Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit and hectic lobbying by the IT industry do not seem to be having much of an impact in swaying US lawmakers’ views on H-1B visas.
Two US Senators have made a fresh attempt to bring in tighter laws that could hurt Indian IT companies.
Senators Chuck Grassley, Chairman of Senate Judiciary Committee, and Dick Durbin, Assistant Democratic Leader, have introduced a bipartisan legislation in the Senate aimed at stopping companies from hiring H-1B visa holders if they employ more than 50 people and over 50 per cent of their employees are H-1B and L-1 visa holders.
According to the Senators, H-1B visas were designed to allow American companies to hire foreign professionals in areas where qualified Americans cannot be found. However, this has been “misused” to outsource jobs mainly to Indian companies such as TCS and Infosys.
“The H-1B visa programme was never meant to replace qualified American workers, but it was instead intended as a means to fill gaps in highly specialised areas of employment that cannot be filled by Americans,” Grassley said while introducing the Bill.
US issues 85,000 H-1B visas every year that includes 65,000 for foreign workers applying for the first time and the remaining for foreign students graduating from US universities. Indian and American companies that benefit from the outsourcing model have been pushing for more visas. This year 233,000 applications were received in just seven days. Indian IT industry representatives said they were not worried by the fresh attempt to enforce curbs by the US Senators. “It’s election time so we expect such Bills and statements to be made. The Bill has to cross several hurdles before it becomes a law,” said an executive of an India IT services company.
A controversial lawIndian companies would be hoping that some of the recent wins on visa issues would not be dampened by such attempts.
Recently, the US Congress allowed a controversial law that collected $2,000 H-1B fee, to lapse. This law had forced Indian IT companies to pay millions of dollars towards protecting the US-Mexican border from illegal immigration.
The legislation was adopted by the US Congress in 2010 for a five-year period.