Will Trump-Sessions team cut down on USA H1-B guest worker visas? Indian software tech companies are heavy users of H1-B visas

Last updated on 22nd Nov. 2016

Tech Worker Visas Face Uncertain Future Under Trump, Sessions, http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/tech-worker-visas-face-uncertain-future-under-trump-sessions-n686631, Nov. 21st 2016

The article above describes possible challenges that Indian tech companies may face in getting H1-B visas for their tech workers to work in the USA, under a Trump administration with Senator Jeff Sessions as the Attorney-General.

The article states that 65,000 H1-B visas are issued every year by the USA to foreign workers (mostly or entirely through companies having those workers as its employees). Another 20,000 foreign graduate-student workers are also admitted to the USA per year under H1-B visa.

Sessions has long wanted to cut down on these visas, according to the article. It quotes Sessions as saying in February 2016, "Thousands of U.S. workers are being replaced by foreign labor".

The article mentions major Indian software consultancy firms, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys as heavy users of H1-B visas. The top ten H1-B visa recipients were all outsourcing firms in 2015, the report said. TCS topped the list with 8,333 H1-B visas.

Regular USA tech companies like Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Google also use H1-B visas. But they are ranked lower in usage of H1-B visas in 2015. Amazon used 826 visas and was ranked 12th highest user of these visas in 2015. Google ranked 14th, Microsoft 15th, Facebook 24th and Apple 34th in the list.

In this year (2016), the article states that companies filed 236,000 petitions for the 85,000 H1-B visas. The cap of 85,000 is set in USA law.
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An Indian correspondent wrote (and was OK with public sharing):
Each year, there will probably be more demand than H1B visas available but another factor is that the amount of straightforward maintenance kind of application will reduce in the future. This has been the mainstay of Indian software companies, whether onshore or offshore. New applications being made for digital transformation will not need this level of maintenance/application support: they are being produced in a short time using automated methods and changes will also be relatively quick.

Businesses like banking are also changing dramatically. Payment gateways will result in a transformation of retail banking and a lot of commercial banking will move to more specialised players. Traditional banking will become more of a background activity. So the massive, monolithic banking systems that have been developed and maintained by Indian companies will change in major ways and so will the support that they require.

It is not clear how Indian software companies will adapt to the new market but the big Indian players have all warned of flatter growth in the coming quarters. So far they have thrived on using mostly low wage employees with basic skills, leavened with a small number of people with good domain and software knowledge. That will not work in the future.

So perhaps a cutdown in H1B visas will be added stimulus for them to change the nature of their bread-and-butter work and find new avenues for software development and support.
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