H-1B-dependent employer


The term H-1B-dependent employer is used by the United States Department of Labor to describe an employer who meets a particular threshold in terms of the fraction of the workforce comprising workers in H-1B status. An employer classified as H-1B-dependent needs to include additional attestations in the Labor Condition Application used for the petition of any H-1B beneficiary being offered an annual compensation of less than $60,000 and without a master's degree. The notion was introduced by the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act passed in 1998 and operationalized through the United States Department of Labor's Interim Final H-1B Rule of December 20, 2000. The regulation is found in 20 CFR 655.736 in the Code of Federal Regulations.
One of the key goals of the concept of H-1B-dependence is to curtail the use of H-1B visas for the replacement of American skilled workers by cheaper labor from other countries. The demarcation of H-1B-dependency is intended to strike a balance between the need to prevent large-scale use of the H-1B to facilitate "cheap labor" against the goal of minimizing the regulatory burden on employers who use the H-1B sparingly. Employers satisfying slight variations of the criterion for H-1B-dependence have been targeted for additional H-1B fees. H-1B reform proposals have suggested various ways of capping the use of the H-1B program by H-1B-dependent workers, but strict caps have never been legislatively or administratively imposed.
H-1B-dependence is not relevant to Labor Condition Applications filed for H-1B1 and E-3 workers.

Definition and applicability

Section 1a of the LCA seeks to classify the employer filing the LCA into one of three categories:
The following are the thresholds for determining whether an employer is classified as H-1B-dependent. Note that for the first column below, only employees in the United States should be counted, but this can include other employees on H-1B or another temporary worker status, as well as United States citizens and lawful permanent residents.
Number of full-time equivalent employees in the United StatesMinimum number of H-1B nonimmigrant workers necessary to make the employer H-1B-dependentHow threshold varies as a percentage of total number of employees
1 to 258 or more100% down to 32%. Note that a consequence of this rule is that employers with 7 or fewer FTE employees cannot be classified as H-1B-dependent.
26 to 5013 or more50% down to 26%. Note the sudden upward jump in the threshold from 25 to 26 employees, making it advantageous to cross the threshold.
51 or more15% or more of the workforce15%. Note the sudden downward jump in the threshold from 50 to 51 employees, making it disadvantageous to cross this threshold.

Exempt nonimmigrant

Even for a H-1B-dependent employer, a nonimmigrant is considered exempt from the additional H-1B attestations if either of these two conditions is satisfied:
All currently employed H-1B employees count toward the number of H-1B employees when used to determine H-1B-dependence, regardless of whether they were themselves exempted from the attestations.

Exemption based on compensation

For exemption based on compensation, only salary and cash bonuses can be counted towards compensation. Non-cash benefits cannot be included.
This criterion differs somewhat from the conditions of the attestation on wages needed for all LCAs. The wage attestation in the LCA says that the wage paid to the worker is greater than or equal to both the prevailing wage for that occupation and area of intended employment, and to the actual wage paid to other workers at the company. In many cases the minimum annual compensation needed to satisfy these attestations is in excess of $60,000. However, this is not always the case.
The exemption threshold of $60,000 is not automatically adjusted for inflation and has not been changed since the rule was introduced.

Exemption based on educational qualifications

The educational criterion is intermediate between two other educational criteria used in the context of H-1B petitions:
DOL uses guidelines published by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers to determine degree equivalency. Note that the DOL regulation does not have a direct bearing on how USCIS evaluates degree equivalency when evaluating Form I-129 petitions based on an approved LCA.

Attestations needed

The following attestations are needed for LCAs filed by a H-1B-dependent employer filing for a non-exempt H-1B nonimmigrant. Even though H-1B-dependence is a global designation applied to the company, the assertion made by the attestations differs based on the specific position in which the worker is being employed. Therefore, an employer who can truthfully make the attestations for one type of worker may be unable to do so for another type of worker. For positions where no H-1B workers are being hired, there is no need to meet the criteria for these attestations even if the employer is H-1B-dependent.
Moreover, since the attestations are time-bound they may not remain true forever.

(A) Displacement

The employer promises not to displace any similarly employed US worker within the period beginning 90 days before and ending 90 days after the date of filing the H-1B nonimmigrant petition; this is not the date of the LCA filing.

(B) Secondary Displacement

The employer promises not to place the employee at another employer's worksite unless the employer has made a bona fide inquiry as to whether the other employer has displaced or intends to displace a US worker any time between 90 days before and 90 days after the placement, and has no contrary knowledge. If the other employer makes such a displacement, the employer applicant may be subject to civil money penalties and disbarment.

(C) Recruitment and Hiring

Prior to filing any petition for a H-1B nonimmigrant pursuant to the application, the employer took or will take good faith steps to meet industry-wide standards to recruit US workers for the job for which the nonimmigrant is sought, offering compensation at least as great as that required to be offered to the non-immigrant. The employer will offer the job to an equally or better qualified US worker.
Ordinary LCAs do not require any attestation to demonstrate good-faith effort to hire a United States. In this respect, ordinary LCAs differ from labor certification, which requires evidence of good-faith effort to recruit US workers. However, even with these additional attestations, the requirements faced by LCA are less onerous than those for labor certification. One key difference is that whereas labor certification requires waiting for several months to try to hire for the specific position, the attestations on LCAs only require one to meet industry-wide general hiring standards.

H-1B1 and E-3 employees do not count towards the threshold

There are two variants of the H-1B status that also require the filing of a Labor Condition Application: the H-1B1 status for nationals of Singapore and Chile, and the E-3 status for nationals of Australia. The concept of H-1B-dependence does not matter for LCAs of employees for these classifications. Moreover, employees in these categories do not count toward the thresholds for determining H-1B-dependence.

Details around definitions and documentation

Definition of full-time equivalent employee

Since being classified as H-1B-dependent requires employers to incur additional cost and complexity, and the threshold for H-1Bs generally increases with the number of full-time equivalent employees reported employers are incentivized to make their count of full-time-equivalent employees as large as possible. The regulations are therefore geared to restricting employers from overcounting the number of FTEs.
The 2000 Interim Final Rule from the U.S. Department of Labor provided the following guidance regarding the definition of full-time equivalent employee for the purpose of determining H-1B-dependence.

What counts as a United States employee

To count as a United States employee, the person must be employed in the United States. United States employees include United States citizens and lawful permanent residents, as well as H-1B employees in the United States. For multinational firms, employees in other countries cannot be counted. In particular, this is important for multinationals because the ability to count employees outside the United States in the denominator could mean the difference between being classified as H-1B-non-dependent and H-1B-dependent. According to the official rules, the list of employees should be determined from the most recent quarterly tax statements unless these fail to include all employees.

What counts as full-time

Any employee who works 40 or more hours a week is treated as one full-time equivalent. An employee who works less than 35 hours a week cannot be treated as a full-time equivalent. Employees who work between 35 and 40 hours may be treated as full-time equivalent if this is accepted in the employer's regular course of business.
For employees who are less than full-time, the employer can choose one of these two methods:
  1. Count each such employee as 1/2 of a full-time equivalent.
  2. Total the hours worked by each employee and divide by the employer's standard hours of full-time employment.
An employee who works more than 40 hours a week cannot be counted as more than one full-time equivalent.
The number of hours worked per employee should be computed based on the employer's most recent payroll record.

What counts as an employee

s and consultants are not counted as employees. The U.S. Department of Labor will count somebody as an employee only if that person is treated as an employee for all tax and legal purposes, including FICA contributions, as per United States labor law.

Combining all entities as a "single employer"

Related entities need to also be included when computing the total number of FTE employees for the purpose of determining H-1B-dependency. In particular, the following are all included as the "single employer":
  1. Controlled groups of corporations: such as a parent-subsidiary controlled group, a brother-sister-controlled group, or a combined group;
  2. Trades or businesses under common control: which can include sole proprietorships, partnerships, estates, trusts, and corporations; or
  3. Affiliated service groups: such as a service organization and other organizations that regularly perform services for the first organization and either are shareholders or partners in the first organization or the interest in the second organization is held by highly-paid employees of the first organization.

    What triggers a H-1B-dependency calculation

An employer must determine H-1B-dependency status every time the employer files a Labor Condition Application. Further, if an employer who did not file as H-1B-dependent at the time of filing the LCA becomes H-1B-dependent when filing Form I-129, the employer cannot use the LCA and must obtain a new one.

Procedure to determine dependency, and documentation needed

Since H-1B-dependent status requires additional attestations, employers have incentives to be classified as non-dependent. Therefore, there is a stronger burden of proof to maintain and submit documentation in cases where an employer who prima facie appears H-1B-dependent files as a non-dependent.
As part of the exercise of filling an LCA, an employer can use a "snap shot" test: do a headcount of the workforce and of the current H-1B employees, and then compare against the thresholds. This snap shot should be conducted using the records of the most recent payroll.
An employer who comes out as clearly H-1B-non-dependent or H-1B-dependent may file the LCA accordingly without submitting any additional documentation. If, however, an employer who comes out as H-1B-dependent based on the snap shot then files as non-dependent, the employer must have documentation showing this. Typical complicating factors that make an employer's status ambiguous include the extensive use of part-time workers, existence of multiple entities that need to be grouped as a "single employer", and significant employee churn.

Public access file

The U.S. Department of Labor does not require all petitions to be in the public access file, but it does require the public access file to contain the list of all exempt nonimmigrants. However, if all petitions filed by the employer are for exempt nonimmigrants, then this list need not be maintained.
Additional documentation of employee lists and payroll, that was used to determine H-1B-dependency, should be maintained by the employer, but does not need to be part of the public access file.

Additional fees

H-1B-dependence itself does not trigger any additional fees. However, at various points in the history of H-1B law, additional fees have been levied on employers satisfying conditions similar to H-1B-dependency. These are employers who have more than 50 full-time employee equivalents and with the number of H-1B and L-1 nonimmigrants at present equal to more than 50% of their current number of FTE equivalents. The corresponding threshold for H-1B-dependency is 15%, but one way these thresholds differ is that the 50% threshold for the additional fees requires the employer to count people in H-1B as well as people in L-1 status. Also, unlike the case of additional LCA attestations, there is no exemption for people based on how much they are earning or their educational qualifications.
Whereas the concept of H-1B-dependence is used only by the United States Department of Labor, the extra fees here are levied by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Public Law 111-230 (August 2010 to September 2015): additional fee of $2000

Section 402 of Public Law 111–230, signed by then-United States President Barack Obama on August 13, 2010, imposed an additional fee of $2,000 on certain H-1B nonimmigrant petitions and $2,250 on certain L-1A and L-1B petitions. All the petitions involved are filed using Form I-129, and these fees apply over and above any applicable fees for those forms. As mentioned above, an employer was required to pay the additional H-1B fees only in the case that the employer had 51 or more employees and H-1B and L-1 employees together comprised over 50% of the workforce.
The fee would apply only to petitions on postmarked on or after August 14, 2010, and until September 30, 2014. Public Law 111-347 extended these fees till September 30, 2015. Petitions filed October 1, 2015 onward were no longer subject to these fees.

Public Law 114-113 (December 2015 to September 2025) : additional fee of $4000

Public Law 114–113, part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016, imposed a fee of $4,000 on H-1B petitions and $4,500 on L-1A and L-1B petitions. The additional H-1B fees would apply to all petitions postmarked on or after December 18, 2015 and until September 30, 2025.

List of H-1B-dependent employers

The latest list of the companies identified as H-1B-dependent_employers in their LCA filings can be obtained from the DoL
In the data file, the column H-1B_DEPENDENT will have a Y or N value indicating the status the company used in the filing.

H-1B-dependence among top users of the H-1B program

The top users of the H-1B program and their H-1B-dependent status given by employers from LCAs filed for work start dates in 2016 were:
Company nameNumber of H-1B visas approved in FY 2014Classified as H-1B-dependent?
Tata Consultancy Services and others under the Tata Group7149Yes
Cognizant Technology Solutions and others under the Cognizant parent group5228Conflicting information in different LCAs
Infosys4022No
Wipro3246No
Accenture2376No
Tech Mahindra and others under the Mahindra Group1850No
IBM1513No
Syntel1149Yes
Larsen & Toubro1001Conflicting information in different LCAs
HCL Technologies927No

History

Introduction in the ACWIA (1998)

The American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act temporarily increased the annual caps for the H-1B status, since the cap was getting oversubscribed. Some interest groups, including some legislators, labor unions, and the White House, were concerned about the effects of these cap increases on native wages in the technology sector. The ACWIA included some concessions intended to address these concerns. The introduction of the concept of H-1B-dependency, intended to prevent employers from using this visa to facilitate large-scale offshoring, was one such concession. The Labor Condition Application was changed accordingly.

Interim Final Rule of 2000

An Interim Final Rule published by the United States Department of Labor published in December 2000 provided more clarity on how employers should determine whether they are H-1B-dependent and what documentation they need to maintain. This rule remains the main guideline to this date.

Later introductions of other variants of the H-1B category

When the H-1B1 visa and E-3 visa were added, and the Labor Condition Application was modified to include them, it was updated to reflect that employees in these categories would not necessitate additional attestations, and that these employees would not count towards the number of H-1B employees. Specifically Section 1a of the LCA explicitly states that the Additional Employer Labor Condition Statements are for the H-1B only.

Introduction of additional fees

One of the ways employers responded to the generally increased regulations surrounding the H-1B, as well as the strict caps on the category, was to more liberally use the L-1 visa for intracompany transfers. In response, additional fees were levied for H-1B and L-1 applicants for employers with more than 50 employees for whom the total of H-1B and L-1 employees exceeded 50% of the United States workforce, as discussed in the [|additional fees section of this page]. The fees have widely been viewed as a way for more high-paying technology firms, that generally have relatively small fractions of their workforce in H-1B status and pay higher wages, to reduce competition for a limited H-1B quota from offshoring and outsourcing firms that currently dominate H-1B usage.