Make hay while H-1B stutters

The US, poor scared thing, is tightening its immigration procedures. Foreign workers on non-immigrant H-1B work visas will need to return to their home country to apply for permanent residency or green card. Visiting Marco Rubio stressed that these reforms are universal measures, and no single country is being targeted. Sweet. Fact: Indians accounted for 70% of H-1B visas last year. So, yes, they're feeling the heat.

A green card is often sponsored by the employer with the applicant continuing to work at the company while waiting for change in status to take effect. Share of green cards per country is capped at 7% annually. Considering the larger pool of Indians applying for them, the wait is long. The new rule will disadvantage the Indian H-1B holder in the green card sponsorship pool. Not just lives disrupted but companies, too, will have to deal with disruption of losing valued highly skilled workers. For many companies, keeping an employee on the books without their work output will not be an option. While the US does a cost-benefit analysis of tightening immigration processes, other countries looking to expand their high-end industries can dip into this pool. Indian skilled workers should actively consider other countries with less disruptive transitions to permanent residency as their destination.

India should see this development in Trump's US as an opportunity. Stop looking the gift horse in the mouth and focus, instead, on building a robust domestic industrial sector. Encourage US companies to set up Indian outposts to house Indian H-1B workers as they wait for the change of status to go through (or not). India should leverage the steady flow of trained workers to build companies in high-skill and hi-tech sectors.