India IT sector flags H-1B role in addressing US skill shortages

India’s IT industry body Nasscom on Tuesday urged the United States to consider the H-1B programme’s role in addressing skill shortages after the Trump administration proposed a more than $100,000 fee for new visas.

Nasscom said the number of H-1B workers employed by Indian IT companies has fallen sharply over the past five years as firms expanded their local U.S. workforce.

The industry body said it was “actively engaged” with all key stakeholders after the US on Monday released a proposed regulation to codify an unprecedented fee of $103,265 on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers.

Critics of the programme argue that it is abused by many companies that replace American workers with cheaper foreign labour.

“The H-1B visa programme has long served an important purpose in addressing short-term skill gaps in the US,” Nasscom said in a statement.

India’s $315 billion IT sector has had to overhaul its decades-old strategy of rotating skilled talent into U.S. projects after President Donald Trump first imposed a fee for H-1B visas last year.

In June, however, a US District Court in Boston struck down the move, concluding that it constituted an unlawful tax Congress never authorized.

Nasscom said the industry had invested more than $1.1 billion to strengthen the U.S. STEM talent pipeline through university partnerships and programmes to upskill U.S. workers.

“A proposed increase in visa fees must therefore be viewed in the context of the programme’s original purpose of enabling access to temporary skills where there is a shortage in the U.S.,” it said.