The American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998 (ACWIA) created a filing fee that certain petitioners must pay when filing an H-1B petition with US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). This fee is $1,500 for each such petition, except that the fee is half the amount where the petitioner has no more than 25 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees who are employed in the US (determined by including any affiliate or subsidiary of such employer). The terms “affiliate” and “subsidiary” were not defined at the time of ACWIA’s passage. In a policy memo dated August 9, 2017 (“Definition of “Affiliate” or Subsidiary” for Purposes of Determining the H-1B ACWIA Fee) USCIS provides definitions “affiliate” and “subsidiary”to determine the appropriate ACWIA fee.
What is most notable about this formula is that USCIS is no longer considering the FTE employees of the parent company when determining the amount of the ACWIA fee. The policy memo states:
“When determining the appropriate amount of the ACWIA fee, officers should count FTE employees of the petitioning employer and the petitioning employer’s affiliates and subsidiaries, . . . . Officers should not include FTEs employees from the petitioning employer’s parent company or the parent(s) of any affiliates. In other words, officers should count down and horizontally, including the petitioning employer’s other affiliates and subsidiaries, but not up toward its parent or its affiliates’ parent(s).”