{"id":32108,"date":"2018-10-29T12:38:38","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T07:08:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=32108"},"modified":"2018-10-29T12:38:38","modified_gmt":"2018-10-29T07:08:38","slug":"visa-heartache","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/visa-heartache\/","title":{"rendered":"Visa heartache"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/opinion\/editorial\/visa-heartache\/article22413877.ece\"><strong>Visa heartache<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Context<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The United States\u2019 H-1B visa has for decades been a source of nail-biting tension in India. The latest case in point was a scare that President Donald Trump\u2019s administration was toying with the idea of new regulations that would restrict extension of the visa by those awaiting a green card<\/p>\n<p><strong>Fears of Indians being deported from the U.S. over the H-1B visa may be alarmist<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Leaving aside technical reasons why such regulations may not take off, the contentious history of the H-1B visa should have given pause to alarmist claims between 500,000 and 750,000 Indians in the U.S. would have to \u201cself-deport\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>A Soft Target<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, given the number of times that protectionist rhetoric has identified this visa category as a soft target, and the relatively high frequency of spikes in political pressure to protect American jobs, one would expect a more nuanced reaction than unbridled panic<\/p>\n<p><strong>Attempts to tighten the visa norms<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In the past, even during the Obama administration, the bipartisan Comprehensive Immigration Reform plan called for the tightening of qualifying conditions for the H-1B visa<\/li>\n<li>As recently as 2017, four bills were tabled in the U.S<\/li>\n<li>Congress mooting new proposals to\u00a0clamp down on H-1B visas<\/li>\n<li>None came to fruition<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Executive Order: only modest changes<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The last salvo was Mr. Trump\u2019s executive order in April, which was accompanied by much fist-banging but ultimately only called for modest changes, mainly a multi-agency study on what reforms are required.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Visa, a pathway to permanent residency<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The apparently endless cycles of heartache over the H-1B visa stem from a fundamental reality: that the visa itself is designed to be a non-immigrant entry ticket into the U.S. economy, but over time it has metamorphosed into a virtual pathway to permanent residency and citizenship, particularly in the case of Indian nationals<\/p>\n<p><strong>The void is real<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The most important reason for this is that most of these \u201cspeciality occupation\u201d workers \u2014 primarily experts in fields such as IT, finance, accounting, and STEM subjects \u2014 fill a real void in the U.S. labour force<\/p>\n<p><strong>Giant tech firms rely on H-1B<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is not only Indian tech firms whose employees get awarded H-1B visas, but it is to a great extent a visa that Silicon Valley giants such as Microsoft, Intel, Amazon, Facebook and Qualcomm rely on for their staffing needs<\/p>\n<p><strong>Can\u2019t hurt these global tech leaders<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Thus, there is a self-limiting dimension to any reform that purports to slash H-1B allocations, so that no President or lawmaker would want to be seen as causing economic pain to the companies on whose coat-tails the U.S.\u2019s reputation as a global tech leader rides<\/p>\n<p><strong>Back Channel lobbying<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Indian policymakers, who appear to be aware of this subtle truth, should focus their efforts on quiet back-channel lobbying, and eschew knee-jerk reactions every time the \u201cBuy American, Hire American\u201d rhetoric echoes in Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Visa heartache Context The United States\u2019 H-1B visa has for decades been a source of nail-biting tension in India. The latest case in point was a scare that President Donald Trump\u2019s administration was toying with the idea of new regulations that would restrict extension of the visa by those awaiting a green card Fears of&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/visa-heartache\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Visa heartache<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704854781},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}