What is New H-1B Visa Rules?

The new rules notified by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of Labor (DoL) for the H-1B visa regime, changes the definitions of specialty occupation, employer, & employee-employer relationship, and limits the validity of an H-1B visa to one year for a worker placed at a third-party worksite; it also increases enforcement and investigations for these visas. The new rules also changes the current four-tiered prevailing wage system for jobs that U.S. employers seek to fill with foreign workers. Both rules will be issued as Interim Final Rules (IFRs), without any notice period or right to comment.

How New H-1B Visa Rules effect India?

The new rules notified by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of Labor (DoL) for the H-1B visa regime, changes the definitions of specialty occupation, employer, & employee-employer relationship, and limits the validity of an H-1B visa to one year for a worker placed at a third-party worksite; it also increases enforcement and investigations for these visas. This will slowdown India's talent movement to US also the prospects of Indian IT majors building up their order books as they limp back through an economic recovery in India are, in the interim, likely to be seriously undermined by this move.

What is India's views on New H-1B Visa?

IT Industry body Nasscom said that the changes announced to the H-1B visa program will restrict access to talent and will harm the American economy, endanger U.S. jobs, put U.S. interests at risk, slowing down R&D into solutions to the COVID crisis. It is important for the U.S. market to be able to access skilled talent for its businesses, especially during the COVID recovery phase. IT further added that these regulations seem to be based on misinformation about the programme and runs counter-productive to their very objective of saving the American economy and jobs. The industry body stresses that this is particularly relevant at a time when U.S. businesses continues to face a huge deficit of STEM skills: overall U.S. unemployment rate grew from 4.1% in Jan-2020 to 8.4% in August-2020; while unemployment in computer occupations declined from 3% to 2.5% in this period.