KOCHI: US presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy’s recent remark that he would ‘gut’ H-1B visas if he were to come to power has raised concerns among visa seekers. It has also turned the spotlight on the problems associated with the non-immigrant American work visa programme, one of the most sought-after by highly skilled professionals from India.
“The lottery system needs to be replaced by actual meritocratic admission. It’s a form of indentured servitude that only accrues to the benefit of the company that sponsored an H-1B immigrant. I’ll gut it,” US-based news portal Politico quoted Ramaswamy as saying. In another interview to Fox News, he said only those having the civic skills to be US citizens – not just technical skills – should be given these coveted work visas.
The H-1B visa scheme as it stands today is indeed mired. But not in the way the businessman-turned-politician described it. There is a dire need to increase the annual cap of work visa issuances, which currently stands at 85,000. The demand for H1-B visa, which offers the path to Permanent Resident Card, is so high that lakhs of applications are filed every year and add to the huge backlog from previous years.
For instance, for fiscal year 2024 alone, US businesses submitted as many as 7,80,884 applications. To deal with such a high number of visa seekers, the US government adopts a lottery system to decide who all get the visas.
The lottery system is by no means perfect. Selection in the lottery does not mean the visa is guaranteed. This year, for example, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USIS) conducted two rounds of lottery. The second round was necessitated after the agency found ineligible applications were wrongly selected. The very nature of the selection process makes luck, rather than pure merit, the deciding factor. Ramaswamy says the visa is “bad for everyone involved”.
But that’s stretching it a bit too far. American companies need highly qualified professionals in large numbers, whereas there is an acute shortage of candidates with the relevant qualification and skill sets in the US.
This makes these companies scout for talent from countries like India but they need to rely on the H-1B visa to hire professionals from abroad. It also works for the professionals because they get far better pay in the US, can bring in their spouse and children, and enjoy the social status and comforts of living in a Western country.
Politics vs business
Ramaswamy has a habit of making bombastic statements to constantly remain in the news and win the popularity charts. Before taking to politics, he was a businessman who had no qualms in using the very H1-B visas he now threatens to abolish. His pharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences used non-immigrant work visas as many as 29 times from 2018 through 2023. And so, his claim that he will bring in a ‘meritocratic’ visa regime in place of H-1B needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Obviously, the politician does not mean to increase the intake of foreign workers: he wants to cut down on the number of visas given out so that there are more jobs up for grabs for Americans. That’s the message he wants to send to his potential supporters.
Whipping up nationalist sentiments for electoral gains is a tried and tested strategy. Former US president Donald Trump had also taken a hardline stance on H-1B workers and made very provocative speeches against the system that supports foreign professionals to flourish in the US.
In 2017, he introduced some rules that made it harder for American companies to hire qualified foreign workers. These included stricter wage requirements and increased scrutiny of visa applications, resulting in withholding of applications and a higher number of rejections.
An entrepreneur like Ramaswamy, Trump had also hired a number of foreign workers under the H-1B visas for his various businesses. But after becoming president, the Republican leader trained his guns on the non-immigrant visa programme to appeal to his nationalist supporters.
“Right now, H1-B visas are awarded in a totally random lottery—and that’s wrong. Instead, they should be given to the most-skilled and highest-paid applicants, and they should never, ever be used to replace Americans,” Trump had said after signing the ‘Buy American, Hire American’ executive order in July 2017.
In June 2020, the Trump administration went a step ahead and temporarily suspended the H-1B visa programme, citing its impact on the US job market which was badly hit by the Covid pandemic. But more than the pandemic, the harsh decision was influenced by the fact that it was in election year and Trump was seeking a second term as US president.
The suspension of the H1-B visa programme deprived thousands of foreign workers of the opportunity to work in the US, leaving those vacancies open to native Americans—a factor Trump hoped would help him come back as president. The visa crisis ended only when his successor Joe Biden let Trump’s proclamation lapse in March 2021.
Always under scrutiny
By definition, H-1B is a non-immigrant visa that allows US-based companies and other employers to hire professionals from other countries in specialty occasions that require theoretical or technical knowhow. These specialty occupations are spread across various fields including architecture, engineering, mathematics, physical sciences, social sciences, medicine and health, education, business specialties, accounting, law, theology, and the arts.
The H-1B visa is usually issued for three years, which can be renewed for another three years. After the maximum period of six years, one has to leave the US and stay out for at least one year. After that, a fresh application can be moved for the whole process to start all over again. If they win the H-1B visa lottery again, they can come back to the US to pursue their career. Most people initiate the process to apply for permanent residence soon after they land in the US because there is no guarantee that they’ll get the H1-B visa again.
Of the 85,000 H-1B visas that the US government issues every year, 65,000 visas are open to foreigners who have a valid job offer from a US-based company and hold a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent in the field of employment. Another 20,000 visas are reserved for those with advanced degrees (Master’s or higher degrees) obtained from US institutes of higher learning.
However, the visa cap will not apply if the employer sponsoring an applicant is an institution of higher education, a nonprofit organisation connected to such an institute, or a government research organisation.
The visa is very popular among Indian IT professionals, who have been the largest recipients of H-1Bs in recent years. According to estimates, roughly 75% of the visas given away every year go to Indian professionals. Therefore, any change in visa rule will affect hundreds of thousands of Indians. Because of its nature and potential to impact the job market, the visa programme is always under scrutiny and subject to debate.
Need for more
Critics of the programme claim it’s not always the brightest and the best who get H-1Bs; they argue that outsourcing firms abuse the visa provision to bring in low-skilled workers at lower wages, who end up displacing American workers who would have been hired at higher pay. It is this notion that politicians like Ramaswamy and Trump are trying to cash in on.
But others point out that skilled workers from other countries contribute immensely to the US economy and, in fact, create job opportunities for native Americans. According to the American Immigration Council, a Washington-based advocacy group, unemployment rates are relatively low in occupations that employ large numbers of H-1B workers. It points out that the visa holders and native workers don’t compete for the same set of jobs because their skill sets are different.
“They complement each other in the labour market rather than compete for the exact same jobs. Second, immigrant workers spend and invest their wages in the US economy, which increases consumer demand and creates new jobs. Third, businesses respond to the presence of immigrant workers and consumers by expanding their operations in the United States rather than searching for new opportunities overseas,” it argues.
Indian-American Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, one of the vocal proponents of the work visa programme, had in July introduced a bill to double the number of H-1B visas available annually from 65,000 to 1,30,000. “We have had the same cap of a very limited 65,000 people for 33 years, and that needs to increase. It needs to double,” he had said while introducing his bill.
Silicon Valley tech giants are also batting for a higher intake of top talent under the H-1B programme. Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Salesforce are reportedly lobbying the Biden administration to increase the number of foreign workers allowed in the US. Ramaswamy’s outrageous call to scrap the non-immigrant visa regime altogether may remain a non-starter till he gets ahead in his race to become the Republican party’s presidential nominee, but H-1B visas will continue to be under the lens as the fight for quality jobs is only going to intensify.