San Jose Mercury News
Posted at 4:35 a.m. PDT Monday, August 21, 2000

India seeks more U.S. visas, less control for tech

BY NARAYANAN MADHAVAN

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's software industry said on Monday that it
had urged Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to push for a raise in
work permit visa limits for technology professionals during his U.S.
visit next month.

The National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM)
also said Vajpayee would seek an early signing of a ''totalisation
agreement'' with Washington to eliminate payment of social security
charges by Indian workers in both countries.

NASSCOM President Dewang Mehta said the industry wanted an immediate
removal of such barriers and added costs, which he said were
non-tariff trade barriers.

``The main issues of NTM (non-tariff measures) with the USA which need
to be addressed relate to avoidance of double payment of social
security; increase in global H-1B (work permit) visa cap and removal
of locational constraints in H-1B visas,'' he said in a statement.

The United States accounted for about 60 percent of India's software
exports of $4.0 billion in 1999/2000 (April-March). Indians make up
the bulk of the H-1B visas which enable Indian software engineers to
spend three years working in the United States.

The United States allowed 115,000 H-1B visas in the 1999/2000
(October-September) period, but the quota was exhausted last March.

The quota, which was 65,000 in 1997/98, was at the 115,000-level for
the next two years, and would drop to 107,500 in 2000/01.

HUNGER FOR TECH PROFESSIONALS

Industries in both nations want the quota hiked substantially to feed
a huge hunger for technology professionals. Two separate bills, one
each in the U.S. Senate and Congress, propose to raise the annual
quota to 195,000 or 200,000.

Mehta said nations like Australia and Ireland had totalisation
agreements in place which eliminate social security payments in two
countries.

U.S. laws state that social security gains can be had only if payments
are made for at least 10 years but workers under H-1B visas do not
benefit from them as their visas are valid for only three years and
can extend by another three, Mehta said.

``This money is going down the drain and making the Indian industry
less competitive by 10 to 14 percent (of costs),'' Mehta said.

He also called for restrictions on the location of technology workers
under visa rules, saying it went against the trend of globalization,
when workers moved freely.

``We want this old, archaic law to be done away with,'' Mehta said.