H-1B visa overhauling: Majority of the employers say that IT would be the worst hit sector and Indian tech firms in the US would decrease hiring of Indian resources.
The H-1B program reforms would have a major impact on the hiring process of the Indian companies in the US, and the IT sector will be the worst hit, according to the TimesJobs survey released on Friday.
More than 800 employers were interviewed during the survey. Forty four percent of these respondents said that the “American tech firms will shift back jobs from India to US”, if the reforms kick-in.
And, the worst hit category within the IT industry would be IT services. The respondents were asked about the IT domain – IT consulting, IT services and Tech startups – that would take the biggest plunge. A whopping majority of 66 percent responded that the IT services category would suffer the most.
Furthermore, the respondents said this would lead the Indian tech firms in the US to hire lesser Indian resources. About 56 percent agreed that it would be detrimental for the Indian talent sources. Thirty-two percent said that it would help the American resources to make a comeback. However, 12 percent maintained that it would increase hiring of Indian resources.
A lot of speculations are being made on Trump’s course of action on the most popular work-visa program, the H-1B visas. While the Trump administration has stood on his poll planks to bring back jobs to America by introducing stricter rules on the H-1B visas, the opponents of the reforms argue that much of the flaws listed against the H-1B program are unfounded.
Representatives of the Indian government have been ensuring the Indian workforce that no drastic changes for the H-1B program are in sight. Several senior politicians, including India’s finance minister Arun Jaitley, have expressed that it does not make business sense for America to curtail the number of highly skilled foreign workers.
Another point of contention is whether the H-1B program should continue as lottery-system. Several lawmakers in the Trump administration have pushed for a merit-based process wherein a beneficiary would be weighed according to a point-based system similar to that of Canada.
(May 24: There was a spelling error in the story. The word “whopping” was incorrectly written as “whooping” in the previous version.)
3 Comments
The H1-B visa needs to be eliminated & the current H1-B holders need to be returned to their country of origin. For exceptional talent, the O-1 visa still exists.
Offshore Outsourcing companies have been using the H-1b visa to completely bypass the U.S. Free Labor market. Offshore Outsourcing companies just copy a business process and move it offshore, that’s just plain only business, nothing hi-tech about that anymore.
Incidentally, Offshore Outsourcing companies also complain that they can’t find any local workers, even after forcing better qualified, more experienced local workers to train their H-1b replacements.
The Offshore Outsourcing model can still continue, even without any visas, they just would have to actually consider hiring local workers to act as documentation and training personnel, think English majors. The Offshore Outsourcing companies can use the U.S. Free Labor market (you know Capitalism), same as any other ordinary business in Main St. USA. If that damages their business model, we can all sing a chorus of Goodbye for them.
The H-1b visa needs to go to companies that originate new technology, create jobs in the United States, are actually trying to hire Americans, and that sponsor people for Green Cards and citizenship. There are more than enough (non-Outsourcing) companies to do this right now, and giving H-1b visas to Offshore Outsourcing companies is basically an insane waste of U.S. taxpayer borrowed dollars.
Good news!