H-1B visas: US lobbies push to help India

NEW YORK: Immigration reform is working its slow uncertain way through the US Congress but there is a groundswell of support from powerful American business groups and economists for multiplying the annual quota of H-1B visas many times beyond present limits.

“US industry universally would like to see a freer, easier flow of talented, technical people between India and the US. We are working up on Capitol Hill on finding a solution,” Ron Somers, president of the US-India Business Council, told DNA.

“We will press for the liberalisation of the visa regime while respecting the need for national security,” added Somers.

According to economists, the number of people allowed into the US is far too small, posing a significant problem for the economy in the years ahead. Only 140,000 green cards – the document which gives holders the right to work and live permanently in the US – are issued annually to scientists, engineers and other skilled workers.

Most Indians, especially information technology workers, wind up in the US on temporary H-1B guest worker visas which are good for specific jobs for three years with the possibility of one renewal. The US Congress cut the annual quota of H-1B visas in 2003 from 200,000 to well under 100,000. Now demand far exceeds supply. The small quota of 65,000 for the current fiscal year that began in October is already exhausted.

In November this year, the US Senate bowed to pressure from industry to approve a proposal to “recapture” unused H-1B visas going back to the 1990s and to add 30,000 of those unused visas to the current 65,000 annual cap.

Gary Becker, 1992 Nobel laureate in economics and a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institute, argued instead that the right approach would be to increase the number of entry permits to skilled professionals and eliminate the H-1B programme altogether, so that all such visas became permanent.

“Basically, I am proposing that H-1B visas be folded into a much larger, employment-based green card program,” Becker said in the Wall Street Journal. “The annual quota should be multiplied… and there should be no upper bound on the numbers from any single country. Such upper bounds place large countries like India and China, with many highly qualified professionals, at a considerable and unfair disadvantage – at no gain to the US,” he added.
 
The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) also wants the number of H-1B visas granted to India to increase.

“American employers need to have the additional numbers to get the skills that they need. The market place is the best arbitrator to decide the quota for H-1B visas,” said Bob Cohen, senior vice president, ITAA.