Allaying apprehensions of the 50/50 Bill in the US largely being an instrument to thwart the number of H-1B and L-1 visa foreign workers by mandating the compulsory 50% recruitment of local citizens, Som Mittal, president of Nasscom, the apex body of the software industry, said the Bill, even if enacted and passed, will not have any seeming impact on Indian IT workers moving from offshore to onshore. He claimed that the Bill will be more tough on visa applications of non-techie foreign workers in other industries like banking, retail, manufacturing and other service industries, compared to the IT sector.
?Hardly 20,000 foreign workers were granted visas in the last 4 months out of the 85,000 under the H-1 B quota. That is the stringency of standards even without such an act?, he said. With US senate elections slated to be held around November, the Durbin-Grassely work visa Bill is doubtful for now. However, Mittal said H-1 B and L-1 reforms are part of the comprehensive immigration reforms Bill aimed at curbing illegal immigration in that country.
To a question on tanking of registrations at 5.93 lakh by the IT workers on the national skills registry(NSR), Mittal denied and said it is not going wayward and will be shoring up numbers following the hiring spree of IT majors. So far, IT/ITES workers of 83 companies had joined and the vector is mainly strong on the fresh hires. ?NSR majorly focusses on enumeration of freshers than experienced candidates and we should wait for the end of the current hiring phase for the net additions?.
Harsh Manglik, chairman, Nasscom, responded to a question on preventing talent poaching among IT players. He concurred with the need to initiate a dialogue between IT recruiters and the companies at the national to sort out the issue and urged the industry look into larger issue of talent crunch. Harsh asserted that the demographic advantage of the country could be best leveraged to address the shortcomings of the talent base. ?Scarcity of talent should never be a issue as half of the population below 24 years and one-third of the population less than 15 years?.
Later in his speech, he referred to the setting of ambitious plans of Nasscom to become a $225-billion industry by exploring newer geographies and newer business sectors. Going forward, he added that the apex body of the software industry should support smaller IT companies.