The term H-1B-dependent employer is used by the United States Department of Labor to describe an employer who meets a particular threshold in terms of the fraction of the workforce comprising workers in H-1B status. An employer classified as H-1B-dependent needs to include additional attestations in the Labor Condition Application used for the petition of any H-1B beneficiary being offered an annual compensation of less than $60,000 and without a master's degree. The notion was introduced by the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act (ACWIA) passed in 1998 and operationalized through the United States Department of Labor's Interim Final H-1B Rule of December 20, 2000. The regulation is found in 20 CFR 655.736 in the Code of Federal Regulations. One of the key goals of the concept of H-1B-dependence is to curtail the use of H-1B visas for the replacement of American skilled workers by cheaper labor from other countries. The demarcation of H-1B-dependency is intended to strike a balance between the need to prevent large-scale use of the H-1B to facilitate "cheap labor" against the goal of minimizing the regulatory burden on employers who use the H-1B sparingly. Employers satisfying slight variations of the criterion for H-1B-dependence have been targeted for additional H-1B fees (by Public Law 111-230 and 114-113). H-1B reform proposals have suggested various ways of capping the use of the H-1B program by H-1B-dependent workers, but strict caps have never been legislatively or administratively imposed. H-1B-dependence is not relevant to Labor Condition Applications filed for H-1B1 and E-3 workers. Definition and applicability Section 1a of the LCA seeks to classify the employer filing the LCA into one of three categories: The employer is not H-1B-dependent The employees being petitioned for are exempt nonimmigrants The employees being petitioned for are not exempt, and the employer is therefore including the additional attestations Thresholds for defining H-1B-dependence The following are the thresholds for determining whether an employer is classified as H-1B-dependent. Note that for the first column below, only employees in the United States should be counted, but this can include other employees on H-1B or another temporary worker status, as well as United States citizens and lawful permanent residents. Exempt nonimmigrant Even for a H-1B-dependent employer, a nonimmigrant is considered exempt from the additional H-1B attestations if either of these two conditions is satisfied: The worker is being paid $60,000 or more in annual compensation. The worker holds