India-USA : H1B Visa Changes

What is H1B visa?

The H1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows companies to employ foreigners for a period of up to six years. This visa is aimed at helping companies employ foreigners in positions for which they have been unable to find American employees.
The minimum salary for an employee holding the H1B visa is set at $60,000 per year. H1B visa holders are allowed to apply for permanent residency in the US as well as buy or sell property in the country.
Every year, the US government grants 65,000 H1B visas, while an additional 20,000 are given to foreign students who have completed their masters course from a US university.
In accordance with the Free Trade Agreements that the US has with Singapore and Chile, they get additional 5,400 and 1,400 visas under the H-1B1 category, respectively.

What is the issue?

New US leadership under Trump is working on changes in H-1B and other guest worker visa programmes as part of President Trump’s immigration reforms.
New restrictions are proposed for H-1B visa holders.
These visa programmes are mandated by the legislature and are widely used by Indian IT companies to place skilled workers in the US.
Trump has signed an executive order to enforce and review the H-1B visa programme.

What does the new H1B reform bill propose?

The new H1B visa reform bill proposes a radical overhaul of the process, increasing the minimum salary for visa holders to be $130,000, more than double the current minimum.
This would mean that companies would have to either pay rather highly for the skilled workers, or not choose foreign employees in favour of American citizens.
The new visa reform bill also eliminates the category of lowest pay, and raises the salary level at which H1B dependent employer are exempt from non-displacement and recruitment attestation requirements to greater than $130,000.
The H1B visa bill removes the ‘per country’ cap for employment-based immigrant visas. It sets aside 20% of the annually allocated H1B visas for small companies and startup employers (50 or fewer employers) to ensure small businesses have an opportunity to compete for high-skilled workers.

Why Trump doing this?

These changes are aimed at fulfilling his campaign pledges to put “America First”.
H-1B visa programme is accused of taking away jobs from Americans. Also, Trump wants a more merit-based way of giving visas to highly skilled workers instead of the present lottery system.

Why these steps are a cause of concern for India?

A sizeable chunk of the applicants are Indians.
Indian students migrating to the states for pursuing a higher degree and tech companies that send their workers on off-site projects will be among the most affected by the changes to the visa policy.
It will lead to a decrease in interest in students flocking to American universities, thereby minimising the brain drain.

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