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Business News/ Politics / News/  US Senate Bill seeks more restrictions on H-1B visas
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US Senate Bill seeks more restrictions on H-1B visas

US Senate Bill seeks more restrictions on H-1B visas

Standing firm: Nasscom president Som Mittal. Rajkumar / MintPremium

Standing firm: Nasscom president Som Mittal. Rajkumar / Mint

Hyderabad: The US Senate has introduced a draft legislation that seeks to add new curbs on H-1B and L-1 visas and prevent foreigners from replacing qualified US employees. If this passes into law, India’s large outsourcing industry is likely to be impacted.

The Bill seeks to prevent firms that have at least 50% of their employees on H-1B or L-1 visas from applying for more. The US operations of many Indian technology outsourcing firms have up to 90% of the employees on these visas.

Standing firm: Nasscom president Som Mittal. Rajkumar / Mint

Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, and Chuck Grassley, a Republican senator from Iowa, introduced the Bill on Thursday.

The Bill, if passed, would require employers who want to hire an H-1B visa holder to first make a “good-faith attempt" to recruit a qualified US worker. It also seeks to prohibit employers from using H-1B visa holders to “displace qualified American workers." It also seeks to allow the US department of labour to initiate investigations without a complaint and without the labour secretary’s personal authorization, review H-1B applications for fraud, conduct random audits of any firm that uses the H-1B programme, and conduct annual audits of firms who employ large numbers of H-1B workers.

The premise that the visa is used to displace US workers is misplaced, said Mittal, adding that Indian firms had been allocated only 12,000 H-1B visas in 2008, out of a total 85,000.

Nasscom, which has professional lobbying firms on its payroll in Washington DC, said it will “provide perspectives to the relevant lawmakers on the significant negative impact these unfair trade practices can have on the India-US trade partnership."

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Published: 24 Apr 2009, 10:09 PM IST
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