Indian businesses want action on H-1B visas

Alumni of a major Indian university want the U.S. Congress to take separate action to pass H-1B visa legislation that went down with the immigration reform bill that failed in Congress last week.

Members of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) alumni association, meeting for a three-day conference in Santa Clara, Calif., said Friday that they are hoping to get a separate vote on an immigration bill provision that would increase the number of visas granted to highly skilled engineers coming from abroad to work at U.S. technology companies.

“Almost as soon as the bill died, there was talk of piecemeal moves to get parts of that bill passed,” said Umang Gupta, chairman and CEO of Keynote Systems, a company that measures the technical performance of Web sites. He’s also chairman of the board of PAN IIT, the alumni group hosting the conference, which has drawn close to 4,000 people.

The legislation would increase the limit of H-1B visas to be granted every year to 115,000 from 65,000 today. Backers say the extra visas are needed because there aren’t enough qualified U.S. engineers to do the work U.S. companies need done. Opponents say the visas just make it possible for U.S. companies to hire foreigners at lower wages than they would have to pay U.S. hires.

The legislation would also continue to allow 20,000 visas per year to applicants who have advanced degrees from U.S. colleges and universities.

Today, about half of the graduates of U.S. engineering schools are non-Americans, many of whom have to return to their home countries to find work when they should be allowed to work here and contribute to U.S. economic growth, said Pradeep Khosla, dean of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania.

“The day this country limits the free flow of skilled immigrants coming into this country, that’s the day we start going downhill,” said Khosla.

Another IIT alum, Yogen Dalal, managing director at Mayfield Fund, a venture capital firm, noted that in the early 1990s, some in Silicon Valley thought they would be overcome by the Japanese. But the success of valley companies such as Google and Apple, which introduced its iPhone a week ago, shows it remains a center for innovation.

“Wealth is being created by innovation right here in [Silicon Valley]. Economic value is being created here. The work force is just being redistributed,” Dalal said.

The H1-B discussion is happening against the backdrop of the loss of thousands of jobs in recent years, particularly in Silicon Valley, as companies outsourced work to lower-wage markets in countries such as India. But as more work is done in India, wage inflation has begun to narrow the pay gap between India and the United States. And in some cases, Indian companies have begun moving jobs to the United States, said Arjun Malhotra, chairman and CEO of Headstrong, an outsourcing consulting firm.

“If you look at the issue today, it’s not outsourcing, it’s global sourcing. You go to wherever the best resources are available to do that job,” said Malhotra.

The Indian Institute of Technology was created in 1950, three years after India gained its independence from Great Britain. It has about 100,000 alumni, 25,000 of whom live and work in the United States.