Weekend Rumination

Prime Minister Vajpayee will head back home on September 18, at the end of a two-week US visit. In less than a fortnight from then, thousands of youngsters will be queuing up at the US embassy in New Delhi, and thousands more at the American consulates in other Indian cities. They will be seeking short-term work visas (for three years, renewable for another three years), known in the game as H-1B visas.

Around the same time, the US government will almost certainly have announced an increase in the number of such visas that it will issue, from 1,15,000 this year (ending September) to 200,000 next year. Just under half of all US H-1B visas issued anywhere in the world, are issued in India. If that ratio holds, close to 100,000 young Indians will then be heading for high-paying software jobs in the US.

 

Predictably, there is criticism within the US, that the best jobs are going to foreigners and not to homegrown boys and girls. But this doesn