IT firms breathe easy as Donald Trump proposes merit-based immigration

US govt realised challenges in getting high-skilled workers while undertaking immigration reform

US President Donald Trump’s proposal for immigration reforms to encourage merit-based migration might help India’s export-focused software and information technology (IT) sector.

Indian IT companies, such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro, as well as multinationals like Google, IBM and Facebook send engineers on work visas to work on client locations in the US. They account for nearly 70 per cent of H1B visas issued every year to high-tech workers.

On Tuesday night, in his first State of the Union address to a joint session of the US Congress, Trump said, “Nations around the world, like Canada, Australia and