As of September last year, there were an estimated 583,420 H-1B authorised work permit holders in the United States, according to data released by the US immigration agency in June. A Bloomberg analysis of the data showed that just about 2,000 H-1B visa holders were employed by federal agencies. Indian nationals account for over 70% of H-1B recipients, but they are increasingly being sent to work there by American technology companies such as Google and Apple. “It is hard to estimate the exact impact on the Indian IT sector as some of these could be subcontractors to firms retained by the federal agency,” said Poorvi Chothani, managing partner at immigration law firm LawQuest.
Sanjay Jalona, CEO of mid-sized IT firm LTI, said it has been hiring local employees in the US to service corporate clients and has reduced the number of people it sends onsite on work visas. Stocks of IT services companies HCL Technologies (1.96%) and Tech Mahindra (3.07%) ended the day in the red, on a day when the Sensex was up about 2%. HCL provides software and services to the US federal government through partner ImmixGroup. Tech Mahindra, too, works with certain federal agencies. IT industry body Nasscom said Trump’s order appeared to be based on “misinformation and misperceptions.” It said the order was an extension of Trump’s previous rulings on H-1B visas and a move that would hurt US recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
“This underscores, and sets a timeline for, the agencies to finalize and publish some of the regulatory measures that have been discussed by the Administration and mentioned again in the June Proclamation. These may include the changes to the definitions of “specialty occupation”, “employer”, and “employer-employee relationship”,” Nasscom said in a statement. The US has a huge shortage of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) skills, which are bridged by workers on non-immigrant visas like H-1B and L-1, it said, adding that there were over 625,000 job vacancy postings for common computer occupations in the country.