Thread: India Complains: H-1B visa shortage again

H-1B visa shortage again
25 Feb 2008, 0055 hrs IST,Sujit John & Mini Joseph Tejaswi ,TNN

BANGALORE, INDIA: Despite evidence of an impending recession in the US, there is expected to be a severe shortage once again of US visas for Indian IT professionals in the coming year.

April 1 is the date to begin filing H-1B cases (for entry into the US from October 1), and IT companies are already scurrying to put together all documents in the expectation that the entire H-1B quota will be exhausted on the very first day, as it did last year.

"The visa scenario is going to impact the industry adversely, says Ravi Prasad, resident partner and immigration expert in legal firm Jay Sagar Associates.

"The business volumes have gone up significantly, but the quota remains the same. This is going to be a major deterrent for the industry, as it’s tough to convince and retain clients without having some amount of physical support/presence at the clients’ premises," Prasad adds

For the 58,200 H-1B quota, the US received 1,20,000 petitions on April 2, 2007, the first day the quota opened last year.

"Short of a miracle, we expect the same to happen this year, says Navneet S Chugh, attorney in The Chugh Firm.

"We can also reasonably expect that, like last year, this year there will be a lottery system to pick petitions for approval. So expect somewhere between 40 per cent to 50 per cent of a company’s filed petitions on April 1 to get approved.

It was widely expected last year that the US Congress would increase the H-1B quota to over a lakh. But that didn’t happen.

Several immigration bills have failed in the US House as well as the Senate. And now with the presidential election primaries underway, nobody expects US President George Bush or his Republican government to take up the matter.

Meanwhile, the demand for IT services has not faced a significant cut yet. So a visa shortage is inevitable.

"To overcome this problem, domestic companies are currently busy checking out alternative options like L visa (meant for intra-company transfer), J visa (for specialists/domain experts) and B (business) category visas, says Prasad.
Indians were 34,000 of the 58,200 H-1B recipients last year.

"We expect the number to go up slightly this year, Chugh says.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Busi ... 810583.cms

Indians are the fastest-growing group of illegal immigrants in the United States, stated a Department of homeland Security report in February 2008. The report says there are 2,70,000 unauthorized Indians in the United States - a 125 percent jump since 2000, the largest percentage increase of any nation with more than 100,000 illegal immigrants in that country. The report says though the number of Indian immigrants is low when compared to people from Mexico, the Indian context is appalling as the illegal immigrants mostly consist high-skilled workers. Illegal immigrants from other countries are mostly low-skilled workers. If the trend continues India will only trail only Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala in illegal immigration. The report quoting experts says virtually all immigrants enter the US legally and then violate the visa terms, thus becomimg illegal immigrants. "They come here as professionals, most often in the H-1B program, and given the fluctuations of Silicon Valley, the business climate, these guys lose their jobs. They get laid off or they wager their hands on a start-up coming in."

"The problem with the H-1B program is, you can't have any significant time between jobs" without falling out of legal status. “Indians made up 44 percent of H-1B applicants in the 2005-06 fiscal year, five times the number from second-place China, the report says. The report says another source is relatives from India who arrive for a visit on a tourist visa and never go home. http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/feb/19us.htm
Jeffrey Passel of the Pew Hispanic Trust estimates that the number of “illegal Indiansâ€

Always remember one thing:

"There is nothing more permanent than a temporary (guest) worker program."
TRANSLATION: The programs never cease and the "temporary/guest" workers never leave.

Must remind india and the US companys who violate law by not looking and even deliberate shutting out of US workers that our economy is down and unemployment is up.The governmnet clains 6% unemployment.This not only is 18 million which is larger than some US states,but it does not include those not filing foe un-employment,self employed and the under-employed -These are good paying jobs,some with insurance,etc.If you think business outsource to india,etc now ,wait till obama or hillary is president with thier requirements for business to provide all insurance.Your telephone operators,all customer service,ordering over the phone will be done overseas.

BANGALORE, INDIA: Despite evidence of an impending recession in the US, there is expected to be a severe shortage once again of US visas for Indian IT professionals in the coming year.

I wonder what "impending recession means to these people!

(Despite) hellloooo is anyone home in that brain there..."Impending recession".....but lets hurry up and get more H1B visa so we can put a little more hurt on Americans

Excuse me is there anyone out there that care's about what is happening to Americans! I don't think so.

The L-1 Visa Scam

The L-1 visa was designed to permit foreign companies to bring their citizens into America to work in those companies’ American offices (a reasonable objective). However, some clever (criminal?) immigration attorneys firgured out a way to use L-1 visas as they were never intended to be used. Some companies (particularly Indian IT companies) use L-1 visas to emigrate workers to their “officesâ€

Originally Posted by SOSADFORUS

BANGALORE, INDIA: Despite evidence of an impending recession in the US, there is expected to be a severe shortage once again of US visas for Indian IT professionals in the coming year.

I wonder what "impending recession means to these people!

(Despite) hellloooo is anyone home in that brain there..."Impending recession".....but lets hurry up and get more H1B visa so we can put a little more hurt on Americans

Excuse me is there anyone out there that care's about what is happening to Americans! I don't think so.

I started researching the H1-B tragedy in 2003. This is old news to me. What the Indian computer industry refers to as a "recession" is the desire on the part of American citizens to keep their jobs. Many Indians come from a Brahmin class and like to believe that American citizens, especially white males, are beneath them. Many of them believe themselves to be genetically superior to White Anglo-saxon working peoples, so they spread the racist philosophy that allowing white americans to keep their computer jobs and not replace them with Indians will cause the economy to get worse.

This is, of course, psychotic in the extreme, but George Bush and his fellow anti-Americans cowtow to the Indian government by pretending to believe in this hateful philosophy so that India will send cheap replacements for American workers.

What makes this so disturbed, though, is that Indians need to come to the US and get trained by American citizens before they can take these jobs.

If Indians were so superior to begin with, why did they require training from Americans?

Those not directly affected may find the hostility hard to believe, but here is only one (of the hundreds) of the examples of this attitude towards America and Americans that I have seen: http://www.computerworld.com/comments/n ... ment-40951

Some of them really believe that they are responsible for America's technology greatness and that we should be grateful to them for taking our jobs.

Not enough ways to go legally....we already know 800 MILLION are waiting.


Waiting for WHAT? Jobs....we have none....countries money...we are broke. Room? Heck...we can't grow food in concrete jungles and housing complexes.



I'm ready to spit bullits.....we were the industry capitol....cause of the "global freeze:....we shifted business to China....built on every scrap of land and now we have a "new"
problem?

Originally Posted by BetsyRoss

Those not directly affected may find the hostility hard to believe, but here is only one (of the hundreds) of the examples of this attitude towards America and Americans that I have seen: http://www.computerworld.com/comments/n ... ment-40951

Some of them really believe that they are responsible for America's technology greatness and that we should be grateful to them for taking our jobs.

Can we say delusional much? You would think that the US was built on the backs and by ingenuity and would not exist if not for foreign aliens. If they are so resourceful, why are their homelands still 3rd world caliber and they have to leave them just to put food on their tables?