Bengaluru: The Bangalore Chamber of Industry and Commerce (BCIC) has welcomed the United States move to resume the processing of H1-B visas after a gap of five months. The processing of visas was suspended five months ago following a huge rush of applications for H1-B popular especially among Indian IT professionals.
Raju Bhatnagar, Secretary General, BCIC welcoming the mutually beneficial move said: “This one initiative sends the right signals to the Indian IT industry which saw a sudden downturn due this directive from the Trump administration. The revoking of the processing of H1B visas also reiterates the contribution of Indian IT sector to US companies and their economy in general.”
In the same vein, Bhatnagar also sounded a word of caution: “While Indian IT industry has acted responsibly, it is also a fact, that it has misused the H1-B facility. With the Trump Administration demonstrating an intent to crack down sharply on H1B Visa misuse, we hope, that the incidents of such misuse by Indian IT industry will be a matter of the past”.
In a major relief to Indian IT professionals, the US citizenship and immigration services (USCIS) said that it has resumed fast processing of H1-B visas subject to the fiscal year 2018 cap that has been set at 65,000.
Premium processing also resumed for the annual 20,000 additional petitions that are set aside to hire workers with a US higher educational degree.
The restructuring of H1-B programme was expected to severely impact Indian professionals especially employed in I-T majors. The scheme allowed employers to procure highly skilled non-immigrant workers from other nations, at wages lower than what they are obliged to pay to the American employee.
The H1-B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise.
