Source: The Thunderstorm
A small visa suddenly sparked a huge wave. The United States and India, this complicated partnership, suddenly broke?
The cause of things is a new visa policy that officially landed in the United States.The application fee for the H-1B work visa, from the original thousands of dollars, rose to $100,000.
The news comes out that the world's most burning pot, not elsewhere, is the United States and India. The two countries on social media, filled with anger and blasphemy against each other, full of fire medicine.
To put it logically, the U.S. visa policy is global and not specifically tailored for your Indian family.Why can such a visa clearly put the huge cracks in U.S.-India relations on the table?
Behind that, it is obviously not so simple.
To understand this problem, we must first understand what this H-1B visa is.
The H-1B visa is a temporary work visa in the United States, not an immigrant visa. It is valid for three years and can be extended to six years. The annual quota is 65,000, and another 20,000 is dedicated to applicants who have obtained a master's degree or above in the United States.
The H-1B visaAt the beginning, it was established to introduce global elites to American enterprises. Of course, this also includes India.
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, and Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, both embarked on the American technology stage with H-1B.
Alvin Krishna, the current CEO of International Business Machinery Corporation (IBM) in the United States, is also a representative of H-1B immigrants. He is an Indian engineer who took over IBM in 2020, taking the company to the forefront of artificial intelligence, hybrid cloud and quantum technology.
In other words, U.S. innovation is closely linked to those highly skilled foreign talents, including those from India.
That’s why there’s a lot of anger after visa tightening.Tightening visas will restrict the development of the U.S. technology industry.
On the other hand, many Americans are also calling for tightening the visa policy.
After the visa was tightened,U.S. companies should at least prioritize hiring U.S. workers, in particular to prevent the so-calledThe "Indian immigration fraud" has closed the loophole in which Indians rely on low wage requirements and batch applications to squeeze in on a large scale。
According to last year’s data, 71 percent of U.S. H-1B visas were taken away by Indians.The H-1B visa has become an Indian visa.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of applications come from India.
The U.S. Immigration Bureau was only allowed to take the "random lottery", but because the absolute majority of Indians in the application base, the result is still that the majority of the seats fall into the hands of Indians.
The winning Indian,Although they are all related to the science and technology industry, they are largely divided into two categories.From the image belowcanAs you can see, American tech companies and Indian outsourcing companies have always been the head of visa applications.
They are obviously the targets of key attacks:
Native American technology giantand directlyRecruiting Indian engineers.Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc., because of the explosion of artificial intelligence, cloud computing, the demand for highly skilled foreign talents has increased significantly, and the number of directly applying for H-1B has also increased.
And Indian outsourcing companies, rely on the advantage of low-priced labor to contract orders. They outsource IT system development, maintenance, technical support and back-office operations back to India, and then send engineers and project managers directly to the offices of American customers to "stay". And these people almost entirely rely on H-1B visas. Typical representatives are local Indian IT service giants such as Infosys and Tata Consulting (TCS). They are headquartered in India, but have branches in the United States, which are responsible for docking customers.
It can be said that the new visa policy of the United States has accurately targeted India's "life gate"-relying on visas to outsource technical services is the pillar of India's service trade.
We are an account, Indian software giant.The Infinity (Infosys）In fiscal year 2024, 2504 initial H-1B approvals were obtained.
According to the new rules, the company will pay an additional US$250 million for visa fees alone, and its profits will directly evaporate US$250 million. As soon as the news broke, the company's share price fell 3.4% that day.
More than 60% of the export market of India's IT service industry is in the United States.
Once the United States restricts expatriates, Indian companies can only temporarily transfer their business back to China or nearby countries for digestion. The impact on the Indian economy can be imagined.
Therefore, it is not difficult to understand why the US-India relationship will therefore appear new cracks.
But if you think this is just a dispute over visas, make it simple. As Reuters commented:
U.S. visa policy adjustment between the U.S. and IndiaServices trade disputes。
In fact, trade in services is just a microcosm of the continued bad relationship between the United States and India. The United States has closed more than one door to India.
This year, bothgoodstradeYiThe same goes for “Vengeance.”
Trade talks between the United States and India have not made much progress.June, even though India has opened some agricultural products to the United States, the United States is still pushing its luckIndia has opened up the market for dairy and agricultural products.
But dairy products are India's red line, which affects the livelihoods of about 80 million small farmers. In India, cows are a source of wealth for almost every farmer. In order to protect this industry, India has huge dairy cooperatives and federations, covering almost all farmers across the country. If the United States wants to open up the dairy market, it will be tantamount to directly impacting this huge community of interests. India naturally would not agree.
AugustThe United States threatens to impose tariffs on India's purchase of Russian oil.This led to the cancellation of a round of negotiations.
There is still no significant progress in the negotiations between the two sides.。
It is also precisely because the United States has increased H-1B fees and imposed tariffs on India. Against this trade background, Indian Foreign Minister Sujaysen recently stated that the increase in visa fees has becomeIndia seeks new trade arrangements。
So you see, from visas for talent flow, to daily necessities trade, to international strategy, between the United States and India, there has been a comprehensive and deep rift. The skyrocketing visa fee is just the latest and most dramatic scene.
Finally, Tanner would like to share two opinions.
The first,The United States 'punch hit India's rice bowl and was also tearing down the load-bearing wall of its own Silicon Valley.
Secondly,This makes it even more clear to us how vulnerable the so-called “allies” are.