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Overseas Indians seek extension of deadline for H-1B workers

Special Correspondent

“They are given insufficient time to sell their homes, pack up and leave the country”

In some U.S. quarters H-1B is seen to have been misused
India can only find ways to divert its returning workforce to other nations

NEW DELHI: The External Affairs Ministry is deluged with representations from overseas Indian organisations seeking an extension of six months, against the 30-day deadline, to benched H-1B visa workers in the U.S., who are being forced to return home.

In letters to the External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, the organisations pointed out that the H-1B visa holders losing jobs are required to leave the U.S. within 30 days. Otherwise they become “out of status” or illegal residents.

The deadline does not give them sufficient time to sell their homes, pack up and leave the country. Children studying in schools will be forced to leave in the middle of the term. With market values already down by 30 to 40 per cent, those attempting distress sale of houses are being forced to accept heavy financial losses, according to B. R. Prasad of the New York-based Overseas Congress.

The situation is expected to become bleaker after the U.S. Congress passed a law barring companies from accepting federal bail-out if they employ H-1B visa workers above a certain percentage. It is unclear whether the H-1B visa holders can work for Indian companies subcontracting from a firm that has received a federal bail-out. In case this happens, more H-1B visas could be cancelled.

Officials here pointed out that there was nothing much the Ministry of External Affairs could do in view of the economic downturn and the rise of protectionist tendencies all over the world. In some U.S. quarters, especially among trade unions, the H-1B is seen to have been misused.

Instead of complementing the shortage of U.S. citizens for a particular job, visas are being used by Indian companies in the U.S. to recruit Indians at the expense of citizens of the land. This had been brought out for two consecutive years from the data released by the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services. In such a situation, India can only work out strategies to divert its returning workforce to other countries such as the European Union, they suggested.

Story so far

The H-1B visa was introduced in the 1990s owing to shortage of U.S. engineers in companies such as Microsoft and Yahoo.

For some years 1,15,000 foreign engineers were allowed annually before the U.S. settled for the 65,000 annual limit.

Initially, many of the engineers, overwhelmingly Indian, were absorbed by these U.S. companies and served the purpose for which the visa was designed – to maintain U.S. corporate edge by importing engineers in case of a shortfall.

However, as the officials pointed out, critics of the system in the current downturn got a boost when the date for 2007 and 2008 from the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services showed that most of those given visas were to Indians who entered the country to work for India-headquartered firms working for or in large U.S corporations.

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