Why America’s new H-1B visa curb will hit India’s computer programmers the most
The days of the liberal transatlantic visa regime for the foreign shore-loving techies, long known as the cushy H-1B issued by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), are perhaps now over. A new diktat that was nevertheless widely expected has said that being a regular computer programmer would not be enough to apply for the coveted H-1B work visa, which is a “specialty occupation” needing highly qualified applicants for highly paid positions.
In a move that would impact the humongous information technology (IT) industry in India, which considers client servicing one of its chief sources of revenue, the USCIS has ruled that “an entry level computer programmer position would not qualify as a specialty occupation, and would therefore be not eligible for an H-1B work visa".
It must be noted here that until now, on an average, the USCIS had issued about 85,000 H-1B visas on a yearly basis, a substantial chunk of which had gone to Indian and Chinese companies, IT engineers mostly, who have formed the fat base of the immigrant-dependent Silicon Valley. This has led to the culture of start-ups, innovation and the general upward bounce in the tech industry, most of which have been immigrant driven.
However, the latest ruling has come right in time when the April 1 window opens to invite a fresh batch of H-1B visa applications, definitely in a bid to curb Indian computer programmers with dreams of America in their eyes from applying en masse. The ruling as issued on March 31, 2017, supersedes and rescinds the previous guidelines of the USCIS – those issued in December 2000 – and imposes strict restrictions on the eligibility criteria to apply for the much desired H-1B visa.
Trump’s ‘Buy American, Hire American’
It must be noted here that the new USCIS memorandum is hardly unexpected, given that President Donald Trump ran his noxious, blatantly racist election campaign on the promise of “Buy American, Hire American”. He reiterated this in his inauguration speech on January 20, 2017, when he insisted that he would overhaul the manner in which Americans do trade and commerce, significantly curbing the tendency to bring in cheap labour from foreign countries in lieu of American counterparts.
Trump’s America First policy has firm backing from the Congress, particularly from US attorney general Jeff Sessions, who has opposed the H-1B programme from its inception. In addition, several instances of rampant exploitation of H-1B norms, with tech companies giving out H-1B visas to entry-level positions that require simple code writing and checking, has created a sense of disenchantment among Americans in competition for the same jobs but legally requiring at least double the salary.
According to a Bloomberg report, a coalition of employers relying on highly skilled immigrants actually backed the new ruling.
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| Every year India sends thousands of engineers and tech workers on H-1B visas to work in the US. Photo: Reuters |
“Scott Corley, executive director, Compete America, a coalition of employers that rely on high-skilled immigrants, said in a statement on Monday that H-1B reform should be part of a broader re-assessment of the country’s immigration priorities. ‘Our nation’s outdated legal immigration system relies heavily on a single temporary visa category, the H-1B, to prove work authorisation for every kind of high-skilled foreign professional we recruit’," he said.
The immigration reforms are also to give “priority to companies paying higher salaries” and also would “explicitly prohibit companies from replacing qualified US workers with H-1B workers”.
How will this impact India?
Every year India sends thousands of engineers and tech workers on H-1B visas to work in the US. Indian tech companies such as Infosys and TCS, which have offices in the US, also find it cheaper to send an Indian to their US offices rather than hire American citizens purely because of the monetary gain made in the process.
H-1B revenue is a sizeable chunk of the remittances pie and props up investment in Digital India, PM Narendra Modi’s flagship project. Given that both Modi and Trump are populist leaders putting their countries first in a bid to overhaul respective economies, that they are now at odds over an employment criteria is definitely a thorn in the throat of the future of the India-US “special relationship”.
The USCIS memorandum would have a prohibitory effect on the H-1B visa regime as a whole, because its transatlantic lure would be significantly thwarted once it starts showing impact on the Indian and Chinese tech sector.
Given that highly-qualified professionals anyway do not depend on a stringent visa regime, and that they usually come from the upper crust of the global capitalist elite whose nationality doesn’t really hinder movements across borders, this new H-1B ruling would be chiefly impacting the Indian middle classes which see the tech sector as a gateway to a globally savvy, cosmopolitan lifestyle, unaffected by local issues.
Indians targeted in US
There is also a correlation between the politics of racial intolerance that is getting legitimised in the US at present because of the new president and the Republican regime at the helm, and the fresh curbs on a visa regime that drives an immigrant-dependent sector.
The murder of an Indian engineer from Hyderabad – Srinivas Kuchibholta – in Kansas City, Texas, by a retired US navy personnel is not entirely disconnected from this new era of American protectionism under President Trump.
At the last WTO summit, it was Chinese President Xi Jinping who batted most passionately in favour of globalisation. Exactly when it’s time for Asian countries to benefit from the big historical developments of the last century, it seems America is reluctant to pay its dues.