Consultations between India and the US at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on the dispute over the increase in non-immigrant visa fees, which has adversely affected Indian IT companies, have failed to produce an amicable solution.
India will make a last-ditch attempt to settle the issue when Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets US President Barack Obama in Washington next month, failing which it may ask WTO to set up a dispute settlement panel to sort out the matter, a government official told BusinessLine .
“The US kept insisting that the decision to impose higher visa fees was not targeted at Indian IT companies. US officials refused to consider our suggestion of a roll-back,” the official said. The US introduced an additional fee of $4,000 and $4,500 for certain categories of H1B visa and L1 visas (both non-immigrant visas), respectively, last December. The H-1B and L-1 categories of non-immigrants, for which there has been a significant fee hike, are the ones that are most extensively used by Indian service suppliers in the US, especially in the IT sector, according to the Commerce Ministry.
With the bilateral consultations failing to produce results, the next obvious step is to go in for a full-fledged dispute by asking the WTO to set up a settlement panel.
But India will wait and see if Modi’s US visit produces any results before it takes the ultimate step. “The issue of visa fee hike will be taken up by the Prime Minister with the US President Obama. We will have to see if he can convince the US government to reconsider its decision. If not, we will consider going in for a full-fledged dispute by asking for a panel,” the official said.
According to IT body Nasscom’s estimates, the visa fee hike would cause about $400 million losses annually to Indian industry.
The US accounts for close to 60 per cent of software exports from India.