In a proposal expected to hit Indian information technology (IT) companies the most, US software giant Microsoft Corporation has suggested a whopping fee of $10,000 (over Rs 5 lakh) for a new category of H-1B visas and $15,000 (more than Rs 7.5 lakh) for permanent residency or Green Card. This could raise a huge $5 billion over a decade, it said.
Both the new categories of H-1B and Green Cards, according to the Microsoft plan, would have annual capacity of 20,000 and would be restricted to STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). The money so raised, it says, would be used for the STEM education programmes.
Given that Indian techies grab the maximum number of H-1B visas, such a proposal if accepted by the US legislature would hit the Indian IT companies the most. Such a proposal from Microsoft comes at a time when the visiting External Affairs Minister, S M Krishna, is expected to raise the issue of increase in H-1B visas in his meeting with the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, in New York early this week.
The proposal was revealed at a Washington-based think-tank gathering last week by Brad Smith, general counsel & executive vice president, legal & corporate affairs, Microsoft. He said the money thus raised would be used to generate the necessary skilled manpower in the coming years.
Microsoft currently has an opening of 6,000 jobs in the US, of which 3,400 are for researchers, developers and engineers. “Too few American students – especially those who have historically been underserved and under-represented – are achieving the levels of education required to secure jobs in innovation-based industries,” he said in his remarks to the Brookings Institute, an eminent American think tank.
