››H-1B BACK ON TABLE FOR INDIA-US TALKS
WASHINGTON: India has put the H-1B temporary visa programme for high-skilled professionals firmly back on the table for discussions with the United States after pussyfooting around it as the Trump administration put an unprecedented squeeze on it and its chief beneficiaries, Indian companies and IT professionals.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar raised the issue in his meeting with the acting secretary of homeland security, Kevin Mcaleenan at their meeting earlier in the week, along with other issues of legal immigrations and the welfare of the hundreds of thousands of Indian students enrolled in US colleges.
Jaishankar wrote in a tweet that he discussed “promoting lawful travel, ensuring flow of talent and protecting the interests of students”.
No further details were shared by either side, but people familiar with the talks said the phrase “ensuring flow of talent” referred to the H-1B visa programme under which the US grants a total of 85,000 three-year visas to foreign professionals required by US companies to meet a shortfall in local availability.
An estimated 70% of these visas go to Indians, hired by US behemoths such as Microsoft, Facebook and Google, smaller US companies and US subsidiaries of Indian IT companies Infosys, TCS, Wipro and Mahindra.
The Trump administration has put the programme under unprecedented scrutiny under pressure from immigration hardliners who claim that there is no shortage of local talents and visas were being used to displace Americans workers with cheaper alternatives from abroad.
President Donald Trump has been personally ambivalent on this issue, having used the programme himself for his businesses, as he has said. But he has sided with the hawks, such as senior adviser Stephen Miller, and under his “Buy American, Hire American” policy the department of homeland security has curtailed the programme through a string of executive
decisions without touching the annual intake. H-1B seemed to have gone off the agenda — until now.
Jaishankar also focused on the welfare of Indian students, an issue that received a lot of attention some months ago when hundreds of them were left facing deportation for enrolling into a fake university launched by the department of homeland security to catch what they described as “pay-to-stay” scamsters.
The people familiar with Jaishankar’s discussions said no specific cases were discussed. But the University of Farmington case has annoyed Indian officials, who have argued this was a case of entrapment.