Delhi Diary: India's Technology Professionals Nervous Over Tightening US Visa Rules

By Shakir Husain Shakir Husain, Bernama’s correspondent in New Delhi shares his take from the Indian sub-continent. NEW DELHI, April 30 (Bernama) -- President Donald Trump's "America First" policy is making India's technology industry nervous as hundreds of thousands of professionals are at risk of losing their jobs in the United States. The H-1B visa, which US employers use to hire foreigners for specialised jobs for which American workers are not available, represents the crux of the matter. Indian news media have highlighted that 750,000 Indian professionals could be sent back from the US due to the Trump administration's planned stringent new conditions for the work permits that are often information technology graduates' path to settle down in America. US-based companies, including American operations of Indian IT giants such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro, pick their foreign workers and apply for H-1B temporary work visas on their behalf. Top users of H-1B visas include Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Intel, Microsoft and Oracle. Workers from India constitute about 80 per cent of those who benefit from the programme, followed by Chinese recipients. Critics say many employers abuse the process to bring in foreigners at lower wages, while its supporters claim that the H-1B visa enables the US to easily acquire talent not easily available locally. The Trump administration contends the visa system is skewed against the interests of American workers and has vowed to fix the loopholes. The steps proposed to tighten the H-1B process include ending the lottery system, raising the salary levels and requiring companies to employ only the highly skilled foreigners. The US also plans to disallow spouses of H-1B visa holders from working by rescinding a Barack Obama period measure. Obama in 2015 allowed work permits under the H-4 EAD (Employment Authorisation Document) provision to the spouses of H-1B visa holders in the queue for the permanent residency document Green Card.A number of non-resident Indians (NRIs) holding these visas have spoken about their anxieties about the impending rule changes. "We need two incomes to support our family. We have a house mortgage and two car loans to pay back and are expecting our second child. This new rule could throw much of our financial planning out of whack," Krithika Rajan, an engineer, was quoted as saying in an Indian newspaper. "Most importantly, I'm extremely passionate about my work, so the thought of not being able to do my job unless my husband lands a Green Card is very concerning," she said. Her worries reflect the concerns of the large community of Indian professionals. "This is a very disappointing development. We have already taken up the issue with the US. We hope to take it forward by other negotiations," India's Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu said recently. The issue has also become political, with the Congress party accusing the government of being a "mute spectator" to the US clampdown, which could result in 750,000 Indians being deported. It may rankle the Bharatiya Janata Party in the ongoing campaigning for the Karnataka assembly elections as the state capital Bangalore is the country's top IT hub generating billions of dollars of revenues via technology services exports to the US. -- BERNAMA