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An association of more than 2,100 small and medium-sized IT businesses in the United States that are predominantly owned and operated by Indian Americans has urged lawmakers to double the H-1B quota from the current 65,000 to address the country’s massive shortage of skilled workforce.
The H-1B visa is a nonimmigrant visa that allows US companies to hire foreign workers in specialized occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise.
Tech companies rely on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.
More than 240 members of the league called ITServe gathered in the US capital on Tuesday for their first-ever in-person congressional advocacy day during which they plan to reach out to congressmen and senators to brief them on the massive shortage of a highly skilled workforce in the United States.
They said the shortage of a highly skilled workforce is affecting their business and the American advantage in general.
In addition to increasing the number of H-1B visas from the current 65,000 to 130,000 annually, ITServe is also urging legislators to invest more in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education in the United States to develop the required high-level skilled force within the country.
Coinciding with the Congress call for ITServe, Indian American Congressman Raja Krishnamurthy on Tuesday introduced the Highly Skilled Immigration Reform for Employment (HIRE) Act.
The law would boost U.S. competitiveness by helping close the skills gap — the space between the skills required for the jobs employers need to fill, and the skills possessed by current potential employees.
This will help close the skills gap by providing additional funding to enhance STEM education programs in US elementary and secondary schools while doubling the number of available H-1B visas annually from 65,000 to 130,000 to allow for this. American employers, including those in the biotechnology sectors, are scrambling to attract top talent from around the world.
“Creating jobs and building the economy of the future requires us to lead the way in technology by developing our local workforce while attracting the best talent from around the world,” said Krishnamurthy.
“The US needs to maintain its leadership in technology and innovation,” said Vinay Mahajan, President of the IServe Alliance.
“The startup ecosystem must be supercharged. A critical component of both is highly skilled workers.”
“The United States has a significant skills gap—the availability of workers versus opportunities for IT talent. The HIRE Act focuses on reducing this gap through highly skilled immigration and funding the development of local STEM talent. We need to The brightest minds from around the world to maintain our vast leadership in technology and innovation.”
ITServe represents more than 2,100 US IT companies located throughout the United States. “We’re in 23 countries. We provide more than 175,000 jobs, high-skilled employment in the United States, and we also contribute $12 billion to the United States’ GDP.
He said the United States is a leader in technology and they should maintain that leadership. And the startup ecosystem is one of the best in the world.
“But for both of those things leadership in innovation and technology and for a good startup ecosystem, what you need is a common component and that is highly skilled people or highly skilled people in IT. There is a lot of skills gap right now in the US Especially the kind of availability of people who have the kind of skills that they need versus what they have locally here.
“What we need to do is do a lot of high school migration from different countries around the world. Our focus today is to highlight to lawmakers that there is still a huge skills gap in the United States in the high-skill area,” he said, Adding that the IT service supports the HIRE Act.
According to Anju Vallabhaneni, of Columbus Ohio, ITServe members will assess lawmakers on the problem they are facing.
“The main problem we face is getting the right talent. To get the right talent, we rely on recruiting talent from all over the world.”
“What they raise is the fact that we need to expand our cadre of technologists in this country. Obviously, we always need to develop local talent in the United States, but at the same time, we need to attract the best and brightest, most hardworking and entrepreneurial people from around the world,” Congressman Krishnamurthy said.
“Including H-1B workers. We’ve had the same very limited cap of 65,000 people for 33 years, and that needs to be increased. It needs to be doubled. That’s what we’re proposing as part of the higher act. I look forward to working with ITServe,” he said.
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