US President Donald Trump has extended the freeze on the most sought-after H-1B visas along with other types of foreign work visas by three months to protect American workers, saying while therapeutics and COVID-19 vaccines are recently available, their effect on the labour market and community health has not yet been fully realised. The decision will impact a large number of Indian IT professionals and several American and Indian companies who were issued H-1B visas by the US government for the fiscal year 2021 beginning October 1. The freeze on various categories of work visas was ordered by Trump through two proclamations on April 22 and June 22 last year.
While the denial rate has dropped slightly to 21 per cent in 2019 from 24 per cent in 2018, the National Foundation for American Policy has said it is much higher for Indian IT companies like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Wipro and very low for American companies like Amazon and Google. For instance, the denial rate for TCS and Infosys in 2019 was 31 per cent and 35 per cent respectively, whereas for Wipro it was 47 per cent and 37 per cent for Tech Mahindra. On the other hand, the denial rate for the new H-1B petitions in 2019 was just four per cent each for Amazon and Google. The denial rate for Microsoft during the same period was six per cent, and Facebook along with Walmart was just three per cent each.
The government's increased thrust on investment and continued focus on job creation in India gives the sense of an improving job market scenario in the coming months.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his first-ever in-person meeting with President Joe Biden raised a number of issues involving the Indian community in America, including access for Indian professionals in the US and speaking about the H-1B visas, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla has said.
The Congress won 77 seats or 42% of seats in the 2017 polls. How then can Gujarat be called a BJP bastion, asks Sanjeev Nayyar.
H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa, which allows US employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in speciality occupations
Economic experts fear massive layoffs in various sectors of the American economy due to the current economic distress that is only going to deteriorate in the coming months. A record 3.3 million Americans have filed initial jobless claims for the week ending March 21. Even as the peak of coronavirus in the US is two weeks away, millions of people in the country have lost their jobs.
"The Right to Life as guaranteed by Article 21...gives the right to every human being to live a life of dignity with access to at-least bare necessities of life. To provide food security to impoverished persons is the bounden duty of all States and Governments," the top court observed while issuing a slew of directions on a plea of three activists.
The USCIS announcement indicated that the US government is going to be tough and stringent in approval of H-1B visas this year.
ITServe's lawsuit against the USCIS alleges that the agency has no authority to misinterpret the existing regulations and shorten the approval durations.
Prospects are grim for many, as humans and organisations aren't keeping up with the pace of technology. Shyamal Majumdar ponders the future of employment.
All Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) cardholders are required to take a special permission from the central government if they want to be involved in any missionary, 'Tabligh' or journalistic activities in the country.
The impact of Shinzo Abe's towering personality is such that even in death, Abe remains a polarising figure, asserts Dr Rajaram Panda.
Here's what you must know in order to avail of loans that can help you pursue a professional course.
The move will help industries in pushing authorities for exemption under various labour laws at a micro-level, along with demanding changes to bring greater flexibility in their operations related to retrenchment, safety standards, and collective bargaining.
In a major relief to thousands of Indian IT professionals, a federal judge in the US on Thursday blocked the enforcement of a temporary visa ban by the Trump administration on a large number of work permits, including the most sought after H-1B visas, ruling that the president exceeded his constitutional authority.
>The farmers will go home but the country will not get the agricultural reform it badly needs -- if nothing else, then to prevent a bigger water crisis than already exists, argues T N Ninan.
This non-refundable fee will support the new electronic registration system to make the H-1B cap selection process more efficient for both petitioners and the federal agency, USCIS said.
'We will be hoisting the tiranga, but this kind of celebration is uncalled for when the farmers in this country are dying by suicides, their families are ravaged by poverty and farmers are not enjoying any freedom.'
The lawsuit seeks to overturn these sweeping and unlawful immigration restrictions that are an unequivocal not welcome sign to the engineers, executives, IT experts, doctors, nurses, and other critical workers who help drive the American economy.
Around 81 per cent of the workers constitute the unorganised sector - devoid of any social security cover and outside the purview of a complex set of labour laws.
In the age of robots and automation, skills such as people management, coordination and negotiations will be relevant, says Babita Shekhar.
'I'll survive for a month, but worry about what will happen if the lockdown isn't eased after that.'
Amendments to the Child Labour Act say children can work in 'family enterprises' but the definition isn't clear, points out Shyamal Majumdar.
The report also points out that a larger section of the poor and vulnerable households achieve middle-class status in urban areas in India despite the presence of a large urban informal sector.
'As for people like me, if the virus doesn't get us -- the measures being taken against it definitely will.'
The changes in the labour law also provide for stricter punishment for employers for violation.
The changes if legalised would have a detrimental effect on the functioning of Indian tech companies in the US and also small and medium-sized contractual farms in the IT sector, which are mostly owned by Indian Americans.
President Donald Trump's executive order restricting entry of skilled foreign workers into the US, mainly on H-1B and L1 visas, has resulted in an estimated loss of $100 billion to companies in the US, a top American think-tank claimed. The executive order signed by Trump on June 22, that had temporarily banned issuing fresh H-1B and L-1 visas till December 31, caused a negative impact to the valuation of Fortune 500 firms equivalent to over $100 billion in losses, Brookings Institute said in a report released this week.
All were released on $250,000 bond, the Department of Justice said.
US Senators introduce legislation to cut H1B visas by 15,000.
Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran on Thursday said even though a "hybrid" model will be the new normal in future, India's largest software exporter TCS will ask employees to come to work once the pandemic is over as social interactions are a social necessity. "I do want to make the point that people need to meet people. It is a social necessity. "So, there will be a shift towards moving people to work when the pandemic gets over," Chandrasekaran, who also chairs TCS, said at the company's annual general meeting. At present, 97 per cent of the company's staff have been working from their homes because of the pandemic, he said, admitting that a "hybrid" model where people work from homes and also from offices will be the new normal.
'The government is not ready to talk to us. They have their own agenda.'
That is the number for job creation that India needs to achieve, argues T N Ninan.
Given the rapid changes in the Indian labour market, there is an urgent need to have current, accurate and publicly available data through regular, dynamic and comprehensive surveys. Indeed, this was the intention behind constituting the NITI Aayog Task Force on Improving Employment Data. The attempts by the government to "improve" labour data has actually made it worse, say Rosa Abraham, Janaki Shibu & Rajendran Narayanan.
The Monster Employment Index for the month of August stood at 153, registering a 25 per cent jump over the same period a year ago, when the index level was at 122.
The NDA government has approved additional facilities for members of minority communities living in India on long-term visa
Indian IT firms - which have to incur an additional burden of about $400 million annually - have called it "discriminatory".
An ISIS recruit from New Zealand has reportedly set up a LinkedIn account, describing himself as an "education management professional" working in the Syrian city of Raqqa.
