'Only People Who Will Be Affected By H1B...'

'...are young Indians with aspiration to go to the US.'
'The dream has to be more about working in India...'

Imposing a $100,000 fee for an H1B visa by Trump sent panic across the IT industry.

But further clarification by the White House that it was a one-time fee for new visas, seemed to have calmed the nerves.

Still, the debate on how Trump's visa policy would affect India, a country that gets 71% of the H1B visas issued every year and the young engineers in India, continues.

Dr Ganesh Natarajan, who joined NASSCOM in the 1990s when he was the CEO of APTECH, went on to become the chairman of NASSCOM and the NASSCOM Foundation.

He has also mentored many young entrepreneurs, invested in five accelerator and venture funds and enabled more than 80 start-ups and high growth companies in the IT industry for more than three decades.

"Young people in India who are just graduating or just joined big companies with the hope that the company would file an H1B for them, will be disappointed," Dr Natarajan tells Rediff's Shobha Warrier.

Now that you are visiting New York, you must have had discussions on Trump's new H1B visa policy with your old classmates and colleagues running businesses in the US. What is the mood among the Indians settled in the US?

As there was no clarity on H1B visa on Friday, there was a perception that H1B had to be renewed and every time, it had to be renewed, you had to pay a $100,000 fee.

There was panic everywhere, and companies asked those who were travelling to come back immediately.

And there are 300,000 people on H1B visa in the US.

Fortunately, by the weekend, the White House clarified that it was only a one-time fee.

Today, the process is fairly simple. There will be a $100,000 fee for those who are applying for the visa from October 1, 2025.

It means the change in the fee will not affect anybody who is in the US. So, it will not have any impact on those who are already in the US.

But yes, it is a problem for those young Indians who want to come and work in the US.

When I finished my engineering in industrial engineering in 1981, 41 out of 49 students from my class took H1B and came to the US.

You posted on X a couple of days ago about the American Dream all of you had at that time...

Yes, we had that dream. But the young Indians of today who have that dream will have a problem.

Let's see how it turns out. It has not yet been implemented.

Yes, if the fee for H1B is going to be $100,000, a lot of young Indians will not be able to go to the US.

But it will not affect anybody who is in the US.

What about companies that bring in employees from India on an H1B visa?

Getting people from India to the US is going to come down. They may have to hire locally.

But then there is a large talent pool of people, both Indians and Americans here in the US.

That way, a mature company in the US that does not rely too much on H1B will not have any problem at all.

But it will be a problem for those companies that rely a lot on H1B.

Do you see a lot more offshoring happening hereafter though there is talk that Trump may tax that too?

If you look at the models that were followed, in the 1980s and 1990s, we saw companies taking people from India to America to do work.

In the last 30 years, you can say, from 1991 onwards, it was much more of offshore work. And wherever required, either they hire locally in the US or bring people from India.

But today, 80% of the work is done offshore. And it will not be impacted right now.

But if the US Hire Act, as they call it, get implemented, it will be a problem. That's a long way to go as the Bill has to go to Congress, the Senate, etc. That will take a long time.

Right now, the model that is followed is that of more and more offshore work and less on-site work. Only if necessary, somebody is sent from India.

If you look at last year's data, 60,000 new H1B visas were issued, out of which only 10,000 were taken up by India-centric companies or Indian-own companies.

50,000 visas were taken up by foreign companies like Google, Microsoft, etc to take Indians from India.

From that point of view, the impact on the Indian IT industry will be much less, less than what one would have feared.

It is said that Indians are taken from here to the US because of dearth of local talent. Is it true?

Today, the scenario has changed. There are more community colleges that produce a lot of bright talent. So, it is not true that local talent is not available.

Indian companies themselves have set up multiple centres in the US, Mexico and Canada to hire and train local people.

There are a lot more local people, both of Indian origin and local Americans and Mexicans are available today. So, companies have the option of recruiting people locally.

I wouldn't worry too much about the visa fee.

You mean only those young Indians with American dream will be affected?

Yes, young people in India who are just graduating or just joined big companies with the hope that the company would file an H1B for them, will be disappointed.

The dream has to be more about working in India, I guess!

Reports say that India is the biggest beneficiary of the H1B visa as 71% of the visas were issued to Indians. Does that mean American companies did not benefit from these Indians working there?

Of course, everybody benefitted.

Corporate America, almost 90% of large American companies, have got some work done by Indian companies.

In fact, the model of many Indian IT companies was built on working both in India as well as in America.

The competitiveness of America has substantially improved because of the work done by Indian technology companies.

Yes, you are absolutely right. There was benefit for Indian persons, benefit for Indian companies, benefit for the stock market, and benefit for American companies also. There is a beneficial impact across all bandwidths.

By stopping talent from other countries to go there, won't America and American companies be affected?

I don't think an American company would worry that much because there are enough people available locally.

There are 300,000 people on H1B visas and the same number of people with a green card. So, there is enough Indian talent in America. Plus, there is local talent.

On top of that, there are these GCCs -- Global Capability Centres -- that have pools of talent working out of India, Mexico and Canada.

And the GCC model now works very well. And this model is not going to be disrupted by the H1B fees.

The only people who will be affected are the young Indians with aspiration to go to the US.

There is a clear move in America that they don't want too much immigration. They want more jobs to the Americans, and it is completely fair to do so.

Every country would want jobs to be given to their own people first.

So, there is a need for all parties to come to a sensible point of view in this matter. But then what is sensible for me and what is sensible for somebody sitting in Washington may not be the same. We will have different perceptions!

Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff