Visa fee hike issue nothing new during US polls: Nasscom President

The information technology and services industry body Nasscom on Wednesday said issues such as visa fee hike is ‘nothing new’ during the US elections, but there are some concerns which both the countries should address.

“I wouldn’t say there is any major cause for concern although we do have in principle very serious concerns at any discriminatory approaches that are followed in the US. The increase (in visa fee) is applicable only to the so called 50:50 companies — effectively implying that it is for Indian companies, although other foreign companies also adopt the same business model,” R Chandrashekhar, President, Nasscom, told reporters here.

Talking to media on the sidelines of the launch of report ‘The Future of Internet in India’, he said: “What we do see is, people are looking at all the logical things namely the shortage of skills in the US, the needs of corporate services to remain competitive, and the US business houses themselves pointing out the need for immigration to the skill gaps.”

“Looking at all these factors, we should wait for this phase to be over and there is no major cause for concern as of now.”

The US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in his campaigns has proposed to raise the minimum wage for H-1B visas, the most-popular work visa for Indian technology professionals.

“What we have to see on every side is not rhetoric but actions...In this case, the actions which have already been taken, have been discriminatory and are causing injury to the industry and imposing costs,” Chandrashekhar said.

In December, US President Barack Obama had signed the Omnibus Bill with a $1.8-trillion spending package that introduced a hefty $4,000 fee for certain categories of the H-1B visa and $4,500 for the L1 visa.

Since the fee hike is only for those companies that employ more than 50 workers and more than half of the employees are foreigners, Indian IT companies, such as Infosys and Wipro, are at the receiving end.

According to Commerce Ministry, Deputy US Trade Representative Robert Holleyman, during his recent visit to India, told the Ministry that once a policy is part of the appropriation Bill (or Omnibus Bill), it has to run its full course and the decision cannot be terminated mid-way. India will also take up the matter urgently at the strategic and commercial dialogue scheduled between the two countries in New Delhi on August 30-31.

And, if the matter is not resolved through bilateral talks, approaching the dispute settlement panel of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) could be India’s only option. As per estimates by Nasscom, the move will cause losses of $400 million annually to Indian companies.

Asked on the impact of GST on the IT industry, Chandrashekhar said: “Specifically in things like having multiple cities of registration, in internal transactions of companies becoming liable to tax, which is not the case today, and such internal tax being taxed in a service sector where goods are intangible and very difficult to value,” he said.

“We should not move from a fairly straight forward regulatory environment, which exist today, to far more complicated and intricate litigation prone environment tomorrow. We want the GST without integration of all these problems,” he added.

Meanwhile, Nasscom along with Akamai Technologies released a report ‘The Future of Internet in India' – that said Internet users are expected to reach 730 million by 2020. According to the report, 70 per cent of e-commerce transactions are expected to happen via mobile and 75 per cent of the new internet user growth would come from the rural areas.

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