New visa laws can pin down IT talent

WASHINGTON, DC: The H-1B and L-1 Visa Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act of 2007 introduced in the US Senate has been attracting attention for all the wrong reasons, but a recent compromise bipartisan bill introduced by Senators Edward Kennedy and Jon Kyl, which struck out certain clauses Indian Americans and US IT companies were opposed to, has still not resolved the dispute. Indian American business organisations now claim that certain provisions of the new compromise bill could spell the death knell for IT companies dependent of H-1B and L-1 talent.

The Washington-headquartered US-India Business Alliance along with India’s apex IT body Nasscom met Senators Dick Durbin and Chuck Grassley, the original sponsors of the controversial bill, to resolve the outstanding issues. USIBA President Sanjay Puri said that US IT companies are not opposed to the fundamental tenet of the bill, which is prevention of fraud by certain employers while hiring H-1B and L-1 talent.

Puri’s bone of contention, however, is a clause that prohibits US companies from hiring H-1B visa holders if they employ more than 50 people and also restrict their total H-1B hires to less than 50 per cent of the company size. “If this clause is present in the final legislation, several IT companies will be forced to close down,” he said. “H-1B and L-1 visa holders are employed to fill the technical skills gap in companies, not to downsize American workers. This requirement would pin down employers who will have nowhere to turn to hire the right talent.”

He is working closely along with the US business community to engage the US Senate in a win-win formula discussion. Fortunately for India’s technical talent visa aspirants, some of the other contentious clauses of the original Durbin-Grassley bill have been struck out in the Kennedy-Kyl compromise.

Indian companies wanting to transfer employees en masse to their US subsidiaries using the L-1 visa can, for instance, continue to apply for “blanket petitions” instead of the individual petition requirement in the original bill. Another clause that required an employer wanting to submit an H-1B application to first advertise the job opening for 30 days on a Department of Labour (DOL) website, has been struck out.

“We are confident the US Senate would pass legislation that works for the benefit of American business by allowing companies to hire the right talent,” Puri said. “We are hoping for a win-win arrangement.”