The co-chair of the India Caucus in the US Senate says he and other members of a congressional delegation that visited India earlier this month will press the State Department to look into complaints that the recent rate of denials of H1-B visas had been higher for applicants from India compared to other countries.
Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, said they had often heard this complaint, especially from tech companies, during their trip to Hyderabad. Warner also said he was exploring several legislative and administrative measures to help Indian visa applicants. Among them is the Startup Act, a bipartisan legislation that Warner has introduced along with Republican Senator Jerry Moran, which would aim to lower the dollar amount threshold for those seeking an entrepreneur’s visa by starting a business in the US, and staple a green card to the degree of students who come to the US to get advanced degrees in STEM or Science, Technology and Mathematics disciplines. Warner said he also supported raising or removing annual caps for H1-B visas.
Asked if the provision championed by Senator Chuck Schumer in 2010 to increase visa fees for some categories of H1-B applicants had worked as intended, Warner said, “Sometimes in Congress we link things that may or may not necessarily be linked.” The visa fee hike was supposed to help pay for securing the US border with Mexico to deter illegal immigration from that country. Warner added that despite the fee hike, he still saw strong demand for H1-B visas from India.
The senator also wants President Barack Obama’s administration to speed up the negotiation of a Bilateral Investment Treaty or BIT with India, and said he would press the government on the issue again this week. He has written to President Obama earlier urging him to make this a priority. While officials in the State Department and the US Trade Representative’s office have supported a BIT with India, the Obama administration is yet to finish its review of the model BIT language — started two and a half years ago — and no new treaty can be concluded until this process is completed.
Another member of the congressional delegation, Democratic Congressman Joe Crowley from New York, said he had called on Indian officials to relax limits on Foreign Direct Investment in the banking and insurance sectors.
Crowley is a co-chair of the India Caucus in the US House of Representatives.
The lawmakers said the delegation also raised the issue of India’s nuclear liability law, which US industry has complained does not conform to global norms and the Convention on Suppleme- ntary Compensa-tion. They were told by Indian officials that the law would not be revisited, but the Indian government could consider making some changes on the regulatory front.
