Donald Trump Announces New US H-1B Visa Rules: How Indian Techies Will Get Affected

The US government has announced it will tighten the requirements for the popular H-1B visa.

These visas, most often used by Indian and Chinese companies, are generally approved for a period of three years for a person, but many visa holders change employers to extend their US stay.

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The temporary visas are intended to allow US companies to use foreign workers to fill skills gaps. The visa programme has been widely used by Silicon Valley firms to bring in engineers and other skilled workers, many coming from India.

Trump admin says visa has been abused

But the Trump administration says the visa has been abused, often at the expense of American workers and that it will be announcing an ¡°interim final rule¡± which will ¡°strengthen¡± the non-immigrant work visa programme. The rule, to be implemented after a 60-day comment period, would also seek to require firms to make "real" offers to US residents before seeking to bring in foreigners and add new compliance mechanisms.

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The number game

According to US Department of Labor statistics, more than two-thirds of H-1B visa holders come from India, and more than 10% come from China. Up to 85,000 people are granted an H-1B visa each year, and about 5,00,000 people are currently living in the US under the same programme. 65,000 out of 85,000 are for people with specialty occupations, while the rest 20,000 are reserved for those foreign workers who have earned a masters or higher university degree in the US.

As many as 2,50,000 guest workers are seeking a green card in the US currently ¡ª about 2,00,000 of them on H-1B visas¡ªcould lose their legal status. Experts say thousands more including students, who are not seeking resident status may also be forced to return home.

What changes for you

As per the Department of Homeland Security, whose main job is to secure the US from the threats it faces, the H-1B work visa regime had over the years gone far beyond the mandate for which it was launched, often "to the detriment of US workers". Therefore, in order to bring back the integrity to the work visa regime, the new changes announced by the DHS would ensure that H-1B petitions are approved only for ¡°qualified beneficiaries and petitioners¡±.

Though the exact specifications of the change hasn't been announced by the DHS yet, it has specified that the new rule will narrow down the definition of what constitutes a ¡°specialty occupation¡±.

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This means that companies and agencies which hire workers on H-1B visas will have a tough time proving to the immigration agencies that such employees are not available from the domestic pool of US workers. It also means that Indian IT companies would either have to shell out more money to hire local talent or pay more to the existing H-1B work visa holders.

The second proposed change relates to companies allegedly making fictitious work offers to fictitious employees just to fulfil their quota of H-1B visa applications approved. The US administration has in the past alleged that both Indian and the US-based companies have often given H-1B work visa offers to foreign employees ¡°just on paper¡±, thereby allowing them to evade some part of taxes, while also undercutting the jobs for eligible US workers.

The third and final proposed rule change talks about better enforcement of the new H-1B norms which will be announced later.

It is also likely that the 65,000 visas issued every year would be brought down significantly.

What about old relaxations

Though the DHS has come out with a broad plan on what it intends to do to ¡°overhaul¡± the H-1B work visa regime, the final contours and exact changes are not known yet.