Table of Contents
What is a Visa?
- A visa is an official document that allows the bearer to legally enter a foreign country.
- The visa is usually stamped or glued into the bearer’s passport.
- There are several different types of visas, each of which afford the bearer different rights in the host country.
Types of U.S. Work Visas
- The US work Visa allows foreign nationals to work in the United States.
- There are various types of Visa issued by USA-H-1B and H-2B, H-4, J, and L visas.
- Non-Immigrant Visas.
What are H-1B, H-2B, L and other work visas?
- In order to fill a vacuum of in IT and other related domains,
- The US administration issues a certain number of visas each year which allows companies from outside the US to send employees to work on client sites.
- Lottery system
- Of these work visas, the H-1B remains the most popular among Indian IT companies.
- The US government has a cap of 85,000 total H-1B visas for each year.
- Of this, 65,000 H-1B visasare issued to highly skilled foreign workers.
- The rest 20,000 can be additionally allotted to highly skilled foreign workers who have a higher education or masters degree from an American university.
- Can stay for maximum of six years.
- Even though the H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa, it is one of the few US visa categories recognized as dual intent.
- It means that the H-1B visa holder can apply for and obtain a US Green Card while in the
- US on an H-1B visa.
- The US government also issues L1 visas which allows companies to transfer highly skilled workers to
- US for a period of up to seven years.
- H-2B visas allow food and agricultural workers to seek employment in the US.
What USA has done now?
- The US administration on Tuesday said it was extending the 60-day ban on immigration and non-immigrant worker visas till the end of 2020.
- Visas including the much-coveted H-1B and H-2B, and certain categories of H-4, J, and L visas shall remain suspended until December 31, the White House said in a press note.
Why did the US suspend non-immigrant worker visas?
- The technology boom coupled with the arrival of the internet and low-cost computers in developing nations such as India and China saw a large number of graduates willing to work at relatively low costs in the US,
- A win-win situation for both employer and the employee.
- However, it has since often been criticised for sending low cost workers to the US at the expense of domestic workers.
- In January 2017, after taking over as the president of the US, Trump had hinted that the low-cost workers were hampering the economy and undercutting jobs of citizens.
- Trump seized the opportunity provided by the economic contraction due to Covid-19 by first banning the entry of non-immigrant workers till June 23, and then extending it till December 31.
impact Indian IT companies?
- Indian IT companies are amongst the biggest beneficiaries of the US H-1B visa regime.
- As of April 1, 2020, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) had received about 5 lakh H-1B work visa applications, according to official data.
- Indians had applied for as many as 1.84 lakh or 67% of the total H-1B work visas for the current financial year ending March 2021.
- Apart from the suspension of these work visas, the executive order signed by Trump has also made sweeping changes to the H-1B work visa norms, which will no longer be decided by the currently prevalent lottery
- The new norms will now favour highly-skilled workers who are paid the highest wages by their respective companies.
- This could result in a significant impact on margins and worker wages of Indian IT companies which send thousands of low-cost employees to work on client sites in the US.
- Though the large Indian IT companies have cut down their dependency on H-1B and other worker visas by hiring as much as 50 per cent of staff locally, they still rely on these visas to keep costs in check.
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