WASHINGTON: A bill introduced last week in the House of Representatives here seeks to severely limit the number of highly-skilled foreign workers that US-based companies can hire at any given time.
The bill proposes to prohibit companies that employ more than 50 people, and half of whom are foreign workers on H-1B and L-1 visas, from hiring any more under these visa programmes.
If enacted, this bill will significantly impact heavy users of these foreign visa programmes in the US, which includes Indian IT majors such as TCS, Infosys, Wipro and Tech Mahindra.
But the bill, introduced in the House last Thursday by congress members Democrat Bill Pascrell and Republican Dana Rohrabacher, has along way to go before it becomes law.
It must first pass the House, then the senate — both already have some bills on H-1B pending consideration — before it reaches the president’s table for being signed into law.
The US grants 65,000 H-1B visas annually to highly skilled foreign workers temporary hired abroad, and 20,000 more to foreigners enrolled in US colleges and universities.
{{/usCountry}}The US grants 65,000 H-1B visas annually to highly skilled foreign workers temporary hired abroad, and 20,000 more to foreigners enrolled in US colleges and universities.
{{/usCountry}}But there is no cap on L-1 visas that allow US-based companies to bring skilled foreign workers on temporary transfer from heir overseas units, subsidiaries and facilities.
There have been growing concerns in recent years about the use of these visas by some companies to displace local Americans and with foreign workers, many from India.
The top 10 recipients of H-1B visas in 2014, according to a US labour department report, included Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys.
Partly because of these concerns, the US recently levied an additional fee of $4,000 for each H-1B application from employers with more than 50 people, if half of those are on H-1B.
Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has sought to tap into these concerns, but has ended up confusing people on both side of the issue with his many flips-flops.
He first vowed to “end forever the use of the H-1B” and then declared his support for it saying “I’m changing. I’m changing. We need highly-skilled people”.
He told a TV interviewer: “They go to Harvard, they are first in their class and they’re from India. They go back to India and they set up companies and they make a fortune…”
That is the position he has held on to since.
His rival, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton supported lifting the cap in 2007, but has gone on to join those expressing concerns about outsourcing eating up jobs.
Critics of the programme include Republican senator Jeff Sessions, who heads Trump’s foreign policy shop and is an outspoken opponent of the H -1B visa programme.
Others, however, have proposed to raise the cap. The senate passed a bipartisan immigration reform bill in 2013 that proposed to lift the cap first to 115,000 and then to 180,000, in phases.
The US chamber of commerce said in 2015 the country’s GDP will grow by “$22 billion if the H-1B programme is expanded, with more than $158 billion expansion over 30 years”.