Friday, April 19, 2013
Immigration Bill Gives New Legals $3,000 Hiring Edge
Under the immigration reform bill, some employers would have an incentive of up to $3,000 per year to hire a newly legalized immigrant over a U.S. citizen.
In avoiding one controversy — the cost of providing millions of newly legalized immigrants with ObamaCare subsidies — the Senate “Gang of Eight” may have risked walking into another.
The bipartisan legislation released Wednesday dictates that those granted provisional legal immigrant status would be treated the same as those “not lawfully present” are treated under the 2010 health law.
That means they would neither be eligible for ObamaCare tax credits nor required to pay an individual tax penalty for failing to obtain qualifying health coverage. It also means some employers would face no penalty for failing to provide such workers affordable health coverage.
For employers who don’t offer insurance, fines are based on full-time equivalent staffing levels, so distinctions between citizens and visa holders don’t matter.
The Cost Of Citizenship
But employers who do offer insurance also can face fines. If the coverage costs a worker more than 9.5% of pay, it is deemed unaffordable and the worker becomes eligible for ObamaCare’s exchange subsidies.
These employers would have to pay the government up to $3,000 per full-time worker who receives ObamaCare subsidies.
Some employers have said they would seek to limit ObamaCare fines by shifting some workers to part-time, which the law defines as fewer than 30 hours.
The immigration bill, as written, would provide another path for avoiding fines by hiring of legalized immigrants as full-time employees, since they wouldn’t be eligible for ObamaCare for a decade or more.
Full article: http://news.investor … employer-mandate.htm
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