at the same rate which local workers get paid with the same qualification and experience for doing the same work. If there isn’t a standard for this, the local prevailing wage for the occupation has to be paid by the employer.

Overtime should be paid too as per the market standard.

Benefits during downtime

If there is a downtime or a period of no projects being available to your employer (bench period) caused by the employer, you will have to be paid for it too. If there is a loss of productive time caused due to not obtaining the right work permit or license for the employee or a process, you are entitled to fringe benefits that are similar to the benefits being given to US employees.

Deductions

You are not required to pay anything from your salary or out of your pocket, directly or indirectly. There is no petition filing fee, financial liability or expense that the employee has to bear for being part of the H1B program.

All petition fee, financial penalty, attorney fee and legal filing fee has to be paid by the employer as per the H1B Labor Condition Application.

Visit http://www.dol.gov/wecanhelp/h1bworkers.htm for the detailed documentation by the US Department of Labor.

Stay tuned for more on this series of articles…