Obama signs 9/11 health bill, sticks India with paying for it

US president Barack Obama signed into law a bill on Sunday giving federal health benefits to first responders to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, staying unmoved by India’s complaints about a steep hike in skilled-worker visa fees which will partially fund the $4.3 billion aid bill.

Commerce minister Anand Sharma slammed the bill as “retrograde” after it passed Congress at the close of the session on December 22. India is now mulling steps to take its complaint to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as the bill will be funded by a 2% levy on goods and services sourced from contractors in countries like India, China and Thailand which are outside the purview of WTO’s Agreement on Government Procurement. The bill will also be funded by the continuation of a fee hike on work visas from 2014 to 2021.

In August last year, Congress dramatically hiked fees for work visas to help pay for a $650 million effort to increase security along the US-Mexico border. As a result, the fees for H-1B visas shot up from $320 to $2,320, while it increased by $ 2,250 for L-1 visas. This increase will now stay until 2021 to help cover the cost of the 9/11 responders health care bill.

India’s IT industry which relies on work visas for bringing in engineers for US projects contends the hikes will cost $200 million a year. 

“We do not rush into disputes, but beyond a point, patience does run out,” commerce secretary Rahul Khullar earlier told business reporters, indicating that India may take this dispute to the WTO.
The law, which Obama signed on Sunday in private during his vacation in Hawaii, provides $4.3 billion in aid over five years, with $1.5 billion for health-care coverage. It also reopens a $2.7 billion compensation program for those who became ill after working or living near the debris at the Ground Zero site in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attack.

In a statement released after Obama signed the bill, the president called the legislation “a critical step for those who continue to bear the physical scars of those attacks”.

The bill is named after James Zadroga, an NYPD detective who died of 9/11-related illnesses. “It was a bittersweet battle and this is a bittersweet victory,” said Joseph Zadroga, father of James Zadroga.

The H-1B visa program that catapults Indians into Silicon Valley and Wall Street is on track to leaving thousands of spots unfilled for the first time since 2003. Rising protectionist tides and the anemic US job market with unemployment hovering around 9.8% has depressed demand for foreign worker visas. Out of the 65,000 H-1B visas, about 11,000 slots are still available for the fiscal year ending on March 31,2011, said US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

In 2009, the cap of 65,000 was reached on December 21. In 2008, 163,000 H-1B visa petitions were submitted in the first five days of filing, later forcing US officials to pick winners in a random lottery as the petitions far outnumbered the available visas.