Anti-global visa bill presented in US Senate

The Indian Information Technology (IT) industry can face severe jolt if US senate passes the proposed US legislation to reform the H-1B a long-term visa and L-1 a relatively short-term visa issues to employees of foreign countries.

The US Senators Chuck Grassley and Dick Durbin Thursday presented a new legislation bill before the Senate proposing to curb the numbers of H-1B and L-1 visa programme to protect US from security threat.

Experts believe that the move would hit the Indian IT industry severely as it has most of the H-1B visas, if the bill gets the US Senate’s nod.

According to proposed visa, ‘The companies can not issue more H-1B visa and L-1 visa that already have 50 percent visa holding employees.

H-1B visa allows US employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations like architecture, engineering, mathematics, physical sciences, social sciences and biotechnology, and L-1 visa (usually three year-term) issues to employees of a company with offices in both the home country and the US.

The Indian IT industry, IT body National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) and Indian government has criticized the move of US arguing that this move of US would be antithesis to globalisation and the implication of this legislation would not only hurt the Indian IT industry but also the US economy.

Indian Commerce and Industry minister Kamal Nath condemned US’s Anti-Indian policy and said, “This is certainly not in line with the US President’s stand against protectionism at the recent London G20 meeting and our desire to mainstream development in the Doha negotiations. Indian IT engineers and industries have helped America in making a globally competitive country.”

He urged the US administration to not pass such a bill that would hurt India as well as US economy.

“Several provisions of this Bill are against the principles of free trade and are creating trade barriers. In many ways, it (the legislation) is targeting Indian companies and restricts their ability to compete in the US market. This is also against President Obama’s stand against protectionism at the G20 summit,” said NASSCOM president Som Mittal, adding that NASSCOM will ensure the US authority and help them to prevent the abuse of visas.

According to NASSCOM estimation, the US move would affect all the medium and big IT companies which have branch offices and subsidiaries in the US that are staffed largely by H-1B visa holders.

On the other hand, Grassley, the bill presenter, has said in a statement that the new legislation would route out the fraud and abuse, and clear the way of Americans to be considered the first priority for the job.

“In tough economic times like we’re seeing, it’s even more important that we do everything possible to see that Americans are given consideration when applying for jobs. If there aren’t qualified Americans, companies can use the legal immigration programmes we have available, but we must return the H-1B and L-1 visa programmes back to their original intent,” said Grassley.

The Senators (Chuck Grassley and Dick Durbin) had last year, too, presented this bill but it was rejected then, and this time they have re-introduced it by making slight changes in it.