Finance Minister Arun Jaitley raises the issue in bilateral meeting with US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in Washington
Just two days after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order for making H-1B visas more stringent to curb its "abuse", India has started mounting diplomatic pressure on the US with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley bringing up the issue on Friday during his bilateral meeting with the US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in Washington DC.
A statement issued by the government on the interaction between the two dignitaries said that Jaitley prodded those reviewing the H-1B programme, which is an employment-based, non-immigrant visa for temporary worker largely used by Indian information technology (IT) services firms, to consider "the significant contributions skilled Indian professionals have made to the US economy".
"(The finance minister) expressed the hope that the US administration will take this (significant contributions of skilled Indian professionals) aspect into consideration while taking any decision," said the release issued by the finance ministry on Friday.
Jaitley's meeting with Ross is the first cabinet-level interaction between the two countries under the Trump administration. Ross reportedly said that the US had started the process of reviewing H1B visas issues and no decision has been taken on it yet.
According to the US commerce secretary the main objective of the Trump administration of taking up matter was to move towards a more merit-based immigration policy where highly skilled professionals were given preference.
Many experts believe stringent rules for H-1B visas will adversely impact India's over $100-billion IT industry as it will snip its currently high margins and make it lose its cost edge over MNCs.
One of the reasons for a review of the H-1B programme by the US administration has been its misuse by the Indian companies, which they believe had led to US jobs going to Indian techies. The non-immigrant employment visa is mostly used by Indian tech firms.
Som Mittal, former Nasscom president, said the misuse of H-1B visa has been "overstated".
"They (US administration) have overstated the misuse of H-1B visas. Maybe we (Indians) get 40-50% of them -- that's just 32,000 visas (out of the 65,000 visas). That doesn't become such an important thing in our industry which is so large (IT-sector employs lakhs of computer programmers, engineers and scientists)," he said.
Mittal said, whatever the Trump administration did on visa, it should exercise moderation so that adverse impact on both countries was minimised.
"One of the things that should be ensured is there should be a time for adjustment for the Indian IT companies. The other is there should be no discrimination against any company. They should extensively consider what would be the impact in case they deny H-1B visas to Indian companies," he said.
He pointed out that there was shortage of local American engineers and any attempt to control H-1B visa could boomerang and adversely affect US's technological prowess.
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 "Finance Minister Arun Jaitley; US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross")
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