[For the new political order taking shape in Washington, however, H-1Bs aren’t quite welcome. Amid promises of sweeping changes to immigration policy, President-elect Donald Trump and his choice for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), have tabbed the program for a major overhaul, and might even scrap it altogether. In the House, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is on the same wavelength.]
By Max Bearak
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Uber CEO Travis Kalanick,
center, and K.T. Rama Rao, a state technology minister,
during the launch of
Uber's bike-sharing project in Hyderabad, India.
(Mahesh Kumar A./AP)
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HYDERABAD,
India — The ritual goes like
this: If you’re approaching the god Balaji with an appeal, walk in a circle
around the temple 11 times and leave an offering of tulsi leaves at his feet.
Should your wish be granted, come back and do it 108 times.
“We call him Visa Balaji,” said Madhu
Vadlamani, 25. “He is famous for granting visas.”
Vadlamani and her husband of just three days,
Revanth Chilakamarri, 29, were but two of thousands of worshipers orbiting the
“Visa Balaji” temple near here one recent morning. Years ago, the incarnation
of Vishnu had blessed them both with student visas to the United States. Though
they had grown up just seven lanes apart, they met in America and fell in love.
The two software developers had returned to
the temple that morning to appeal to Balaji, in hopes of renewing their
American sojourn with a new visa — the H-1B.
For the new political order taking shape in
Washington, however, H-1Bs aren’t quite welcome. Amid promises of sweeping
changes to immigration policy, President-elect Donald Trump and his choice for
attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), have tabbed the program for a
major overhaul, and might even scrap it altogether. In the House, Rep. Darrell
Issa (R-Calif.) is on the same wavelength.
The visas bring nearly 100,000 “highly
skilled” contract workers, mostly in tech and mostly from India, to the United
States every year. Most stay for multiple years, and some eventually get green
cards. According to federal guidelines, H-1Bs are intended to fill positions
for which American workers with the requisite skills can’t be found. Whether
the program always does that is intensely debated by industry lobbyists and
politicians, and companies are not legally required to ensure that result.
Trump has described H-1Bs as a “cheap labor
program” subject to “widespread, rampant” abuse. Sessions co-sponsored
legislation last year with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to effectively gut the
program; Issa, a congressman with Trump’s ear, released a statement Wednesday
saying he was reintroducing similar legislation called the Protect and Grow
American Jobs Act.
Sessions probably will give at least a
glimpse of his plans regarding the program at his confirmation hearing Tuesday.
Sessions and Issa’s legislation primarily
targets large outsourcing companies, such as Infosys and Tata Consultancy
Services, that receive the vast majority of H-1B visas and use them to deploy
workers to American companies seeking to cut costs. In 2015, the top 10
recipients of H-1B visas were outsourcing firms. As recently as 2013, the
Justice Department, which Sessions stands to take over, settled with Infosys
for $34 million in a visa fraud case.
“Logically speaking, I’m worried,” said
Vadlamani, who until recently worked for Deloitte in Orlando. “But being
Indian, I believe that if it is in my karma, then I will get the visa. If not,
there are more and more jobs these days at good companies here.”
But if Vadlamani is circumspect about her
prospects should the visa program be restricted, politicians and business
executives in her home town are bullish. Not only is employment booming in
Hyderabad, they say, but should the United States move against H-1Bs, their
economy stands to gain.
The H-1B program provides American companies
with cheap, temporary contractors who often work longer hours than Americans
and take on the monotonous programming jobs Americans scorn. Proponents of the
program argue that foreign workers increase innovation at American companies as
well as contribute to local economies. A few Indians who came on work visas
have even gone on to become heads of important American companies.
Meanwhile, India’s growth as a global tech
hub has been hampered as tens of thousands of workers have left.
Over the past decade, though, cities like
Hyderabad and Bangalore have slowly but surely gained prominence. At first,
Hyderabad was mostly a base for outsourcing companies servicing American clients,
but now it is home to the biggest offices of Apple, Google, Microsoft and
Facebook outside the United States. Amazon, Dell, Uber and others have major
operations there. All have huge campuses in a part of the city officially known
as Cyberabad.
Cyberabad’s existence is the result of
investments in education and infrastructure made by N. Chandrababu Naidu, the
chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, where Hyderabad was located until the state
was bifurcated in 2014. A network of dozens of information-technology
institutes trained a generation of engineers and software developers to work
back-end jobs for American companies.
For that generation, getting an H-1B was the
holy grail. Even though the work in America could be dull, being there provided
a chance to engage with an invigorating culture of innovation that just wasn’t
present in India yet. And of course, working abroad meant a huge increase in
income and prestige.
But the H-1B cap meant that the bulk of
Indian tech workers stayed back. The current cap — not just from India — is
65,000, plus another 20,000 who have graduated from American universities with
advanced degrees, down from almost double that at the beginning of the 2000s.
Among those who do get the visas, most
ultimately return to settle and work in India. In Hyderabad, many of those
returnees are confident that their city can compete with Silicon Valley for
India’s brightest young minds.
K.T. Rama Rao, the son of the current chief
minister, was one of them. Now he’s the minister for information technology in his
father’s government. He pointed to Apple as an example of how Hyderabad could
absorb the thousands of workers in a potential future with far fewer H-1Bs — or
without them altogether.
“Apple is already moving their maps division
here, and they’re doing that because we’re producing more G.I.S. talent than
anyone else in the world,” he claimed in an interview, referring to geographic
information systems. “Ideally, a president of the United States would have a
balanced perspective on business, but if he wants tech firms to stay, he should
create better job readiness in the U.S.”
Rao said that legislation targeting big
Indian outsourcing companies would wean them away from their dependency on
servicing American companies. Without the visa program, they would have to
engage in new lines of work that created value in Hyderabad and not abroad, he
said.
Amit Jain, now the president of Uber India,
is another returnee who used to be on an H-1B. He said that the influx of
American companies, as well as a growing indigenous start-up culture, could
offer what Indians used to seek in the United States closer to home.
“We definitely have a more robust ecosystem
here now,” he said. “We’re seeing plenty of hiring in the future.”