Foreign faculty face new hurdles

The price for colleges to employ foreign faculty members is going to increase because of revisions in federal immigration laws.

College employers will be required as of March 8 to pay foreign faculty 100 percent of the prevailing or actual wage, whichever is higher. This is an increase of 5 percent.

Prevailing wage is determined by the state’s labor department, based on surveys of statewide educational institutions. Actual wage is the amount of money an institution pays employees of similar experience.

Employers also will pay a $500 anti-fraud fee imposed for each H-1B visa filed on behalf of an employee. The fee will go to the Department of Homeland Security to stop the fraudulent use of visas.

The 5 percent increase in pay will not affect all institutions because most colleges already pay foreign employees wages comparable to other faculty. This includes UNC, said Michele Barosh, assistant director to foreign academic staff.

“From what I’ve seen, salaries are comparable, if not exact,” she said.

All institutions will be impacted by the $500 “anti-fraud” fee, making it a bigger concern than wage-increase requirements, said Catheryn Cotten, director of the International Office at Duke University.

“Only some institutions or departments will be affected by the 5 percent wage increase,” she said. “But everyone will be affected by the anti-fraud fee. That is an absolute cost to the university.”

The common abuses of H-1B visas include underpaying foreign workers and illegally employing aliens.

Higher education institutions are rarely the source of these problems but still have a responsibility to the government, Cotten said.

“As a user of the H-1B visa, we are equally responsible for the $500 fee in order to fund a resource to deal with the fraud,” she said.

In addition to the $500 fee, universities will have to pay the Department of Homeland Security a minimum of $185 for the processing of each application.

“Add to that, Homeland Security is very slow in processing” Cotten said. “So you have to pay $1,000 for premium processing, which many institutions feel compelled to do in order to get their foreign employees here and on payroll in time. This all comes out of the pocket of the university.”

Though the new cost to employ foreign faculty will rise significantly, neither Barosh nor Cotten believe it will greatly affect the number of foreign faculty employed.

“I think that the fee is definitely going to be cumbersome and costly to some departments,” Barosh said. “But is it going to stop departments from hiring the best and the brightest? No, I don’t think it will.”

Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.