India reaches out to US administration over visa restrictions

India has intensified its efforts to prevail over the US Congress not to limit visas for talented workers that might adversely affect its technology sector in which over 3.5 million people are employed. India’s commerce and industry minister, Nirmala Sitharaman was quoted by Reuters as telling it that their government urged the Donald Trump administration to emphasise the effect that India’s IT industry had over American citizens. She added that Indian investments in the world’s largest economy had created jobs for US citizens. The US administration must be made aware of the gravity of this fact. Indian IT companies such as Infosys, TCS and Wipro became prominent in the late 90s as they came to the aid of Western companies by getting rid of the ‘Y2K’ glitch. ‘America First’ campaign of Trump over jobs is making these companies apprehensive as this North American country is their biggest market. The US Congress had introduced a bill in January which has proposed to increase the minimum salary of holders of H1B visa by more than 100 percent, which would increase expenditures of these companies, whose margins are already declining, drastically. Earlier, the Indian government had supported the move of NASSCOM, India’s IT sector’s trade body, to try to influence US Congressmen to prevail over the administration to be lenient towards skilled techies entering the US on work visas. Sitharaman said that the centre would have to talk to the new administration, and added that they were engaging at every level continuously. Software exports from India to America increased over 10 percent to $37 billion in the FY2016 compared to the year earlier. In addition, Indians are the largest beneficiaries of the H1B visas, numbering 65,000, issued each year to new applicants as per the cap prescribed by the US Congress. If you are planning to travel to the US, contact Y-Axis, India’s most influential immigration consultancy company, to apply for a visa from one of its several offices located all over the country.