US SETS UP H-1B ROADBLOCK FOR TECHIES
Dr. Jai Maharaj
By Chidanand Rajghatta
Times News Network
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
Washington - The United States will
shut the door on foreign tech workers
- a majority of them from India -
early this election year amid a
growing debate on job loss and
outsourcing .
The US Citizenship and Immigration
Services (USCIS) has announced that
this year's cap of 65,000 H-1B guest-
worker visas is nearly two-thirds
taken within the first quarter of the
fiscal year, which began on October
1, 2003. Some 43,500 visas have
either been approved or are ''pending
in the queue for adjudication.''
This means that U.S embassies and
consulates across the world will not
be able to issue H-1B visas after
February or March, by which time the
full quota would have been reached,
till the new fiscal year 2005 begins
in October 2004.
This year's reduced quota of 65,000
is a sharp drop from the annual limit
of 195,000 that was in place for
2001, 2002 and 2003. Critics of the
program forced the administration and
the Congress to bring it back to the
pre-2001 quota of 65,000, saying the
higher quota was helping replace
American workers with immigrants.
The six-month shut-off period could
possibly help dampen criticism of the
Bush administration for the job loss
heading into the November election.
But industry experts say the squeeze
will hurt the United States and
American companies more countries
such as India, the highest recipient
of H-1B visas. US companies which
have already outsourced work to
Indian firms and which need Indian
techies for onsite work or
consultations in the U.S will find a
roadblock when the H1-B visa is
filled up.
One way Indian companies like Wipro
and Infosys --which win many of these
projects -- are beating the H1-B
roadblock is to apply for what is
called the L1 visa for short-term
consultants, a category on which
there is no limit. Wipro, for
instance, had 850 workers in the
United States on H-1B visas as
against 1,401 employees on L-1 visas
as of Sept. 30, 2003, according to a
filing with the SEC.
But the upshot of L1 is that the
United States is deprived of taxes
which the H1-B visa holders pay, not
to speak of their other contributions
to the United States when they live
here (L1's do not pay taxes).
Tax contributions by the vast army of
H1-B visa holders in the U.S,
numbering perhaps a million, fund the
social security system in a big way.
''Either way, Uncle Sam will be a
loser. This is absolutely the wrong
way to go about protecting the U.S
economy,'' says Andy Iyengar, CEO of
Sysfour Solutions, a New Jersey-based
IT services company.
Iyengar says big U.S companies which
have contracted work out to firms in
countries like India will be hard hit
when the H-1B quota fills up early.
''There will be projects that are
half complete and suddenly they
cannot bring in Indian techies. And
they cannot scrap the project
midway,'' explained Iyengar. ''If
they stop outsourcing, their costs go
up and they still end up laying off
people.''
More at:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-447545,curpg-2.cms
Jai Maharaj
Creator of newsgroups alt.jyotish, alt.language.hindi, alt.religion.hindu
http://www.mantra.com/jyotish
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