(Image source from: Moneycontrol)

As Donald Trump's administration intensified scrutiny of H1B work visas resulting in uncertainty among IT professionals, NASSCOM chairman Rishad Premji said that it is crucial to apart the sentiment from the fact, regarding the visas.  

Premji, the Chief Strategy Officer and Member of the Board at Indian IT services giant Wipro, was in the New York to address the NASSCOM C summit.

The H1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that permits companies of United States to employ foreign workers in forte occupations that requisite theoretical or technical expertise. The technology establishments rely on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.   

He declared that of the 65,000 HIB visas issued each year, the Indian IT industry utilizes less than 10,000, adding that 70 percent of visas go to Indians but not to Indian companies. This is very, very essential to appreciate.  

He said that it is as well a face that by 2020 there will be shortfall of 2.4 million people, according to data from the Department of Labour, in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) talent in U.S. and half of these will be in the computer and IT related services.

He further stressed that it is important to keep in mind that there is a base of seven million people in the technology space in U.S.

"We are talking about 10,000 people on a seven million strong base. We have got to put things in context and separate the sentiment from the fact," he said.

He said that legislatively, nothing has changed regarding the H1B visas. While there are a lot of legislation's being proposed, "our sense is that it is difficult to predict them going through. But there is a strong enough conviction that they will not go through in their current avatar. It is difficult to get the both the Senate and the House to pass off on these," he said referring to various legislation's proposing changes and amendments to the H1B visa rules and processes.

By Sowmya Sangam