NRIs worry as US plans more work visas

NRIs worry as US plans more work visas
CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA

WASHINGTON, MAY 13: President Clinton's proposal on Thursday to increase visa quotas for high-skilled workers to more than 200,000 per year for meeting the needs of a booming new American economy was greeted differently across work groups and countries: whoops of delight among US-headed aspirants and body shoppers in countries like India, which typically snags about 50 per cent of these visas. And groans of dismay among the many skilled workers already in the US who face greater competition and a bottleneck in the next stage of their visa-centric lives -- securing the coveted Green Card.

Sitting in his cubicle in a chip-making company in Santa Clara in Silicon Valley, Srinivasa Raghavan let out an anguished moan when he heard the news. Raghavan (not his real name) came here two years ago on an H1-B visa that allows skilled foreign workers into the US for six years maximum. Typically, companies that employ such workers and want to keep them longer apply for a Green Card on their behalf.

But during that process, which could take years because of the already existing bottleneck, the workers are tied to that company. ``Some of us are trapped in ordinary, low-paying jobs at a time when the economy is booming and companies are paying a king's ransom for good minds. The influx will slow down the Green Card process even further,'' Raghavan lamented.

However, some of the better high-tech firms are trying to ease the waiting pains of H1-B workers by offering them stock options that typically have a vesting period of four years. That makes the Green Card waiting period more bearable, although according to some workers, the downturn in the stock market is making that bonanza questionable.

The groups that are most delighted over the hike in quota are US companies suffering from a terrible shortage of high-skilled workers -- and the workers themselves in countries like India lining up to come to the US. Although the Clinton Administration last year increased the H1-B quota from the legislated 65,000 per year to nearly 107,500, the quota ran out as early as March this year, six months before the schedule for the new quota to kick in.

Thousands of aspirants in India who already have been contracted for jobs are waiting for the H1-B visa window to re-open in August or September. Some Indian companies that have begun to move their operations to the US or opened subsidiary offices are most stung by the shortage. The Bangalore-based Graycell Technologies, which has transformed itself into a Silicon Valley start-up called Unimobile, uses expensive business visas to shuttle its employees to and fro -- a great handicap at a time when speed is everything.

Under the proposal President Clinton sent to the Congress on Thursday, Congress can raise the H1-B cap to 200,000 per year for the next three years. But to counter critics who say the foreign flooding will dampen efforts to draft Americans for the many vacant jobs, the administration also proposes to raise the H1-B visa fees from the current $ 500 to $ 2000 (and $ 3000 for companies where the foreign workforce exceeds 15 per cent). Clinton has promised that the money will be used to provide computer education to Americans.

Typically, big corporations like Microsoft, Oracle, Intel and Cisco have more than that proportion of foreign workers. The raise in fee is no problem...the shortage is so bad that companies will pay anything, says Anantha Krishna, an Indian engineer who manages medical data bases at the National Institute of Health in Maryland.

Both Democrats and Republicans are bringing in a raft of legislation on thesubject with an eye on their constituencies. At the same time they are trying to please the increasingly influential high-tech businesses that are putting pressure on them to allow more foreign workers.

Some Democratic lawmakers have now proposed legislation to allow H1-B workers to remain in this country if they have even just applied for Green Cards (as things are, they have to go out of the country if their clock has run out). Republican legislators are pushing for legislation that will force companies to pay as much to foreign workers as they would to American workers, thus undermining the basic principle of body shopping that many firms thrive on -- cut-rate salaries.

Lobbying groups for US high-tech corporations actually want the H1-B caps tobe completely eliminated, so severe is the shortage. Now that Europe too has begun to compete for the pool, the shortage will be aggravated, they say. The American labour union behemoth AFL-CIO is opposing the move, saying there is no credible evidence of high-tech worker shortage.