According to Mr. Chauhan, the biggest attraction of H-1B visas is the opportunity to earn much higher salaries. Higher wages are offered in the US, and for someone who is the first in their family to achieve a professional qualification, such a salary can be life-changing. “The H-1B craze is directly related to the wage gap between India and the US for the same engineering positions,” he says.
But not everyone is happy with the program. For many, the H-1B program is a desire to obtain permanent residence or a US green card. While the H-1B itself is a temporary work visa, it allows visa holders to live and work in the US for up to six years. At this time, many H-1B holders apply for green cards through employment-based immigration categories that are usually sponsored by their employers. It takes time.
More than a million Indians, including dependents, are currently waiting in employment-based green card categories. “Getting a green card means signing up for an endless wait of 20 to 30 years,” says Atal Agarwal, who runs a firm in India that uses artificial intelligence to find visa options around the world for education and work.
Mr. Aggarwal moved to the US after graduating in 2017 and worked for a software company for several years. He says that getting the H-1B visa was pretty easy, but then it seemed like he “hit a dead end.” He returned to India.
“This is an unstable situation. Your employer has to sponsor you, and since the path to a green card is so long, you’re mostly tied to them. If you lose your job, you only have 60 days to find a new one. Every person who goes to the United States for merits must receive a green card within three to five years.”
This may be one of the reasons that the visa program was linked to the immigration program. “The H-1B is a visa for highly skilled workers. This is not an immigrant visa. But it faces immigration and illegal immigration and is becoming a sensitive issue,” Shivendra Singh, vice-president of global trade development at Nasscom, India’s technology industry trade group, told the BBC.
