The Trump Effect
Nimrah Mehmooda ECE
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016 saw the ugliest, nastiest election campaign in history. There were scandals, controversies and a lot of vitriol thrown at each side. And the fateful year that 2016 was, it ended with Trump getting elected. Donald Trump defied the expectations and hopes of all pollsters, journalists, academicians and politicians as he beat Hillary Clinton to become the 45th President of the United States.
Amid all his controversial stances and policies on domestic and foreign issues, the one that perhaps affects Indians by and large is his stance on the H1B visa. Donald Trump earlier in his election campaign vehemently opposed what he alleged was the‘ abuse’ of H1B visas by software companies, which he claimed hired cheap labour from India and other South East Asian countries thereby denying Americans their jobs. After winning the elections, his transition team reaffirmed his commitment to‘ scrap’ the H1B visa, or to heavily revamp its use. What can this mean for the Indian engineer?
Among the proposed modifications was granting the H1B visas to only‘ highly qualified’ workers who must hold a Master’ s degree, and getting rid of the lottery system to grant H1B visas. The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, a prominent professional organization in the United States, has repeatedly called for reforms in the visa programs, calling for scrapping the lottery system which the US uses to grant H1B visas, and replacing the system with which grants the visas to the highest paying jobs first. Appointment of Senator Jeff Sessions, a long-standing critic of the H1B program as the Attorney General of US by Trump does not paint an optimistic picture for the future of H1B program and workers either.
Those who will be hit hard by this recent crackdown on the H1B visa program will be consultancies and outsourcing agencies, particularly Infosys and Tata Consulting Services, both who have been accused of abusing the program to substitute IT jobs with cheap foreign labour. There is no denying that India has been benefited majorly by the HIB visa program, which allowed US companies to outsource jobs and hire foreign workers willing to work for cheaper costs. The
top recipients of H1B visas were outsourcing firms which were all Indian, with Tata Consultancy Services topping the list. Globalisation has helped India expand business in service sector boosting its economy since the 1990s. US’ s rollback on globalist economic policies is quite opportunistic on US’ s part and can significantly hurt India’ s economy and employment scene.
With lakhs of engineers graduating every year in India, most of who end up working in the Information Technology sector regardless of the branch they major in, the lack of global opportunities could mean severe competition for domestic jobs and a looming threat of unemployment. H1B visa requirements may include a mandatory Master’ s degree in future, which means that Indian engineering graduates who plan on working in with the US on a H1B platform must pursue higher education. It is safe to say that the new generation of engineering graduates who wish to secure their career must now look for alternatives like pursuing post-graduation degrees or working in PSUs, both of which require one to prepare for GATE, or other alternatives like MBA, etc.
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