US to Ease H-1B Visa Rules for Skilled Indian Workers as PM Modi Visits. Check Details

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi pays an official visit to the US, the Joe Biden administration is expected to make it easier for Indians to live and work in the US.

The US State Department is expected to announce that a small number of Indians and other foreign workers with H-1B visas will be able to renew those visas in the US, without having to travel abroad, Reuters quoted sources as saying.

The move is part of a pilot program that could be expanded in the coming years to help some skilled workers enter or remain in the country.

Indian nationals are by far the most active users of the US H-1B program and made up 73 percent of the approximately 442,000 H-1B workers in fiscal 2022.

Another U.S. official said, “We all recognize that mobility of our people is a huge asset to us. And so our goal is to approach that in a multifaceted way. The State Department is really working hard on creative ways to make changes to things.”

A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on questions about the types of visas eligible or the timing of the pilot launch.

“The pilot model will start with a small number of cases with the goal of scaling up the initiative over the next one to two years,” the spokesperson said, while declining to specify a small number.

Steps can change and are not finalized until announced. The White House declined to comment.

The US government provides 65,000 H-1B visas to companies looking for skilled foreign workers, plus an additional 20,000 visas to workers with advanced degrees each year. Visas last for three years and can be renewed for another three years.

The companies hiring the most H-1B workers in recent years include India-based Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services as well as US-based Amazon, Alphabet and Meta, according to US government data.

The spokesperson said the ability for some temporary foreign workers to renew visas in the United States will provide resources for conducting visa interviews at consulates abroad.

The pilot program will also include some workers with L-1 visas, which are available to people who move within a company to a position in the United States, one of the sources said.

A separate initiative to clear the backlog of visa applications at US embassies in India is finally showing signs of progress and is expected to be included in discussions between the two countries’ delegations in Washington this week.

India has long had concerns about the difficulty its citizens are having in obtaining visas to live in the US, including workers in the technology industry. More than 10 million jobs remained open in the United States at the end of April, according to the Labor Department.

The Biden administration has spent months working to improve visa access for Indians, trying to get around the lack of political will in Congress to comprehensively overhaul US immigration policy. President Joe Biden wants to bridge the world’s two largest democracies, in part in an effort to better compete with China.

(With inputs from Reuters)