Indian IT pros create jobs, don't misuse H-1B visas: US report

BANGALORE, INDIA: Indian IT organizations don't use up most of the yearly H-1B allotment, in a clear deviation from the claims by a section of United States' Senators that Indian professionals deprive the local talent of jobs, asserts a recent report by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP).

The report, in fact, goes to the extent of stating that Indian techies create jobs in the country, reports PTI.

Sample this: from financial year 2006 to 2011, the top 25 India-based companies utilized 6-15 per cent of the new H-1B visas approved for initial employment, and 19.9 per cent in fiscal 2012. In FY 2012, the 26,865 new H-1B visas approved for the top 25 India-based companies equaled only 0.017 per cent of the US labor force. Many of these companies perform services under contract to assist U.S. companies in focusing on core business functions, it said.

"Research indicates measures to restrict the use of H-1B visas are not based on sound evidence and would represent a serious policy mistake that would shift more work and resources outside the United States," said the report's author Stuart Anderson, NFAP's executive director.

Rather than harming US workers or the US economy, H-1B visa holders contributed "between 10 and 25 per cent of the aggregate productivity growth... that took place in the United States from 1990 to 2010," according to economists Giovanni Peri, Kevin Shih and Chad Sparber.

Peri, Shih and Sparber, according to PTI, also found, "An increase in foreign STEM workers of 1 per cent of total employment increased the wage of native college educated workers (both STEM and non-STEM) over the period 1990-2000 by 4 to 6 per cent."