By Sujit Bhar

The H1B visa controversy in the US just won’t go away. Some days back, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts was sued by a section of its workers when the company laid off 30 of its technical workers and replaced them with Indian immigrant technicians. Not only that, the suit alleged that they were forced to do the “insulting” job of training the Indian techies before quitting.

The suit, filed in an Orlando federal court, alleged that their dismissal was “based solely on their national origin and race”, and that the Indians who replaced them were given “special treatment”.

Now, a bill asking for key changes in the H1B visa requirements has been re-introduced in the US Congress. This has been done at the initiative of two lawmakers who say these changes will stem the “abuse” of such visas.

On January 6, Republicans from California, Darrell Issa and Scott Peters, initiated the “Protect and Grow American Jobs Act” with eligibility changes.

The changes are mainly in raising the bar for entrants in this high-tech section. The minimum annual salary has been raised from US $ 60,000 to US $ 100,000, and there will be no Masters Degree exemption. This, the lawmakers said, will attract only those who will add to the US’ intellectual wealth.

While introducing the bill, Issa said: “In order for America to lead again, we need to ensure we can retain the world’s best and brightest talent. At the same time, we also need to make sure programmes are not abused to allow companies to outsource and hire cheap foreign labour from abroad to replace American workers. The legislation we’re introducing today does both. It will ensure that our valuable high-skilled immigration spots are used by companies when the positions cannot be filled by the existing workforce.”

However, if this is to rein in Indian IT companies from availing of top techies from wherever they wish, it might barely work. According to industry insiders, the cut-off today may be at US $ 60,000, but the techies employed are already being paid in the region of US $ 70-80,000. The Masters Degree requirement would also not be a major hurdle.

What would happen, though, is that more locals, including American talent, would get on the payroll.  The problem, however, is with the American educational system, which started the H1B process in the first place.  That system still does not produce enough high-skilled techies in different fields to take up jobs that require a high level of skill.

Of course, there is this complaint against Indian tech companies in the US that they circumvent these H1B eligibility criteria by bringing in full-fledged employees from India. This, probably, will also come under the control of the new, aggressive Trump administration.

Stocks tumble

Meanwhile, Indian stock markets reacted negatively to the “Protect and Grow American Jobs Act”, with stocks of all IT majors taking a hit.

The overall dip was 4 percent, with Infosys losing 2.5 per cent, TCS dipping by 2.18 per cent, which was also the level Wipro dipped on the Bombay Stock Exchange. These heavy stocks dragged the Sensex down 119.01 points to 26,759.23 at the end of trading day.

Smaller IT firms were also losers on January 7 trading and overall investor wealth worth Rs 22,000 crore in market valuation was wiped off.

According to some experts, this was possibly a speculative reaction and would not have any long-term effects on the companies’ valuation.

 Lead Picture: A bill asking for key changes in the H1B visa requirements has been re-introduced in the US Congress