After the introduction of the new $100,000 H-1B visa fee for more than a month, the US firms now appear to have started tweaking their hiring policies to minimise the impact as this visa was key to bringing foreign tech talent, most of them Indians, into the country.
H1B Visa Fee Affecting New Hiring
These latest updates had a major impact as a large number of companies have halted their sponsorship of H-1B visas for certain job roles, and switched to local hires and workers who already have H-1B visas.
This is also due to the reason that the new one-time fee would only apply to new applicants, and not current holders or those applying for renewals as clarified by the Donald Trump-led administration, in the days after the announcement of the H-1B visa changes.
This fee would only apply to visa applications submitted on or after September 21 for workers outside the US, said the U.SCitizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) at the start of this week.
Besides this, those who want to change visa types, especially theindividuals moving from an F-1 student visa to an H-1B, would be exempt from paying the fee.
Although earlier some of the large companies have said that they will continue to hire through the new program.
At the same time some others have said that they will be suspending their sponsorship of visas or reducing the number of sponsorship-dependent hires, ae per the media report.
Updated H1B Visa Fee Impacting Operations
In this regard, the IT consulting firm Cognizant, founded in India and headquartered in New Jersey, has not publicly confirmed halting sponsorships.
But, the company clarified that they would
“Only consider applicants for this position who are legally authorized to work in the United States without the need of employer sponsorship,” in a job listing for a South Carolina-based software engineer role.
Moving ahead, the fee is expected to have “limited near-term impact on our operations,” as per a company representative.
One of the largest sponsors of H-1B visas, Tata Consultancy Services has clearly declared that it would not be hiring employees through the program.
The company has a sufficient number of H-1B visa employees in the US, and would therefore focus on hiring local talent at present, said TCS CEO K Krithivasan in a media interaction.
Other players like Retail corporation Walmart has also halted hiring candidates which require new H-1B visas, as confirmed by the company.
