US Forces India to Pay for not Signing WTO Agreement of Govt Procurement

· 2% Tax on Goods and Services Supplied to US Govt

· Hike in H1B Visa by $2000 from 2014

U.S. President Barack Obama on Sunday, 2 January signed a healthcare package and economic aid for people who fell sick after inhaling toxic fume from the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center, according to the White House.

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.

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.

The bill, named “James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, “ establishes the World Trade Center Health Program and extends and expands eligibility for compensation under the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001. It passed the Congress before it adjourned for the holidays.

The 4.2-billion-dollar package was passed with a voice vote. The package went through after Democrats and Republicans reached a compromise that trimmed the package from 6.2 billion dollars down to 4.2 billion. New York Democrat Charles Schumer and Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn hammered out the deal, allowing the Congress to adjourn on Wednesday and head home before Christmas.

The bill provides free health care and compensation for lost wages and other economic losses to first-responders for the 9/11 terrorist attacks and survivors who fell ill after being exposed to toxins from the ground zero ruins.

The program covers firefighters, police officers and construction workers who rushed to the smoking wreckage of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and worked at the site in the following months.

The legislation is largely paid for by imposing a 2-percent fee on companies based in countries that have not signed a government procurement agreement with the United States.

“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, 2 January 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.

Starting 2011 off on a high note, President Barack Obama signed into law the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, as reported by the New York Times¹. This law will help to compensate rescue workers who have become ill after working in or around the World Trade Center rubble.

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, many people living and working around the “Ground Zero” site in Lower Manhattan have become sick with respiratory illness, and a number of cancers including possibly myeloma, leukemia and lymphoma.

The act, which is worth 4.3 billion dollars, is named for James Zadroga, a police officer that died as the result of a respiratory disease that he developed after working on 9/11 rescue efforts.