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Fearing Tighter US Visa Regime, Indian IT Firms Rush To Hire (moneycontrol.com)

Posted by msmash on from the meanwhile-in-India dept.

From a report on Reuters: Anticipating a more protectionist US technology visa programme under a Donald Trump administration, India's $150 billion IT services sector will speed up acquisitions in the United States and recruit more heavily from college campuses there. Indian companies including Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, and Wipro have long used H1-B skilled worker visas to fly computer engineers to the US, their largest overseas market, temporarily to service clients. Staff from those three companies accounted for around 86,000 new H1-B workers in 2005-14. The US currently issues close to that number of H1-B visas each year. President-elect Trump's campaign rhetoric, and his pick for Attorney General of Senator Jeff Sessions, a long-time critic of the visa programme, have many expecting a tighter regime.

6 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. Trivial to stop the abuse by tempmpi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It seems trivial to stop the abuse: Stop the lottery and replace it with a list ordered by salary and give the visas to the applicants with the highest salaries. This would make hiring H1Bs expensive and limit their use to hiring rare very talented foreigners.

    At the moment H1Bs are broken: The lottery often prevents bringing in highly talented people, while it doesn't matter too much for companies that just want a random cheap semi-skilled person. They just fill a lot of extra applications to get enough H1Bs granted.

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    Jan
    1. Re:Trivial to stop the abuse by Guybrush_T · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This is indeed a good solution, though it may have to be weighted depending on the area, otherwise Silicon Valley will get all the H1-Bs.

      But yes, those three Indian IT companies are the one abusing the system, and it is their fault if H1-Bs are so hard to get. They prevent other companies from legitimately bringing foreign talents by flooding the system.

      So of course they're fearing it won't work long, and I hope it will be the case. I don't really trust Trump to do this smartly, but if at least they can fix the H1-B system, that would be an interesting achievement.

  2. Auction system by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    An auction system may reduce riff-raff and "shortage" BS.

    Have a base cap, such as 30,000 skilled visa positions a year, for example. Maybe have another 30,000 slots, but corporations have to bid against each other for them. If there is truly a shortage, they will pay a high wage for them, and select them for actual skill instead of for cheaper bodies who work long hours because they have no family etc. They wouldn't bid on actual people, just the salaries. And perhaps tax some of that to help pay down the national debt.

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    Table-ized A.I.
  3. Silicon Valley able to cope with Trump regime? by k6mfw · · Score: 2, Interesting

    With all this anti-immigrant attitude that is sweeping the country, and with lots of immigrants here in blue state of California (that appears like a foreign country compared to rest of US in this now Trump administration), where will this put many Silicon Valley companies? I heard Ro Khanna got a lot of backing from many SV companies to unseat incumbent congressman Mike Honda because Khanna is a proponent of more H1Bs (disclaimer: I've not extensively researched the details). I can see why many companies are going to push for more visas in these last two months of current Administration (do it while they can). Anyway, as I see Apple being pressured to bring back jobs to US (yeah, lots of luck with that) then there many other companies either friends with Obama and backed Clinton in the election, how will they fit into the Trump regime?

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    mfwright@batnet.com
  4. Re: "H1-B skilled worker visas" by shaitand · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd be careful, those Americans invented most of the technology the rest of the world needs to modernize and those H1B visa workers are coming here to work on.

  5. Re:"H1-B skilled worker visas" by Dan+East · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Doesn't even need any changes. They just need to vigorously enforce that rule

    Sounds like you're talking about immigration law in general, that everyone is freaking out about on the left with our president-elect. The laws already exist, but what has been happening is "legislation" by the executive branch, by not enforcing law. Another example is the legalization of marijuana at the state level, when it's illegal at the federal level. I'm not attempting to open a debate on whether or not it is right or wrong that the federal government regulates it in the way it does (I am pretty adamant across the board that the Federal government has gotten way too strong and usurped too much power from the states), but what I'm saying is the inaction and lack of enforcement by the executive branch of laws passed by the legislative branch is a misuse of power and an imbalance in the three branches. This has been a problem with previous presidents, but Obama has taken lack of enforcement of law to another level. The judicial branch only gets to rule on cases brought before it, thus if the executive branch does not prosecute in the first place, the judicial branch is also totally removed from the picture.

    So in other words, the left has been flipping out over the mere enforcement of existing laws, and the H1-B enforcement is just another example.

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    Better known as 318230.