H1B Visa Abuse: What Do Software Engineers Earn in India and Pakistan?

A segment of CBS 60 Minutes, top rated American newsmagazine on television, has recently brought sharp focus on H1B visa abuse. It alleges that the H1B visas are being misused by Indian body shops to bring low-cost Indian software engineers to the United States to replace higher-paid American workers.

H1B Visa Abuse:

The visa category was originally intended to help fill gaps in the high-tech workforce with highly skilled employees from abroad in situations where there aren’t enough Americans. Instead, it has given rise to body shops that bring in workers from overseas, mainly from India, to replace higher-paid American workers.

Recent examples of the firing of American IT workers and their replacement by Indian workers at UC San Francisco and Walt Disney and Co have received a lot of media attention. What has particularly incensed the American public is the practice of forcing the American workers to train their replacements.

Labor Cost Savings:

A loophole in H-1B legislation that US companies are taking advantage of allows them to outsource jobs to Indian body shops without even looking for Americans, if those jobs pay approximately $60,000 or higher. Similar jobs in Silicon Valley pay an average of $110,000 a year.

The average salary of a software engineer ($110,000) in Silicon Valley is about 20X more than the average salaries in India ($6,875) and Pakistan ($4,770), according to Glassdoor.

Source: Glassdoor


Indians Gaming H1-B System:

Indian body shops are masters of gaming the H1-B system.  Most of India's IT exports to the United States are made up of wages of H1B workers brought to the United States by a handful of Indian body shops like Cognizant, Tata Consulting Services (TCS) and Infosys.  In 2014, 86% of the H1B visas for tech workers were granted to Indians, according to available data.

Excluding the Indian H1B workers' pay,  India's IT exports drop to about one-twentieth of the the amount reported by the Indian government as IT exports, according to a 2005 study by US General Accounting Office (GAO).

The Indian body shops like Cognizant, TCS and Infosys that rely on the H1B visa program in the US are "the shining star" of the Indian economy, and the country's largest export, according to an Indian-American professor Ron Hira who is a strong critic of the abuses of H1B program. By complaining, the Indian government and firms that rely on the program are trying to "build up a firewall so that no other reforms can come through and constrain the program in any way."

Average Salaries of Software Engineers in Major Cities Source: qz.com


Indian Code Coolies:

H1B workers brought in by Indian body shops are described variously as "code coolies" or "H1B slaves". Some call them "indentured servants", like the ones from India who replaced slave labor after the British empire abolished slavery.

“’Indentured servants’ is a pretty accurate term because in many cases that’s exactly what’s going on,” said Phillip Griego of San Jose’s Phillip J. Griego and Associates. Over the years, Griego and his law partner, Robert Nuddleman have represented several H-1B workers in lawsuits against body shops.

Trump's Pledge:

Along with cracking down on illegal immigration, a key campaign promise of President Trump has been to create lots of American jobs for American workers.  “You’ve heard me say the words, and I’ll repeat them, right now: Buy American and Hire American. It’s not just a motto, it’s a pledge. It’s a pledge to the working people of this country. The era of economic surrender for the United States is over -- it's over,” Trump said at Michigan earlier this week.

Right after the CBS 60 Minutes segment on H1-B visa, Senator Chuck Grassley tweeted: "If u just saw CBS 60minutes abt ripoff H1B visa program is replacing AmWorkers u shld know my/Durbin bill will correct this injustice."

There are reports that new legislation is being offered to change the H1-B program. Among the key provisions of this new proposed legislation are cutting the number of visa by 50% and doubling the minimum salary of H1B workers from $60,000 to $120,000.

Summary:

The abuse of H1B visas to replace American workers and depress wages is drawing both legislative and executive attention under the Trump administration. High profile cases like the firing of American workers at UC San Francisco and Disney and their replacement by Indian workers has energized the support for cracking down on abuse.


Pakistan's Software Prodigy

Biotech and Genomics in Pakistan

Comments

Riaz Haq said…
Software engineers' salaries

Source: Glassdoor

https://www.glassdoor.com.au/Salaries/index.htm


Pakistan Avg Rs 500,0000 ( US$4,770) Min Rs 240 K ($2,290) Max $1.08 million ($10,302)

India Avg Rs. 450,000 ($6,875) Min Rs 327,000 ($4,125) Max Rs. 519,000 ($7,930)

China Avg RMB 150,000 ($21,760) Min 80,000 ($11,605) Max 246,000 ($35,687)

USA $95,105 Min $67,000 Max $132,000

UK British Pounds 37,469 ($46,786) Min 26,000 ($32,465) Max 61,000 ($76,168)

Canada C$72,000 ($53,853) Min C$51,000 ($38,146) Max C$95,000 ($71,057)

Germany Euro 54,000 ($58,144) Min 42,000 ($45,223) Max 70,000 ($75,372)

France Euro 42,000 ($45,223) Min 34,000 ($36,610) Max 55,000 ($59,221)

Australia A$83,968 ($63,963) Min 62,000 ($47,229) Max 116,000 ($88,384)

Israel Shekel 240,000 ($65,717) Min 126,000 ($34,501) Max 319,000 ($87,350)
Riaz Haq said…
#Indian Owner of #SiliconValley Valley staffing firm charged in #h1b visa fraud - SFGate

http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/Owner-of-Silicon-Valley-staffing-firm-charged-in-11026913.php

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The owner of a company that supplied foreign workers to San Francisco Bay Area technology companies is facing visa fraud charges after filing fake documents to bring people to the United States, the U.S Attorney's Office announced Friday.
A federal grand jury indicted Jayavel Murugan, CEO of Dynasoft Synergy, Inc., and a second man, Syed Nawaz, on Thursday on charges including conspiracy to commit visa fraud.

The men obtained H-1B visas for more than a dozen people by claiming the workers had jobs at Stanford University, Cisco Systems and Brocade Communications Systems, according to the indictment. No such jobs existed, but Dynasoft could use the fraudulently obtained H1B visas to get the workers to the U.S., where it could place them with other companies and profit, prosecutors said.

Bala Murali, Dynasoft's chief operating officer, said Nawaz was not available.
Murugan said he did not know about the indictment and was "shocked." He said he needed to consult with his attorney and did not immediately have additional comment.
Riaz Haq said…
Trump Puts India First
By Tim Culpan

https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-04-12/trump-puts-indians-first-by-clamping-down-on-it-visas

"Putting American Workers First," reads the bold headline on the home page of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, proclaiming: "New Measures to Detect H-1B Visa Fraud and Abuse."A click through to the April 3 statement outlines steps the agency will take to clamp down on the use of temporary visas for foreign workers in specialty occupations. Among the areas of focus: "Employers petitioning for H-1B workers who work off-site at another company or organization’s location."Indian technology companies are in the cross hairs. Outsourcing providers such as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Infosys Ltd. and Wipro Ltd. are contracted by U.S. firms and government agencies to deploy programmers and engineers. This usually happens at the client's premises instead of their own offices: that is, "offsite."

Indian nationals are so dominant in the H-1B program that they accounted for 195,247, or 70.1 percent, of all beneficiaries in 2015. PROPORTION OF H-1B VISAS THAT GO TO INDIANS70.1%Whatever the impact on these outsourcing companies, the crackdown is already hurting the net worth of their billionaire founders as investors anticipate tightened enforcement will hurt earnings, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday. Tata Consultancy has lost about 3 percent since the U.S. administration announced on March 3 it would suspend premium processing of H-1B visas, lagging a 2.8 percent advance in the benchmark Sensex index.

Riaz Haq said…
What software engineers are making around the world right now

https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/09/what-software-engineers-are-making-around-the-world-right-now/

https://hired.com/state-of-salaries-2017
A new study published by the data science team at Hired, a jobs marketplace for tech workers, shows why it’s becoming harder for software engineers to afford life in San Francisco, even while they make more money than their peers elsewhere in the U.S. and the world.

Based on 280,000 interview requests and job offers provided by more than 5,000 companies to 45,000 job seekers on Hired’s platform, the company’s data team has determined that the average salary for a software engineer in the Bay Area is $134,000. That’s more than software engineers anywhere in the country, through Seattle trails closely behind, paying engineers an average of $126,000. In other tech hubs, including Boston, Austin, L.A., New York, and Washington, D.C., software engineers are paid on average between $110,000 and $120,000.

Yet higher salaries don’t mean much with jaw-dropping rents and other soaring expenses associated with life in “Silicon Valley,” and San Francisco more specifically. Indeed, factoring in the cost of living, San Francisco is now one of the lowest-paying cities for software engineers, according to Hired’s lead data scientist, Jessica Kirkpatrick. According to her analysis, the $110,000 that an Austin engineer makes is the rough equivalent of being paid $198,000 in the Bay Area, considering how much further each dollar goes in the sprawling capital of Texas. The same is true of Melbourne, Australia, where software engineers are paid a comparatively low $107,000 on average, but who are making the equivalent of $150,000 in San Francisco.

In fact, Hired says it’s seeing a “huge percentage of our candidates” in other markets that are attracting and hiring relocation candidates. In Austin, says Kirkpatrick, 60 percent of job offers are being extended to and filled by people outside of Texas.

(It should be noted that candidates who are willing to move to a new city are often paid more than local candidates, per Hired. It says this is especially true of European, Canadian, and Asian markets, where, astonishingly, non-local candidates can earn up to 57 percent more than their local peers.)

How bias shows up in salaries

Hired’s study explores a range of other data, including how much data scientists and product managers are being paid across 16 major cities and how that salary information has changed over time. Of greater interest to us, however, is another section focused on the impact of bias on salaries and hiring practices. It’s something Hired began following roughly a year ago by collecting voluntary demographic data from candidates and examining how their identity impacts the wages they ask for — and what they receive.

Bias is nothing new, of course. In fact, in a survey released Tuesday by the job site Indeed.com, one quarter of U.S. workers in the tech sector said they’ve felt discrimination at work due to their race, gender, age, religion or sexual orientation. Roughly 29 percent of female respondents said they experienced discrimination, compared with 21 percent of men. Meanwhile, 32 percent of Asian and nonwhite employees said they were discriminated against, compared with 22 percent of white employees.
Riaz Haq said…
#India biggest loser as #Australia decides to abolish 457 #immigration work visas | The News Minute. #h1bvisa

http://www.thenewsminute.com/article/india-be-majorly-hit-australia-decides-abolish-457-immigration-work-visas-60553

Adopting a new "Australians first" approach to skilled migration, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has announced that he will be abolishing the existing 457 Visa programme, currently used by temporary foreign workers to gain employment in the country.

The 457 Visa programme is used mainly to hire foreign workers in the restaurant, IT and medical industries and the majority of such visa holders came from India, Britain and China, reported the Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday.

According to government statistics, 95,758 people were living in Australia under 457 Visa programme last year, with the highest proportion coming from India (24.6 per cent), followed by Britain (19.5 per cent) and China (5.8 per cent).

Turnbull used Facebook to announce the policy, which he said would "put jobs first" and "Australians first", signalling a reduction in the occupations available to skilled foreign workers and raising the threshold to qualify.

"We are putting jobs first, we are putting Australians first," he said. "We are an immigration nation, but the fact remains that Australian workers must have priority for Australian jobs."

Stating that Australian workers must have priority for Australian jobs, he said: "We will no longer allow 457 Visa system to be passports to jobs that could and should go to Australians."

At a press conference in Canberra, Turnbull said the 457 Visa system needed to be replaced because it had "lost its credibility".

The scheme will be replaced by two temporary visas that will impose tougher English language tests, stricter labour market testing, at least two years of work experience and a mandatory police check.

The numbers of jobs eligible for the two-year and four-year visa streams will be slashed, with 216 occupations ranging from antique dealer to fisheries officer to shoe-maker, axed from a list of 651 professions on the list.

Accounting giant KPMG criticised the decision, saying "there is no evidence the current system is not working".

However, Turnbull dismissed that claim, arguing the abolition of the 457 Visa regime was "a decision of my government... this has been a careful exercise in policy development", reported the daily.
Riaz Haq said…
#Trump signs executive order tightening rules on #H1B visa program. Will impact #India the most http://to.pbs.org/2peI3Tt via @NewsHour

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to tighten the rules for technology companies seeking to bring highly skilled foreign workers to the U.S.

The order Trump signed at the Kenosha, Wisconsin, headquarters of tool maker Snap-on Inc. targets the H-1B visa program. The White House says the program undercuts American workers by bringing in large numbers of cheaper foreign workers, which drives down U.S. wages.

The order directs U.S. agencies to propose rules to prevent immigration fraud and abuse in the program.

Agencies are also being asked to suggest changes so that H-1B visas are granted to the “most-skilled or highest-paid applicants.”

Trump says the order sends a “powerful signal to the world” that the U.S. will defend its workers, protect their jobs and put America first. He narrowly carried Wisconsin in November on the strength of support from white, working class voters. But Trump is currently facing a 41 percent approval in the state.


Riaz Haq said…
Less than 5% of #India engineers are cut out for high-skill programming jobs — Quartz #h1bvisa #SiliconValley

https://qz.com/964843/less-than-5-of-india-engineers-are-cut-out-for-high-skill-programming-jobs/

When considering Indian engineering talent, quantity trumps quality.
Indian universities may be churning out the world’s largest engineering population, but the graduates’ skills levels aren’t high. In 2011, India’s National Association of Software and Services Companies estimated that only 25% of India’s IT engineering graduates were employable. Six years on, the talent pool is still in dire straits.
“Only 4.77% candidates can write the correct logic for a program, a minimum requirement for any programming job,” a recent Aspiring Minds study of over 36,000 engineering students in India revealed. The employability assessment company tested students from IT-related streams of study at more than 500 colleges across India on Automata, a machine learning-based assessment of software development skills.

“The IT industry requires maintainable code so that it is less prone to bugs, is readable, reusable and extensible,” the study notes. “Time efficient code runs fast.” Only 1.4% of programmers surveyed could create code that was functionally correct and efficient, meaning it does what it’s supposed to do and in a reliable and speedy manner.
More than two-thirds of the candidates from the top 100 universities in the country were able to write “compilable code,” or that which does not throw errors when compiled into machine-readable code. In the rest of the colleges, only 31% of students were able to write compilable code.
One reason for the poor performance is the dearth of good instructors as well as misaligned college curriculums. “The school curriculum focusing on MS-Word, Powerpoint, Excel, etc., rather teaching programming using elementary languages such as Basic and Logo is also the culprit,” said Varun Aggarwal, the co-founder and chief technology officer at Aspiring Minds.
Riaz Haq said…
#India’s worst engineers come from #Hyderabad, the city that sends the most STEM students to the #US https://qz.com/977850 via @qzindia

Hyderabad, the southern Indian city that sends the largest number of STEM students to the US, is home to India’s worst techies, a study has noted.
Software engineers from the city lag much behind those from other Indian cities when it comes to programming skills, a recent Aspiring Minds study of over 36,000 engineering students in India showed. The employability assessment company tested students from IT-related streams at over 500 colleges across India on Automata, a machine learning-based assessment of software development skills.

The study analysed students on their programming skills, practices, and ability to handle runtime complexity—the time taken to run a program. Hyderabad had a total score of just 3.49 on 100 while New Delhi had 23.48 and the Mumbai and Pune regions together had a score of 17.51.
Hyderabad, home to over 6.8 million people, is the common capital of two Indian states, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Over the past decade or so, it has turned into a hub for thousands of students aspiring to enter the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology. Between 2008 and 2012, it sent over 26,000 students to the US, most pursuing science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) degrees, a Brookings Institution report (pdf) said.
“Hyderabad, India, sent the largest number of STEM students (20,800) to the United States and ranked fourth for the percentage of its students pursuing a STEM degree (80%) during the 2008-2012 period,” the report said. “Notably, 91% of students from Hyderabad are studying for a master’s degree, versus only 4% for a bachelor’s degree.”
In 2015—the year for which the latest data is available—the US government issued around 60,000 visas to Indian students, with a large number being issued by the US consulate general in Hyderabad.

India is believed to be churning out the world’s largest number of engineers every year at over one million, but the graduates’ skill levels have remained poor. “Only 4.77% candidates can write the correct logic for a program, a minimum requirement for any programming job,” the Aspiring Minds study had noted.
“Lack of programming skills is adversely impacting the IT and data science ecosystems in India,” Varun Aggarwal, a co-founder at Aspiring Minds said. “The world is moving towards introducing programming to three-years-olds. India needs to catch up.”

Riaz Haq said…
#India's #IT giants are laying off employees. And the worst is yet to come. #H1B #Wipro #Infosys #TCS http://www.dailyo.in/politics/it-sector-unemployment-layoffs-cognizant-wipro/story/1/17146.html … via @dailyo_

The $150-billion Indian IT sector has not just been an important contributor to the country's GDP and global exports, but has also been at the vanguard of white-collar job creation in an otherwise jobless growth of the past two decades.

For years, campuses across India have relied on the mass hiring by the likes of Infosys, Tech Mahindra, Cognizant, etc as the placement hub for India's large crop of engineers. But, of late, the sun has stopped shining on the sector. Major recruiters like Wipro, Infosys, Cognizant have been seen significant reduction in their workforce. The bad news though is that the worst is yet to come.

For various reasons, we may see massive layoffs in the IT sector. Here's why:

1. The rise of automation

Over the past few years, automation has gathered pace and, in the coming time, it promises to replace many jobs, especially of repetitive and mundane nature.

The competitive advantage in favour of automation has been increasing with technological advancement reducing cost, improving performance and wider applicability becoming possible. The Indian IT sector faces a serious challenge from automation as the nature of most jobs here is "mundane". Besides, human discretion and intelligence are low enough to be easily replaced by automation.

2. 'Freeze' on hiring Indians abroad

India's abundant labour force had made it less expensive to hire Indian expats for projects abroad. But the tide has turned against this trend with US proposing to raise the minimum income requirement for H1B visa to $130,000 from existing $60,000. Australia, Singapore and many other popular lucrative markets too have introduced procedural changes making life difficult for Indians. Getting a work visa has been made both time-consuming and costly.

This will affect one of the most lucrative opportunities that our IT workforce enjoyed, and make it more difficult to employ middle-level employees whose higher salary expectations are difficult to fulfil within India in an industry, where mass hiring at the bottom (to keep the cost low) is the norm.

3. Rises of protectionist politics in US, Europe

The rise of protectionist politics in advanced economies has increased the pressure on companies there to outsource contracts to local companies, instead of firms in India. This is making growth prospect more difficult for Indian IT companies.

The proposed reduction in corporation taxation in the US as well as France will also further incentivise more of the IT big shots to shift back some, if not a major portion, operation back to the US. All this again doesn't bode well for jobs in the Indian IT sector.

4. Corporate governance and Indian IT brands

Indian IT's fabled rise was built on the foundation of outstanding corporates who won the trust and respect of their stakeholders at home and abroad through admirable corporate governance.

But even as the industry needs the goodwill in these difficult times, the Indian IT bellwether have had a rather tough time negotiating corporate governance troubles.

While TCS has seen Tata Sons being mired in a dirty and ugly boardroom struggle, Infosys, after years of being led by unsatisfactory successors to its founders, found a decent performer in Vishal Sikka. But the respite seems short-lived as the current leadership has been engaged in a power-cum-perception struggle against Infosys old guard, notably Narayana Murthy, who has levelled and repeated some serious charges against the present leadership.


5. Sluggish global economy and low demand

As such, the big ticket projects are far fewer in number now with the global economy slowing compared to the initial decade of the millennium when Indian IT sector came of age.
Riaz Haq said…
#India's tech sector downsizes heavily as #Trump’s #H1B temp worker visa policy creates uncertainty

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/23/indian-tech-sector-downsizes-heavily-as-trumps-h-1b-policy-creates-uncertainty.html

Technology companies in India are in the midst of a massive restructuring drive that has both employees and industry analysts worried over the future of the sector.

Information Technology companies like Infosys, Cognizant and Tech Mahindra have announced redundancies this year and some analysts have said that this string of layoffs are expected to continue for the next two years.

A recent report from McKinsey India says that at least 200,000 software engineers in India will lose their jobs each year over the next three years.

According to local media reports, tech giant Infosys had earlier announced its plans to lay off about 1,000 employees at senior levels based on performance-based processes, the company also then announced its plans to hire 10,000 Americans over the next two years – a move many analysts have said will please U.S. President Donald Trump. Following this move, other companies such as Cognizant announced their plans to cut 6,000 jobs.

"With the majority of their business coming from US-based clients, it seems like a natural step for Indian IT companies to expand and strengthen their client offering in a market that promises sustained growth. This will undoubtedly benefit U.S. workers and sing to the tune of Trump's America First strategy," Af Malhotra, co-founder of Bangalore-based IT firm GrowthEnabler, told CNBC via email.

U.S. President Donald Trump's "America First" agenda and focus on curbing immigration especially around the much-sought-after H-1B visa policy may hurt India's massive information technology sector that forms a strong base for the country's economy.

Data from Goldman Sachs estimates that Indians accounted for nearly 195,257, or 70.1 percent, of all beneficiaries of the H-1B visa program in 2015. And hence, President Trump's decision to steer his policies towards "America First" is clearly going to hurt these professionals as well as Indian software companies. But there are divergent views on whether the redundancies in India by major IT companies have anything to do with Trump's policies.

"It does not seem like Indian companies are laying off in India so they can hire in the US," an IT-professional based in the U.S. told CNBC on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the topic. "The IT sector has been struggling, these companies have been having poor disappointing earnings/lower guidance for a few quarters now and that is probably the primary driver."
Riaz Haq said…
Indian recruiters see surge in job seeking among tech workers

US visa ban and automation cuts demand in one-time booming employment sector

https://www.ft.com/content/f1035a74-41df-11e7-9d56-25f963e998b2


Indian recruitment companies are seeing a surge in job applications from laid-off IT services workers, as the sector rapidly automates.

The Indian IT sector employs more than 3 million, according to industry body Nasscom.

IT companies such as Infosys and Wipro grew rapidly over the past three decades by hiring huge numbers of Indian software engineers to perform software installation and maintenance work for global companies, at relatively low cost.


But recruiters say the companies now appear to be cutting staff at an increasing rate, as they focus their businesses on fast-growing, cutting-edge fields such as data analytics and connected devices, which require smaller numbers of more highly-skilled staff.

Cloud computing lets groups tap into generic platforms, easily creating company software without the need for outside consultants.

“Lay-offs happen every year, but this is different,” said Alka Dhingra, assistant general manager at Teamlease, a large Indian recruitment company. Its applications in recent months from jobhunters in IT services were at least 50 per cent higher than in recent years, she said.

A further shadow over domestic job creation has been cast by the prospect of tighter immigration rules in the US, by far the industry’s biggest market, aimed at pushing companies to hire locally instead of bringing in workers from India. Infosys this month promised to hire 10,000 workers in the US.

The worries about job cuts in the industry reflect global concerns about the potential for rapidly developing automation to create unemployment — a particular concern in India, where about 1m young people enter the workforce each month.

The number of people seeking IT services jobs on Naukri, India’s most popular jobs website, increased 23 per cent year-on-year between January and April, it said.

The Forum for Information Technology Employees, a workers’ group, is seeking to form the industry’s first union to fight what it says were illegal job terminations seen recently in the sector.

The companies themselves have downplayed the scale of headcount reduction.

“To say the need of people in the business will go down is wrong,” said Ravi Kumar S, deputy chief operating officer at Infosys. “Automation will take away jobs of the past but will create lots more jobs of the future.”

Mr Kumar said the job cuts at Infosys in recent months were part of an annual process where “underperformers” were released, though he declined to say how the number of such cuts compared with previous years.

Lay-offs have also hit senior staff, as companies see less need for managers to handle large teams, said Kris Lakshimanth, chairman of Headhunters India, who estimates job inquiries from such people have doubled since last year.

“Companies are trying to reskill the employees [in new fields], but where there is no option, they're having to let them go,” said Ratna Gupta, a director at ABC Consultants, another recruitment company. “Obviously the number of humans required is going to be less.”

Riaz Haq said…
After #IT #outage, #BritishAirways union blames outsourced IT jobs in #India for problem #Modi #BJP http://toi.in/ea7ePZ via @TOIBusiness


NEW DELHI: British Airways' GMB union has reportedly blamed the airline's decision to outsource hundreds of IT jobs to India last year for the IT failure related problems on Saturday.
The GMB website says the union had on February 29, 2016 warned against BA outsourcing IT jobs. The website quotes Mick Rix, GMB national officer for aviation, as saying then that a march will be held "in protest as the company plans to outsource and offshore work to one of the biggest IT majors in India.

The GMB website says "the affected job losses at Heathrow in West London is around 700 people and around 100 in New Castle and other locations."
The Indian IT major "will need to carry out work in the UK and they will bring workers from India to fill the jobs of the ex BA workers," the website adds.

Riaz Haq said…
Buying a home in #SanFrancisco and #SiliconValley a struggle even for highly paid #technology employees at #Apple and #Google. #RealEstate

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/02/14/buying-a-bay-area-home-now-a-struggle-even-for-apple-google-engineers/

Bay Area home prices are out of reach for many middle-income families, but surely if you’re a highly prized engineer at Apple or Google you can afford a house here, right?

Not so fast.

These days even high-paid tech workers — the very people often blamed for driving up home prices — have to stretch to buy a house, according to a new study by Los Angeles-based real estate startup Open Listings. Techies do come closer to affording a pricey Silicon Valley home than teachers, service industry workers and scores of other workers. But home ownership may not be a given for them anymore, a shift that signals how the region’s explosive housing costs are shutting out even the prosperous.

“These highly paid, highly coveted people that are being recruited from all over the country or the world … they’re unable to afford the housing that’s available nearby,” said Open Listings CEO Judd Schoenholtz.

Software engineers at Bay Area tech companies including Apple, Google and Facebook would have to fork over more than 28 percent of their monthly salaries — a move frowned upon by financial experts — to pay for a home within a 20-minute commuting distance from their office, according to the study. The average software engineer at Apple, for example, makes $188,000 a year, and would have to spend 33 percent of his or her salary to afford a median-priced home in Cupertino, the study said. For software engineers at Reddit and Google, the mortgage and tax payments would total 32 percent of their income. Twitter engineers would have to fork over 30 percent, and Facebook engineers 29 percent.

Techies are unlikely to get much sympathy from other Bay Area workers struggling to make ends meet. Teachers, for example, who make a median salary of $72,340 a year, could afford just 0.4 percent of homes in San Francisco, according to an April study by Trulia.

But people whose mortgage payments exceed the recommended 28 percent of their income may have a hard time getting a home loan, Schoenholtz said. If they do get a loan, it may not be for the full amount of the price, which would force them to pony up more for a down payment. And for residents already paying high rent prices, saving up a standard 20 percent down payment is hard enough — not to mention a payment of 30 or 40 percent.

That means the dream of home ownership likely will elude some high-tech workers, which could hurt local companies’ abilities to recruit and retain employees, Schoenholtz said.


“If that’s not going to be attainable, I wonder what the long-term viability of these companies (is),” he said.

It’s an issue already on the radar of many Bay Area tech companies. Last month, more than 100 tech executives and venture capitalists signed a letter supporting a bill by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, that would make it easier to build dense housing near transit stations.

“The lack of homebuilding in California imperils our ability to hire employees and grow our companies,” the leaders wrote. “We recognize that the housing shortage leads to displacement, crushing rent burdens, long commutes and environmental harm, and we want to be part of the solution.”

In Apple’s hometown of Cupertino, for example, Zillow estimates the median home value is $2.2 million — up more than 20 percent from a year ago.

Several companies are taking the matter into their own hands. Facebook is planning to build 1,500 homes on its expanded Willow Campus in Menlo Park, and Google is backing the development of nearly 10,000 homes as part of its new office development at North Bayshore, in Mountain View.

Riaz Haq said…
#US tightens #H1B #visa rules, #Indians to be hit hardest. #India #Modi #Technology http://toi.in/qqEbWa/a24gk via @timesofindia


The Trump administration has just made it more difficult for companies and individuals to get the H-1B work visa. And even if one gets it, it may not be for a full three years, as is the practice now.
Indians and Indian IT companies will feel the impact the most because they are the biggest users of this visa. The shorter durations may even make the transition from H-1B to a green card next to impossible.
A policy memorandum issued by the US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) on February 22 said its officers could seek detailed documentation and more evidence from companies to establish that they have specific assignments in a specialty occupation for the H-1B beneficiary. And that they have these assignments for the entire time requested on the petition.
If the company is able to only demonstrate that the beneficiary will have the specified work for less than three years, then the visa would be granted for that shorter duration.
Currently, H-1Bs are issued for three years, and, for a long time, they were extended for another three years with few questions asked. Over the past year, the Trump administration has made the process of extension more difficult - compelling Indian IT companies to tell employees on H-1Bs that they may have to return earlier than anticipated. The new rules imply that one may not even get the initial full three years now.
Riaz Haq said…
#Indian #H1B applicants face particular scrutiny in #Trump's work visa crackdown. #India #Modi #BJP https://tcrn.ch/2OlL1Ps via @techcrunch


Coming to the U.S. on a work visa is getting harder across the board, but workers from India in particular are feeling the effects of recent policy shifts from the Trump administration. A new report from the National Foundation for American Policy sheds light on how the “Buy American and Hire American” executive order from April 2017 has impacted H-1B applicants in the last year. The H-1B visa, popular in Silicon Valley, lets skilled foreign workers live and work in the U.S. for a six year term.

For the three months period starting in July 2017, H-1B denial rates went from 15.9% to 22.4%. In the same time period, Requests for Evidence seeking additional documentation in the fourth quarter of 2017 nearly equaled the total amount of Requests for Evidence from the year’s other three quarters combined (63,184 and 63,599 requests, respectively).

Drilling down, workers from India appear to be the most affected. From July to September 2017, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) demanded additional documentation from 72% of Indian H-1B applications, compared to the 61% rate of other countries considered together. During that same three month period, 23.6% of Indian applications were rejected, up from 16.6% between April and June 2017.

“The increase in denials and Requests for Evidence of even the most highly skilled applicants seeking permission to work in America indicates the Trump administration is interested in less immigration, not ‘merit-based’ immigration,” the report adds.

“… U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has enacted a series of policies to make it more difficult for even the most highly educated scientists and engineers to work in the United States.”

In January, rumors of a ban on H-1B extensions for green card applicants had H-1B workers nervous. In June, new rules shortening visas for Chinese STEM students went into effect. While China only accounted for 9.4% of total H-1B visa applications in the 2017 fiscal year compared to India’s whopping 76%, the Trump administration will likely continue to tighten immigration policies targeting China as it obsessively tries to turn the screws on its perceived trade nemesis.
Riaz Haq said…
Bengaluru pays the highest salaries in India: Study

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/hardware-software-jobs-pay-the-highest-in-india/articleshow/66744465.cms

Hardware & networking jobs fetch about Rs 15 lakh per annum ($21,500) .. software jobs fetch about Rs 12 lakh ($16,900)  , and consumer jobs Rs 9 lakh ($12,700).   

(One US $ is worth 71 Indian rupees)
Riaz Haq said…
Hundreds of #Indian #students face jail, deportation from #UnitedStates after the arrest of 8 men from #India in #fake university scam via @htTweets https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/hundreds-of-indian-students-face-jail-deportation-in-us-college-scam/story-NelUt7N8HnUZf6KM1Z6xgJ.html

Hundreds of students from India face deportation or criminal charges after the arrest Wednesday of eight men of Indian origin who had enrolled them at a fake university run by undercover US agents in a sting operation to snare racketeers who misuse the student visa to help unqualified foreigners stay and work.

US justice department’s Michigan branch announced the arrest of the eight men, whose names indicated they were either Indians or American citizens of Indian descent, all over the country, charged with visa fraud and harboring aliens for profit, according to an indictment unsealed Wednesday.

The alleged recruiters arrested were identified as Barath Kakireddy, of Florida; Suresh Kandala, of Virginia; Phanideep Karnati, of Kentucky; Prem Rampeesa, of North Carolina; Santosh Sama, of California; Avinash Thakkallapally, of Pennsylvania; Aswanth Nune, of Georgia; and Naveen Prathipati, of Texas,

A number of students enrolled in this fake institution, University of Farmington in Michigan state, were also taken into custody by agents of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in an early morning swoop — “5:00 am and thereabouts”, said someone who was told of it by witnesses — all over the country.


Those apprehended could be around 200, according to official sources and witness accounts, of the total of an estimated 600 enrolled. But, those in the know warned, all 600 could be on the deportation list, and only, if they were lucky. Some of them could be looking at a jail term as well.

The Indian embassy here and its consulates have been in touch with US officials and also with some of affected students or those who know them and is working on how to help them.

There was no response from ICE to request for information about the number of Indian students arrested or detained and their fate — if they were being detained or arrested for deportation eventually or that they could also be charged with criminal offenses, and tried and incarcerated here.


In one of the early morning raids, as described in a second-hand account, government agents asked students to name their professors at the school to test whether they were complicit in the scam — of enrolling in a school knowing it had never held classes, because it wasn’t meant to as a “pay-to-stay” operation.

“Don’t worry, we know you can’t name them,” one agent is said to have told the student.

University of Farmington was a fake institution started and run by undercover agents from the Department of Homeland Security since 2015, said one of the three related indictments that were unsealed Wednesday, to “identify recruiters and entities engaged in immigration fraud”. It was not staffed with educators or instructors, had no curriculum and held no classes or educational activities. It was run out of a commercial building.


The enrolled students, the indictments alleged, were not victims of the scam, but willful collaborators. “Each of the foreign citizens who ‘enrolled’ and made ‘tuition’ payments to the University knew that they would not attend any actual classes, earn credits, or make academic progress toward an actual degree in a particular field of study — a “pay to stay’’ scheme.

“Rather, their intent was to fraudulently maintain their student visa status and to obtain work authorization under the CPT (a course-related curricular training programme that allows off-campus work authorization for foreign students).

“Each student knew that the University’s program was not approved by the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was illegal, and that discretion should be used when discussing the program with others.”
Riaz Haq said…
#Trump Admin tells #India it is considering caps on #H1B #visas to #Indians at between 10% and 15% of the annual quota. There is no current country-specific limit on the 85,000 H-1B work visas granted each year, and an estimated 70% go to Indians. https://reut.rs/2x5EdxO


The plan to restrict the popular H-1B visa program, under which skilled foreign workers are brought to the United States each year, comes days ahead of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to New Delhi.

India, which has upset companies such as Mastercard and irked the U.S. government with stringent new rules on data storage, is the largest recipient of these temporary visas, most of them to workers at big Indian technology firms.

The warning comes as trade tensions between the United States and India have resulted in tit-for-tat tariff actions in recent weeks. From Sunday, India imposed higher tariffs on some U.S. goods, days after Washington withdrew a key trade privilege for New Delhi.

Two senior Indian government officials said on Wednesday they were briefed last week on a U.S. government plan to cap H-1B visas issued each year to Indians at between 10% and 15% of the annual quota. There is no current country-specific limit on the 85,000 H-1B work visas granted each year, and an estimated 70% go to Indians.

Both officials said they were told the plan was linked to the global push for “data localization”, in which a country places restrictions on data as a way to gain better control over it and potentially curb the power of international companies. U.S. firms have lobbied hard against data localization rules around the world.

A Washington-based industry source aware of India-U.S. negotiations also said the United States was deliberating capping the number of H-1B visas in response to global data storage rules. The move, however, was not solely targeted at India, the source said.

“The proposal is that any country that does data localization, then it (H-1B visas) would be limited to about 15% of the quota. It’s being discussed internally in the U.S. government,” the person said.

-------------------

Most affected by any such caps would be India’s more than $150 billion IT sector, including Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys Ltd, which uses H-1B visas to fly engineers and developers to service clients in the United States, its biggest market. Major Silicon Valley tech companies also hire workers using the visas.

Stratfor analyst Reva Goujon on Twitter called the move “potentially another big blow to the U.S. #tech industry amid US-#China economic battle,” a sentiment echoed on social media by some Indians and their supporters.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs has sought an “urgent response” from officials on how such a move by the United States could affect India, said one of the two government officials, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs, as well as the commerce department that is typically involved in such discussions, did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Since last year, the Trump administration has been upset that U.S. companies such as Mastercard and Visa suffer due to regulations in several countries that it says are protectionist and increasingly require companies to store more data locally.

India last year mandated foreign firms to store their payments data “only in India” for supervision, and New Delhi is working on a broad data protection law that would impose strict rules for local processing of data it considers sensitive.

-----------------
Riaz Haq said…
#India's #IT industry head accuses #US of discrimination over
#H1B work visas. In last-ditch lobbying effort ahead of #Trump visit to India this month, Debjani Ghosh, president of #NASSCOM, has sought to meet Trump. #technology
https://www.ft.com/content/4afae768-4f0c-11ea-95a0-43d18ec715f5 via @financialtimes



Nasscom, which has nearly 3,000 companies, including leading IT companies such as Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro, argues that the move has disproportionately affected Indian companies.

“We’re at a loss trying to figure out why we’re seeing the kind of discrimination when this is actually benefiting the US,” Ms Ghosh said, arguing that Indian workers help to fill a vital skills gap in the country.

Critics had long complained that the IT firms were using the visas to hire cheaper Indian employees instead of Americans. Indians make up about 70 per cent of workers on H-1B visas in the US.

But Nasscom counters that most H-1B visas are actually taken by US firms such as Microsoft or Amazon, and that they enjoy higher approval ratings than the Indian companies. Around 80 per cent of H-1B applications from the likes of TCS and Infosys are approved by US immigration authorities, far below approval rates of as much as 99 per cent for the American tech giants.

Stricter H-1B rules have already dented profits for Indian IT firms, with brokerages Kotak saying last year that the additional US visa costs were likely to weigh on earnings before interest and taxes.

Nasscom is lobbying the two sides to treat the movement of skilled Indian workers under the H-1B scheme as a trade issue, asking that it be separated from the president’s broader concerns about immigration to the US.

“We just have one request to [our] government, which is — talk to him, make him understand the importance of high-skilled talent mobility,” Ms Ghosh said. “We have to ensure that he understands that this cannot be treated the same way as immigration — they’re two different things. That’s our biggest ask.”

But her pleas are likely to go unheeded. The US and India are negotiating a limited trade package to resolve market access issues for goods such as dairy and medical devices, but a spokesperson from India’s trade ministry confirmed that visa issues have been excluded from the talks. Observers expect that a limited deal could be signed during Mr Trump’s visit to India.

Ms Ghosh also argued that lingering stigma around Indian workers is misplaced, as the country’s companies have altered their business models away from lower-value outsourcing to higher-skilled tech work, and have started hiring more locals.

“It was about cost arbitrage in the past, where people would send jobs to India for cheaper cost, but that has completely changed,” she said. “People haven’t realised the change that the industry has gone through, the contribution that it’s making to the US.”
Riaz Haq said…
Green card share for skilled #Indian #immigrants (EB-2, EB-5 visas) drops to 10% from 14% as application share rises in 2019. Virtually all applicants for EB-2 and EB-3 green cards are on H-1B visa in #UnitedStates. #Trump #Modi #H1B #India https://bayareane.ws/2w2E01a via @mercnews

While a fierce debate rages over a U.S. Senate bill to scrap per-country green card limits — with opponents claiming it would give unfair advantage to Indian citizens — the share of green cards going to skilled Indian workers has dropped, according to a new report.

Meanwhile, the share of green card applications filed by employers for Indians has risen, according to the report released this week by the Cato Institute.

Skilled Indian workers received 10 percent of available green cards in the two largest green card categories — the EB-2 and EB-3 visas for skilled workers — in 2019, down from 14 percent the year before, the report said. Meanwhile, the share of applications filed for Indian citizens by employers jumped to 53 percent from 50 percent, according to the report.

Virtually all applicants for EB-2 and EB-3 green cards are on the H-1B visa or other temporary work visas, said report author David Bier, a Cato immigration-policy analyst. Hundreds of thousands of foreign citizens, the vast majority from India, are stuck in a green card backlog with wait times reaching decades, Cato has reported.

The disparity between the proportion of green cards allotted to Indians and the share of green card applications made for Indians has persisted for years, but broadened significantly from 2018 to 2019, the report said.

“Nearly all (93 percent) of the immigrants waiting for green cards solely because of the low immigration limits are from India,” the report said.

Under federal law, no single nationality can receive more than 7 percent of the total green cards issued per year, though undistributed green cards can be added to that percentage on a first-come, first-served basis.

A bill to address green card waits, The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, passed the U.S. House of Representatives last fall, but has been tied up in the U.S. Senate amid a bitter dispute over whether it is fair to citizens of other countries and U.S. workers to start giving Indian citizens a lion’s share of green cards.

The bill calls for a maximum 85 percent of green cards to be allocated to Indian or Chinese citizens during the first year of implementation. In the second and third years, that would rise to 90 percent.

Bier, in the report, expressed support for the bill, saying the current law creates an “exceptionally unjust system.” Declines in Indians’ share of green cards “will have devastating consequences for recent Indian applicants, effectively guaranteeing that they will not receive green cards at all,” Bier wrote. “Many Indians would die waiting for green cards if they could stick it out, so most will leave the line before then.”

But Center for Immigration Studies lawyer John Miano said the bill “would create a total train wreck in the immigration system.”

Miano pointed to the controversial H-1B visa — intended for jobs requiring specialized skills, used heavily by tech firms and outsourcing companies, and dominated by Indian citizens — as a significant driver of the green card backlog.
Riaz Haq said…
Why #Trump's #H1Bvisas freeze will hurt #India most. #Indians received half a million #H1B visas issued between 2004 and 2012. Along with their dependents make up more than a fourth of the #Indian-#American population, which is currently around 3 million.https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53150214

Illegal immigration has long been the subject of fervid debate in the US.

Now President Donald Trump is making "legal immigration a scapegoat" with an eye on the upcoming election, says Poorvi Chotani, a managing partner at Law Quest, an immigration law firm with offices in the US and India.

"How can the US recover more than 17 million lost jobs due to the pandemic by keeping out a little more than half a million foreign workers for the rest of the year?" she told me.

Ms Chotani is mainly alluding to the H-1B visa programme that currently admits 85,000 immigrants each year, many for skilled jobs in the tech industry. On Tuesday, Mr Trump suspended this and other work visas that allowed foreigners to work in the US until the end of 2020.

The move will hit India hard.

Three quarters of the H-1B visas issued every year still go to India-born workers although the top seven Indian tech companies now pick up only 6% of the total visas under this programme.

Rise of Indian-Americans
"This is testimony to the skill sets of Indian nationals. And it has little to do with immigration. The H-1B is about temporary movement of high skilled workers. It doesn't impact net immigration numbers," Shivendra Singh, vice president of global trade development at Nasscom, the Indian technology industry trade group, says.

The H-1B visa programme is also the reason for the "rise of Indian-Americans into the highest educated and highest earning group, immigrant or native in the US," say the authors of The Other One Percent, a study of Indians in America.

US-based researchers Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapoor and Nirvikar Singh found that by the early 2010s, some 60% of the 100,000 India-born people entering the US each year through skilled-based paths were on the H-1B programme. They were mainly employed in computer-related occupations.

Nearly half of a million H-1B visas issued between 2004 and 2012 went to Indians. Along with their dependants they accounted for more than a fourth of the Indian-American population, which is currently around 3 million.

President Trump has made a tough immigration stance a key part of his campaign
The new entrants, the researchers noted, spoke different languages, and lived in different places from earlier Indian immigrants.

Hindi, Tamil and Telugu language speakers increased in size. Traditional Indian-American clusters in New York and Michigan were replaced by larger clusters in California and New Jersey. In many ways, the skilled visa programme, led to the birth of a "new map of Indian-Americans".

-------------

The future of the H-1B visa programme has been always difficult to predict, and has been susceptible to anti-immigration pressures. Steve Yale-Loehr, a Cornell law professor told the New York Times that this was the "largest crackdown on work visas that I have seen in my 35 years of practice".

It is unclear what will happen next. With the pandemic showing the world how to work remotely, will a post Covid future see a drastic reduction in the visas and more professionals working from home as businesses reduce dependencies on visas? Will short-term "technology visas" ease out relatively long term ones like H-1B?

"An overhaul of the immigration system has long been in process. Things have now been pushed over the edge because of the upcoming US presidential polls. It's all driven by populism, exacerbated by the pandemic and the rise in unemployment" says Ms Chotani.
Riaz Haq said…
#Trump's #H1B ban will hurt #India’s IT services #exports to the U.S., which depend significantly on the H-1B visa, have been big part of bilateral #US-India #trade. #Indian IT sector will be seriously undermined by it. #Modi #BJP #technology #Hindutva https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/the-hindu-explains-how-will-the-us-visa-ban-impact-india/article31935322.ece


"India’s IT services exports to the U.S., which depend significantly on the H-1B visa, have been an important constituent element of bilateral economic trade. U.S. imports of services from India were an estimated $29.6 billion in 2018, 4.9% more than in 2017, and 134% greater than 2008 levels, according to the U.S. Trade Representative..... Until now, the U.S. issued 85,000 H-1B visas annually, of which 20,000 went to graduate students and 65,000 to private sector applicants, and Indian nationals would garner approximately 70% of these. Now the Migration Policy Institute has been cited predicting that up to 219,000 workers would be blocked as a result of Mr. Trump’s proclamation."

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/the-hindu-explains-how-will-the-us-visa-ban-impact-india/article31935322.ece

Riaz Haq said…
There is a lot of resentment among American IT workers. Please check out the following:

"Indian IT Mafia Taking US Jobs"

https://www.saitj.org/assets/the-indian-it-mafia-and-h-1b-f-1-opt-l-1-corruption.pdf


https://www.brightworkresearch.com/how-indians-planned-the-takeover-of-the-us-it-market/
Riaz Haq said…
#Indians bag over 300,000 #H1B #visas, 74% of total approved for the world in 2021. #tech #India #US https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/indians-bagged-3-01-lakh-h-1b-visas-during-fiscal-2021-74-of-the-total/articleshow/90845244.cms

Riaz Haq said…
For US Visa, Over 2-Year Wait For New Delhi, Just 2 Days For Beijing
There's an appointment wait-time of 833 days for applications from Delhi and 848 days from Mumbai for visitor visas.

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/us-visa-appointment-wait-time-the-shocking-difference-for-indians-3387535

Indian visa applicants require a wait-time of over two years just for getting an appointment, a US government website showed, while the timeframe is only two days for countries like China.

There's an appointment wait-time of 833 days for applications from Delhi and 848 days from Mumbai for visitor visas, shows the US State Department's website. In contrast, the wait-time is only two days for Beijing and 450 days for Islamabad

For student visas, the wait time is 430 days for Delhi and Mumbai. Surprisingly, it's only one day for Islamabad, and two for Beijing.

Foreign Minister S Jaishankar, who is in the US, yesterday raised the issue of visa applications backlog with the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The top US diplomat said he's "extremely sensitive" to the issue and that they are facing a similar situation around the world, a challenge arising due to Covid.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-information-resources/wait-times.html
Riaz Haq said…
Layoffs in the Silicon Valley are proving to be exceptionally problematic for Indian Techies. Most them were working on H-1B visas & now have just a 60-day grace period to find another job.

https://www.wionews.com/videos/gravitas-the-impact-of-silicon-valley-layoffs-on-indian-techies-534175

------------------

Layoffs at Amazon: Many Indians impacted, have limited time to find a new job
Amazon is said to cut nearly 10,000 jobs globally this week. While the tech company hasn’t revealed any information about layoffs yet, impacted employees have taken to social media platforms like LinkedIn to share their distress.

https://www.indiatoday.in/amp/technology/news/story/layoffs-at-amazon-many-indians-impacted-have-limited-time-to-find-a-new-job-2297970-2022-11-16
Riaz Haq said…
#India's #visa temples attract #Hindu devotees aspiring to go abroad. These temples can be found in almost any Indian city with a #US consulate – 104.5 WOKV

https://www.wokv.com/news/world/indias-visa-temples/UL6DOVPCITX7RTECQF2UXUBURE/


CHENNAI, India — (AP) — Arjun Viswanathan stood on the street, his hands folded, eyes fixed on the idol of the Hindu deity Ganesh.

On a humid morning, the information technology professional was waiting outside the temple, the size of a small closet – barely enough room for the lone priest to stand and perform puja or rituals for the beloved elephant-headed deity, believed to be the remover of obstacles.

Viswanathan was among about a dozen visitors, most of them there for the same purpose: To offer prayers so their U.S. visa interviews would go smoothly and successfully. Viswanathan came the day before his interview for an employment visa.

“I came here to pray for my brother’s U.K. visa 10 years ago and for my wife’s U.S. visa two years ago,” he said. “They were both successful. So I have faith."

The Sri Lakshmi Visa Ganapathy Temple is a few miles north of the airport in Chennai (formerly Madras), a bustling metropolis on the Coromandel Coast in southeast India -- known for its iconic cuisine, ancient temples and churches, silk saris, classical music, dance and sculptures.

This “visa temple” has surged in popularity among U.S. visa seekers over the past decade; they can be found in almost any Indian city with a U.S. consulate. They typically gain a following through word of mouth or social media.

A mile away from the Ganesh temple is the Sri Lakshmi Narasimha Navaneetha Krishnan Temple, where an idol of Hanuman – a deity who has a human body and the face of a monkey — is believed to possess the power to secure visas. Also known as “Anjaneya,” this god stands for strength, wisdom and devotion. In this temple, he has earned the monikers “America Anjaneya” and “Visa Anjaneya.”

The temple’s longtime secretary, G.C. Srinivasan, said it wasn’t until 2016 that this temple became a “visa temple.”

“It was around that time that a few people who prayed for a visa spread the word around that they were successful, and it's continued,” he said.

A month ago, Srinivasan said he met someone who got news of his visa approval even as as he was circumambulating the Anjaneya idol — a common Hindu practice of walking around a sacred object or site.

On a recent Saturday night, devotees decorated the idol with garlands made of betel leaves. S. Pradeep, who placed a garland on the deity, said he was not there to pray for a visa, but believes in the god's unique power.

“He is my favorite god,” he said. “If you genuinely pray – not just for visa – it will come true.”

At the Ganesh temple, some devotees had success stories to share. Jyothi Bontha said her visa interview at the U.S. Consulate in Chennai went without a hitch, and that she had returned to offer thanks.

“They barely asked me a couple of questions,” she said. “I was pleasantly surprised.”

Bontha’s friend, Phani Veeranki, stood nearby, nervously clutching an envelope containing her visa application and supporting documents. Bontha and Veeranki, both computer science students from the neighboring state of Andhra Pradesh and childhood friends, are headed to Ohio.

Both learned about the visa temple on the social media platform Telegram.

Veeranki said she was anxious because she had a lot riding on her upcoming visa interview.

“I’m the first person in my family to go the United States,” she said. “My mother is afraid to send me. But I’m excited for the opportunities I’ll have in America.”

Veeranki then handed over the envelope to the temple’s priest for him to place at the foot of the idol for a blessing.

“We’ve been hearing about applications being rejected,” she said, her hands still folded in prayer. “I’m really hoping mine gets approved.”

If she and Bontha make it to Ohio, they want to take a trip to Niagara Falls.

“I’ve always wanted to see it,” Bontha said.
Riaz Haq said…
An Indian-origin Google employee lost job after 11 years of service.
The Google employee says it is difficult to express the pain after layoff news.
The H1B visa holders need to leave the country after 60 days if they job.

https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/indian-google-employee-with-h1b-visa-lost-job-after-11-years-of-service-says-countdown-begins-to-leave-us-2327310-2023-01-27

Google laid off thousands of employees and the process was not as smooth considering many were locked out of their systems without any notice. While the news of layoff is disheartening for many, the most impacted ones are the employees who got the job on an H1B visa. An Indian-origin employee with an H1B visa who worked at Google for more than 11 years also lost his job and found out about layoff news out of nowhere.

His wife also got locked out of the system and discovered in the morning that her access to any internal resources on the laptop was blocked. He penned down an emotional note on LinkedIn about his good and bad experiences at Google. He wrote that they were in disbelief after finding about the job they lost at the biggest tech company, even after giving many years to the company.

“Two out of the 12,000 Googlers were staring at each other in disbelief in that room while our 2-year-old daughter slept peacefully not knowing (thankfully so) what just hit her family. It’s hard to explain what this feels like, especially when you’ve spent a third of your life at a place that’s given you so much and more that it becomes an integral part of your identity. I spent 11.5 amazing years at Google - staying loyal and committed to its mission and believing in its “do no evil” motto,” he said on LinkedIn.


The laid-off Google employee with an H1B visa also expressed his pain of leaving the country after about two months if he doesn’t get a job in the US, where he is currently living. “The dreaded H1b countdown has begun and I’m starting to look for roles,” he said.


For those who are unaware, H1B visa holders or we can say immigrants, who get a job in the US, are not allowed to stay back in the country for more than 60 days if they lose a job. The H1B visa workers will have to find a new job in about 60 days or they will have to leave the country. The visas are typically issued for three years, and they can get extended depending on the employment.

Google did fire as many as 12,000 employees across globe, but the company has also promised to offer severance pay to the affected workers. The laid off Google employees will get 16 weeks of salary, two weeks for every additional year at Google, and at least 16 weeks of GSU vesting. Google will also pay 2022 bonuses and remaining vacation time. The sacked employees will also be entitled to receive six months of healthcare, job placement services as well as immigration support.
Riaz Haq said…
#Microsoft-owned platform #GitHub lays off entire #engineering team in #India. "We’re talking of ~100 engineers.....owning fewer and lower priority stuff" #layoffs #jobs #software https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/gadgets-news/microsoft-owned-platform-github-lays-off-entire-engineering-team-in-india/articleshow/99055653.cms?from=mdr
Riaz Haq said…
In the high-stakes race for supremacy in the burgeoning field of generative AI, India’s technology ecosystem is facing an uphill battle to catch up to global leaders. Despite being home to one of the world’s largest startup ecosystems, the South Asian economy has yet to make a material impact in the rapidly advancing AI arena.


https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/03/where-is-india-in-the-generative-ai-race/


No homegrown Indian contenders have emerged to challenge the dominance of large language model titans such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Ventures–backed Anthropic, or Google’s Bard.

“While there are over 1500 AI-based startups in India with over $4 billion of funding, India is still losing the AI innovation battle,” say analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein.


To their credit, many of India’s major startups are using machine learning to enhance aspects of their business operations. For instance, e-commerce giant Flipkart uses machine learning to refine customer shopping experiences, while Razorpay utilizes AI to combat payment fraud. Unicorn edtech Vedantu recently integrated AI into its live classes, making them more accessible and affordable.

Industry insiders attribute India’s dearth of AI-first startups in part to a skills gap among the nation’s workforce. Now the advent of generative AI could displace many service jobs, analysts warn.

“Among its over 5 million employees, IT in India still has a high mix of low-end employees like BPO or system maintenance. While AI isn’t at the level of causing disruptions, the systems are improving rapidly,” Bernstein analysts said.

Dev Khare, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners India, recently assessed the disruptive potential of AI and warned that jobs and processes in industries such as market research, content production, legal analysis, financial analysis, and various IT services jobs could be impacted.


However, for India, this disruption also presents an opportunity. A rapid gain in agriculture sector, which employs over 40% of the country’s workforce, is challenging, and similarly automation in the manufacturing industry may be unnecessary due to the abundant and affordable labor force.

Riaz Haq said…
In the high-stakes race for supremacy in the burgeoning field of generative AI, India’s technology ecosystem is facing an uphill battle to catch up to global leaders. Despite being home to one of the world’s largest startup ecosystems, the South Asian economy has yet to make a material impact in the rapidly advancing AI arena.


https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/03/where-is-india-in-the-generative-ai-race/


With timely upskilling and resource optimization, the services sector stands to benefit the most. Indian consultancy giants are already recognizing it. Infosys, for example, revealed last month that it is working on several generative AI projects to address specific aspects of clients’ businesses. TCS, on the other hand, is exploring cross-industry solutions to automate code generation, content creation, copywriting, and marketing.

In response to this landscape, New Delhi has declared that India will not regulate the growth of AI, taking a different approach from many other countries.

“AI is a kinetic enabler of the digital economy and innovation ecosystem. Government is harnessing the potential of AI to provide personalized and interactive citizen-centric services through digital public platforms,” India’s Ministry of Electronics and IT said last month.


Glimmer of hope
With the more established segment of India’s startup ecosystem staying muted in the generative AI race, young firms are stepping up to the occasion.


Startups like Gan, which enables businesses to repurpose videos at scale; TrueFoundry, which assists in building ChatGPT with proprietary data; and Cube, which facilitates AI-powered customer support on social media, are among those leading the charge.

The surge of interest has prompted nearly all venture funds in India to develop investment strategies in the emerging space.

Anandamoy Roychowdhary, partner at Surge, Sequoia India & Southeast Asia, pushed back that Indian startups have just started to explore applications around generative AI, saying several have been working on this space for many years.

“What cannot be denied though is the spectacular pace of projects and startup creation post the launch of ChatGPT. The Sequoia India and SEA team have been early to this trend, having partnered with 7 to 8 AI companies across earlier Surge cohorts,” he told TechCrunch.

Sequoia India and SEA is evaluating at least five firms in this space each week, he said.

Accel, another high-profile venture firm that has been operating in India for over a decade, said Wednesday that AI is one of the two main themes across the new cohort of its early-stage venture program.

However, some founders expressed concerns that these AI startups are unlikely to focus on creating their own large language models due to the lack of funding and conviction from investors to support such high compute and other infrastructure expenses.

An investor, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, cautioned that the current frenzy around AI deals somewhat echoes aspects of the crypto craze in 2021.


“Everyone wants to do genAI but no one knows how/what to do. This is the crypto arms race all over again,” the person said. “I doubt most Indian VCs ever really dug deep and understood crypto, because otherwise they wouldn’t have made so many utterly crap investments.”
Riaz Haq said…
#US deports 21 #Indian #students in a single day. Their mobile phones & WhatsApp conversations were scrutinized. They were instructed to exit the country calmly, with warnings of severe legal consequences should they voice objections. #immigration #F1Visa
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/latest-updates/students-deported-from-us-may-face-five-year-entry-ban/articleshow/102870578.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Students who were deported from the United States and had their student visa cancel could face a five-year entry ban to the country, TOI said in a report.

These students can also face problems when they try entering other popular international study destinations such as Canada, the UK, and Australia, experts said

The same report also said that this can create long-term implications for these individuals if they want to get an H1B visa in the future unless endorsed by major MNCs.

Financially, the cancellation of the F1 visa results in substantial losses as students forfeit expenses including visa fees, airfare, university application costs, consultant charges, and more, which could total around ₹3 lakh.

Twenty-one Indian students were deported from the United States in a single day, sparking concerns about visa-related complications. Many of these students, hailing from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, had completed visa formalities and arrived in the US with aspirations of pursuing higher education.


Reports indicate that these students were sent back following thorough document checks by immigration officers, leading to their brief detainment. The instances occurred across airports in Atlanta, Chicago, and San Francisco. Students shared their confusion, as they believed they had fulfilled all requirements for their visas and were prepared to join colleges.

Lacking clear explanations for their deportation, some students revealed that their mobile phones and WhatsApp conversations were scrutinized. Moreover, they were instructed to exit the country calmly, with warnings of severe legal consequences should they voice objections. The universities these students were en route to included institutions in Missouri and South Dakota.

As per data for May and June, which is typically when F1 visas for the fall semester are issued, about 42,750 students bagged F1 visas from five consulates in India. In sharp contrast, in the same period in 2022, only 38,309 F1 visas were issued.


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