Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has said the H1-B Visa program that allows U.S. employers to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations for a period of time should be ended.
businessinsider
Trump’s statement evoked sharp reaction from India with Arvind Subramanian, the chief economic adviser to India’s finance ministry, saying it will pose a risk to India’s growth model.
Notably, India is the biggest beneficiary of H-1B visa programme than any other nation in the world.
Arvind Subramanian, chief economic adviser to finance ministry. ibtimes
According to the latest US government data, Asia’s third-biggest economy accounted for about two-thirds of the skilled-worker visas given in the year through September 2014.
Despite the fact that Trump’s company uses H-1B visa programme, the New York real estate mogul who leads in the race for the Republican party’s nomination for president, called for scrapping it.
Indian IT workers cds.edu
At a debate on Thursday night, Trump called the program “very, very bad for workers” and said “we shouldn’t have it.”
He said the programme in reality it doesn’t benefit the U.S. workers.
India exports nearly 60 per cent of its software to th eUS, with part of those earnings coming from on-site work. Researchers at the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimate that earnings generated by skilled visa holders from India are almost equal to the nation’s total exports of goods and services to the US.