US government shutdown may delay visa processing, impact on IT to be marginal: Som Mittal

NEW DELHI: Calling the US government shutdown unfortunate, Som Mittal, President of NASSCOM told ET Now that since Indian firms do not do much work for the Federal government; the failure of US to meet the funding deadline will not impact IT.


The shutdown may cause a delay in visa processing which will in turn have an impact on the mobility of employees to US for work, Mittal said. "However, this impact will be marginal. Travel to US will become a little for a few weeks," Mittal added.

Asked about the impact if the shutdown continues for a longer time, Mittal said that it will affect the US economic macros. "The impact on Indian It firms will be marginal at most," Mittal assured.

For the first time in nearly two decades, the US government staggered into a partial shutdown Monday at midnight after congressional Republicans stubbornly demanded changes in the nation's health care law as the price for essential federal funding and President Barack Obama and Democrats adamantly refused.

As Congress gridlocked, Obama said a "shutdown will have a very real economic impact on real people, right away," with hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed and veterans' centers, national parks, most of the space agency and other government operations shuttered.

He laid the blame at the feet of House Republicans, whom he accused of seeking to tie government funding to ideological demands, "all to save face after making some impossible promises to the extreme right wing of their party."

House Speaker John Boehner responded a short while later on the House floor. "The American people don't want a shutdown and neither do I," he said. Yet, he added, the new health care law "is having a devastating impact. ... Something has to be done."

There are few issues Republicans feel as passionately about as the health care reform, which they have dubbed "Obamacare." They see the plan, intended to provide coverage for the millions of Americans now uninsured, as wasteful and restricting freedom by requiring most Americans to have health insurance.

(With inputs from AP)