While Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on his visit to the US, this weekend he will be visiting Facebook Inc in Silicon Valley headquarters.
India is the only country which gets benefits from the H -1B visa program. This program allows skilled international workers to work at the US companies. Previous year, the third biggest economy of Asia accounted about two thirds of total 85,000 visas for skilled worker.
Meanwhile the technological companies are backing the efforts to increase the visa numbers, Donald Trump, Republican leader wants the visas harder to obtain. Previous month he proposed for increase in the pay for the employees who come on H-1B visas and also inserted the issue in the presidential campaign of the US as part of his larger plans to prevent illegal immigration.
If Donald Trump wins and he sticks to his ideas then India is going to lose most of it. Around 60% of the India’s software exports are made to the US. And part of this earning usually comes from the on site work.
According to an estimation done by the Researchers at Peterson Institute for International Economics, earnings that are generated through the Indian skilled visa workers are equal to the country’s total goods and services exports o to the US.
It will become a tragedy for us and for other countries if this issue becomes a sacrificial goat or punching bag in politics that also surround immigrations. Said R. Chandrashekhar, Head of Nasscomm, Indian trade group that represents companies like Infosys Ltd.
During Modi’s trip of West Coast on the 26th and 27th September, he plans to hold a Q&A session with the co-founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg and also plans to meet the executives at Apple Inc., Google Inc. and Tesla Motors Inc. During this visit he is also seeking the investment from the Fortune 500 companies into India and will also address the Indian audience in San Jose.
On Thursday in New York City, Modi also plans to meet with the executives at JP Morgan Chase & Co., Ford Motor Co and The Blackstone Group.
Meanwhile, Trump takes swipe at Zuckerberg in his proposal for immigration. He criticized a bill which was backed by Marco Rubio, fellow candidate in expanding H-1B visas.
For 100 H1-B workers, 183 jobs are created additionally for the workers who are US born, According to Todd Schulte, President, FWD.us.
It going to get hard to increase the number of visas for high skilled workers before the elections due to the proposal of Trump and its influence on others candidates. Said C.Fred Bergsten, emeritus director, Peterson Institute.
According to Vivek Wadhwa, Professor, Standford University, its very much likely that if Trump wins hes is going to do the tactical shift and he will be silent on his anti immigrant theory to favor skilled workers.
