Washington: A legislation has been introduced in the US House of Representatives which, among other things, calls for more than doubling the minimum salary of H-1B visa holders to $130,000, making it difficult for firms to use the programme to replace American employees with foreign workers, including from India.
- H-1B visas are intended for foreign nationals in "specialty" occupations that generally require higher education
- It includes, but is not limited to, scientists, engineers or computer programmers. The government awards 65,000 every year
- Indians receive nearly 70% of all H-1B visas issued worldwide
- In the American fiscal year 2015 (October 1, 2014 to September 30, 2015), more than 110,000 H-1B visas were issued to Indian citizens.
- In 2016, there were 236,000 applications for just 65,000 available visas, which means only 27.5% of the applicants were lucky
- Industry estimates put the total number of Indian engineers on H-1B visas in the US at up to 350,000
- The H-1B visa program tends to be more critical to outsourcing firms than US tech firms. For instance, more than 60 percent of the US employees of Infosys are H-1B holders, and the company in its annual report has cited an increase in visa costs as among factors that could hurt its profitability
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