US to change L1 and H1-B Visa Application Fees

The new Visa policy introduced by US is quite interesting. Some changes are introduced for L1 and H-1B visas. The new policy has steeply increased the application fees for these H1-B and L1 visas. This new scheme is applicable to all companies which have more 50% of employees on H1-B or L1 visas. This is more applicable to Indian companies because, most of them have Indians working there at USA on H1 or L1 visas. USA citizens working in these Indian companies are less than 50%; hence the policy will have considerable effect on Indian service companies.

The policy proposes to raise the fees on H-1B visas from $320 to $2,320 and fee on L-1 visas given to multi-national transferees from $320 to $2,570. Almost $2000 increase on every visa application, almost equivalent to 92,000 INR, which is not a small amount. And after paying this huge amount the companies will not be assured be about the visa approval. Hence irrespective of the outcome the company needs to pay 92000 rupees for each visa application.

For a rough estimate let us consider the data given by Mr.Gopalkrishna, the CEO of Infosys. According to him anywhere between 2000 to 3000 employees of Infosys apply for these visa every year which is almost equivalent to 18.4 Crore rupees( 92000 * 2000 Rupees) . This means Infosys alone will cough up extra18 Crore to government of USA. If we consider other big service companies in India like TCS, Wipro ,HCL and CTS which also send Indian nationals to US on L1 and H1-B visas then, almost (18*5) 90 Crore rupees will be given to government of USA by our Indian companies. Hence from this new policy the government of USA will be able to generate an excess fund of almost 100 Crore from India companies.

USA is planning to use this money for the purpose of securing their borders using unmanned surveillance systems. USA also seems to have an intention to reduce the number of visa applications which in turn will reduce the number of people working in USA on H1-B and L1 visas and hence create more jobs for higher salaried USA citizens. The new government in USA seems to be very much exited to avoid immigrants and create more jobs to US citizens. Let us see if all these measures can prevent outsourcing of software jobs from USA. According to me it is not at all possible.