While US President Trump had called for tougher immigration laws for technology companies, and had threatened to impose taxes on companies that moved work offshore, in his first State of the Union address to a joint session of the US Congress last week, he proposed having a merit-based immigration system like in Canada, Australia and other nations.

When Indian Foreign Secretary S.Jaishankar was in the US to engage with President Donald Trump’s administration, asking it to not impose restrictions on the entry of engineers., Citizenship and Immigration Services halts premium H1B visa processing for 6 months Citing backlog, authorities put applications on hold from April 2017.

This suspension might last six months. But IT Service Industry worries this move would adversely impact domestic software exporters such as Tata Consultancy Services (Tcs) and Infosys Wipro Cognizant as well as multinational firms such as IBM and Google, SAP who send engineers to work on projects in the US.

"Tier-I Indian IT services firms largely use the premium processing category for H1B visa for their employees, since they can easily afford the additional $1,225 fee. But, now uncertainty escalates".

This means the IT services firms cannot send their employees on urgent projects after April 3, thereby impacting their quarterly business numbers. This delay would add to the existing uncertainties of pricing pressure for the large Indian IT services players. They will now have to plan at least three months in advance to send employees abroad, instead of a week as they now do.

However IT Industry body Nasscom says the suspension of visa procesing will cause some temporary impediment, but it is unlikely to be a major issue. “The current issue of the temporary suspension of premium H-1B processing will create some process delays for the companies – Indian and American, but is not a significant impediment. This has happened in the past for a couple of months to clear the backlog and we will work with the US Embassy in India to enable mobility of skilled talent is not impacted due to process issues”.

Those meeting emergency criteria might, however, still apply for a visa. Industry analysts say given the backlog of petitions with the USCIS, the leeway though Expedite Criteria might not prove to be effective.

T V Mohandas Pai, an IT industry veteran and former board member of Infosys, said this would not have much impact as the US government might resume this service soon.

Mohandas added “This is a common thing and has happened before also. Applications for new visas though premium category usually submitted before April and the petitions sent after that are mostly for renewal”.