Fear of tighter US visa regulations keeps temples, consultancies busy

As the White House signals it might become harder for Indians to legally live and work in the United States, business is booming for those who provide support services to secure the US visa. These range from coaching centres that prep potential long-term visitors in English language proficiency to temples that provide divine intervention.

 

Footfalls at the Shree Siddhi Peeth Chamatkari Hanuman Mandir in New Delhi’s Neb Sarai have increased, especially since January 20, when Donald Trump was sworn in as US president. Hanuman, the ultimate world traveller —  after all, he travelled to a foreign country with no documents to speak of — is the visa-seeker’s ishta devata (patron saint). 

 

This temple doesn’t ask for a lot: Merely that you come to the temple to present your passport at Hanuman’s feet (you can take it back with you immediately) and drop an application written in red ink in a box; recite the Hanuman Chalisa for 41 days; and surrender before the deity, giving up meat, garlic and alcohol. And when you get your visa, register the receipt, also in red ink, in a notebook kept there for giving thanks.

 

As the US gets tougher with visas, the prayers of US-bound devotees in India are getting more fervent, and their purse strings looser. Called Visa Hanuman temples (there are half a dozen all over India), some of them ask for a ‘fee’. But this is small beer compared to the crores Indians shell out every year for a long-term American visa. 

 

For many consultancies, and temples, this is solid revenue flow, especially in the current climate of uncertainty and fear of rejection.

 

Misplaced concern?

 

US-India Strategic Partnership Forum President and CEO Mukesh Aghi scoffs at this. “That fewer H-1B visas will be issued by the US after President Trump took office is just a rumour,” he says. He concedes that Trump’s first term saw record high H-1B denial rates. Senior adviser (now Trump’s chief of staff) Stephen Miller introduced policies that increased scrutiny of H-1B applications, leading to a 24 per cent rejection rate in 2018. This was significantly higher than the 2-4 per cent rejection rate under President Joe Biden

 

However, Aghi says this time there is a difference. “Donald Trump owes his victory in 2024, at least in part, to Elon Musk and other tech supporters who favour admitting more high-skilled foreign nationals and oppose government overregulation of businesses,” he says. “For every 10 H-1B rejections, nine jobs go out of the US. This doesn’t make sense for the American economy.”

 

The H-1B visa programme, which allows skilled foreign workers with a bachelor’s degree to work in the US, has become a cornerstone of American tech and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields. In the Rajya Sabha earlier this week, citing data from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh said Indians received a significant 72.3 per cent of all H1B visas issued by the US between October 2022 and September 2023.

 

The H-1B programme is employment- and company-based, for which the employer bears the costs. Under US immigration law, it is illegal for visa seekers to pay consultants for an H1B visa. However, consultants advising on these visas ask for a ‘refundable’ security deposit to help in getting the visa. This can be as high as $5,000. Aghi says there is evidence that small Indian companies are abusing the H-1B visa system. “We’re in touch with chambers of commerce to prevent this”.

 

These categories of visas support a micro-economy in India. Students seeking to study in the US must report a high degree of familiarity with English – this strengthens their claim to getting a visa. To do that, they are required to take the International English Language Testing System (IELTS, a globally standardised test of English language proficiency for non-native English language speakers) or the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). Both tests require intensive prepping and can cost anything between Rs 25,000 and Rs 1 lakh each, in addition to the actual cost of the test.

 

Beyond faith

 

IDP Education Ltd, which owns the IELTS in India, has opened 23 new centres in the last two years. And, “the percentage of TOEFL test takers in India increased from 5.83 per cent in 2021 to 7.77 per cent in 2022,” Omar Chihane, global head of TOEFL, told reporters in Delhi last year. “We have close to 80 test centres in India. In the last two years, 25 new test centres have been set up, including the first in Kashmir Valley, which was established in 2023.” While not all test takers are US bound, they constitute a significant number. One round of testing costs Rs 16,900. Coaching centres for TOEFL are big business in Punjab and Andhra Pradesh.

 

Aghi says fears that student visa rejection rates will go higher is misplaced. “This year, Indians got a record number of student visas. Their fees cross-subsidise local students. So they represent a valuable revenue stream for American universities,” he says, adding that anxiety on this score is groundless.

 

The exact total value of the business that helps Indians get a US visa to legally live and work in the US is hard to assess. It is even more difficult to assess the size of the grey business that facilitates illegal migration. Anecdotal evidence indicates that amid fears that it will become harder to get a US visa, appeals for divine intervention are rising. 

 

Sharmila Chawla, who lives in Rohini, New Delhi, has put in a prayer at the Neb Sarai Hanuman temple as she awaits her interview for an American visa, scheduled for March. She went to the temple after her daughter’s Canada visa was processed against almost impossible odds at a time when Canada-India relations were at breaking point. “The circumstances for my daughter’s work visa were so adverse that only Hanumanji’s intervention could have secured it for her. I went to the temple with the same faith,” she told Business Standard on the phone. While the temple asked for no money, she said she gave Rs 1,100 with an offering of clothes and sweets to the temple. She expects a positive outcome for her own application.