⧖ Workforce Augmentation · Employer Parity Surcharge funding

Where the Employer Parity Surcharge revenue goes

The surcharge — withheld from the worker's wage at payroll during the integration years, while the employer pays the same as for a domestic hire — is formula-scored, with illustrative landing points of ~12% shortage-skilled / ~40% credentialed trades / ~90% seasonal manual (indicative, not statutory). It pools nationally; each host community draws its share by how many immigrants it hosts and how much help it needs — struggling communities get more per immigrant, high-capacity cities less — and spends it locally on the services newcomers use, like school seats for immigrant children, primary-care expansion, and evening ESL at the library. The exact apportionment formula is still to be determined. Communities hosting refugees and asylum seekers qualify even before residents are employed. The per-worker rate declines to ~10% by Year 9 as the immigrant integrates and pays standard payroll tax and income tax.

Employer demand

Intake volume

Throttled by the surcharge; no number published

~12/40/90%

Illustrative landing points

Indicative, not statutory; → ~10% per worker by Year 9

Hosting communities

Where the surcharge goes

Share of pool by immigrant count & local need

Workforce Augmentation Optimization Talent Capture Immigration Community & Refugees COMPASS

Section 1

The COMPASS-weighted apportionment

The surcharge is targeted — not ring-fenced — to the communities that host: struggling communities receive more than healthy ones. It does not split along a fixed federal formula. The NSB and Treasury apportion the pool against the COMPASS shortage-indicator suite, so the weighting travels with measured local need rather than with a political negotiation. The exact formula and guidance are still to be determined. Three framing principles bound the rule-making:

Where the weight goes	What the funds do
Heavier — low-capacity / hollowed-out tracts	Places with the largest measured shortages on the COMPASS suite (healthcare access, broadband, housing supply, civic capacity, primary care, mental health) receive the largest per-immigrant allocation. The surcharge becomes a capacity-building stream for the places that most need it.
Lighter — high-capacity established cities	Cities with deep immigrant-receiving infrastructure already in place — the established gateways — receive a smaller per-immigrant allocation, on the principle that marginal capacity-building dollars travel further where the capacity is missing.
Refugee + asylum hosting	Communities hosting refugees or asylum seekers qualify even before the hosted residents are employed. Refugee and asylum-seeker healthcare is covered by Distributed Healthcare (the universal floor), not by a separate surcharge slice.

Specific apportionment weights are set by NSB / Treasury rule-making against the COMPASS indicators and are not published as fixed percentages.

Section 2

Phase-in and steady-state intake

Year	Annual intake
Years 1–3	Annual steps, each gated on COMPASS absorption in the receiving communities
Year 4+	Steady state: employer demand sets the volume; the surcharge and the work-offer requirement throttle it below the statutory level

The ramp is administrative — bringing the new intake and scoring system to capacity, gated on the COMPASS absorption indicators — not a new quota concept; federal intake control already exists.

The Genius-Track visa system (PhD Completion, GTV, Postdoctoral, Alliance-Incentive Fast-Track) is separate and additive — combined steady-state flow ~46,000–62,000/year, independent of the surcharge-governed volume.

Section 3

Remittances

Remittances are private household flows from worker take-home pay. The surcharge has already priced the labor-market externality at source; the Accord neither taxes nor restricts remittances.