The National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) has said it is okay with the US government’s move to protect its high-skilled human resources. But such restrictions should be uniform across companies and should not confine only to Indian firms, Nasscom contends.
“If they want to protect their qualified workforce, we don’t have any objection to it. It must protect them fully. But you are not protecting them fully, if you bring in restrictions on only one one set of companies that account for only 20 per cent of the visas,” Nasscom President R Chandrashekhar said.
Chandrashekhar, who is here to take part in the two-day Nasscom Global In-House Centres (GICs) conference, said the proposed restrictions are not applicable to other companies that account for 80 per cent of the visas.
He felt this will discriminate against the Indian companies with operations in the US. He said it was a misconception that Indian companies got the majority of the visas.
On the move by Singapore to restrict visas, he said there were several alternative locations in South-East Asia for companies to look at to address the issue.
Global policiesHe said the global trends of rising protectionism and anti-globalisation are translating into policies. “These are driven by domestic concerns about jobs and economy. But there is also a severe shortage of skills at the high end. Every country wants highly skilled people from anywhere in the world. The definition of the highly skilled changes from time to time.”
Chandrashekhar said the Indian IT industry has weathered several changes and transformed itself to come out of crises. “From labour arbitrage to the Y2K problem, and from the software development phase to providing end-to-end solutions, it has come a long way. The migration issue is an operational challenge. The industry is capable of transforming itself to face this.”