Post facto thinking by US govt on border-visa Bill

The US government is checking suggestions that the border security Bill, recently enacted and signed into law by President Barack Obama, which could nearly double H1B and L1 visa fees for some Indian IT companies, may breach World trade Organisation (WTO) regulations.

US State Department spokesman P J Crowley said in his daily briefing on Monday, “Yes, we are reviewing a suggestion that this Bill is not WTO-compliant. I’m not aware that we’ve reached any final judgment, but we’re not sure that necessarily any WTO issues are triggered.”

He said the US administration would also be discussing the new law’s implications with Indian officials. “As we work to administer this law which Congress passed and the President signed, we will try to understand fully the potential impact that it has on individual companies in India,” said Crowley.

The Bill seeks to generate revenue for border security measures to combat illegal immigration into the US by raising visa fees on companies who have more than half their employees here on work visas.

The Indian government had already protested against the visa fee rise provision even before Obama signed the Bill. Commerce Minister Anand Sharma had written to US Trade Representative Ron Kirk, calling the Bill “highly discriminatory”.

Peter Morici, a professor at the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, and former Chief Economist at the US International Trade Commission, said it would be a stretch to call the Bill discriminatory if it did not single out any company or country, and that the Senate was probably “just looking for ways to raise money”.

While acknowledging the Bill itself did not explicitly target Indian companies, Bob Sakaniwa, associate director of advocacy at the American Immigration Lawyers Association in Washington DC, said the business model targeted would mainly affect Indian companies. Recalling the campaign against Japanese companies in the 1980s, Sakaniwa cautioned, “It’s dangerous to single out any group, company or country for blame, especially in a bad economy.”

The office of Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senator from the state of New York and who was a co-author of the Bill, had identified “Wipro, Tata, Infosys and Satyam” as some of the foreign-controlled companies that would be affected by the visa fee hike. Schumer said last Thursday: “It’s not four companies, but they are the major companies. They are misdirecting the purpose of the H1-B program...These companies recruit people only for the purposes of coming to America...recruiting them only for the purposes of lower cost.”

The admission by the US that it is still examining the implications of the new law will only confirm the suspicions of Indian business groups that the legislation was passed hastily. Kiran Pasricha, CII’s Deputy Director General in Arlington, Virginia, said, “Nobody has really thought this through. It moved way too fast and there was no time for an educated debate on the implications for US industry. At a time of fragile economic recovery in the US, this Bill will only help reduce the competitiveness of US businesses which rely on high-skilled workers from other countries.”

With Crowley stating on Monday, “Now we’re trying to understand its potential implications and we’ll work closely with India as we implement it,” the last word on the visa fee hike may not be out yet.