Increase in US visa fee a non tariff barrier on India: Nirmala Sitharaman

Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman today said that by increasing the visa fee for technology workers "ridiculously so high" the US is imposing a non tariff barrier on India. She said that while we are not against paying visa fees, the cost cannot be so high that it deters people from obtaining the visa.

"I have myself taken this up with the US trade representative Mr Michael Forman. We have spoken to various Congressmen. We have said that this is a non tariff barrier you are imposing on us," Sitharaman said, while addressing an audience at the Invest Karnataka event in Bengaluru on Thursday.

In December, the US hiked fees for the popular H-1B and L-1 visas by $4,000 in addition to demanding an additional $4,500 from those applying for L-1A and L-1B visas. The US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) said the additional fees would apply to companies that employ over 50 people in the US, out of which 50 per cent were non-immigrants.

The increase in US visa fees is estimated to cost the Indian Information Technology (IT) sector an additional $400 million each year, adversely hurting their bottomlines. Industry estimates say that large IT companies such as TCS, Cognizant, Infosys and Wipro get close to 15,000 to 20,000 visas every year.

"At the moment, even as I say this, I know the visa fees of the United States for our IT specialists who are going over are now has manifold increased, much much against our appeals to them," added Sitharaman.

Apart from hiking visa fees, there's also an issue of totalisation, where Indian IT workers are asked to pay social security fees upon entering the country. This fee is however not returned, since the visas don't allow them to stay for more than seven years, whereas the clause to get the fee back is to live in the US for over 10 years.

Sitharaman assured the audience, which counted the presence of several of the top honchos of India's IT sector, that she was "fighting for our rights" and would not lose out.