International

Streamline visa process: Obama

Washington: Driving home the point that he is for creating jobs in the U.S., Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has favoured streamlining the process for the high-skilled H2B visas for Indians and other foreigners to make sure employers were not “gaming” the system.

“For those who don’t know, the H2B visa programme is the programme whereby people with specialised skills, foreign nationals with specialised skills, are supposed to be able to come in and be sponsored by their employer. That’s the idea,” he said at a campaign event in Pennsylvania on Friday.

However, he said the “problem” is that if employers want “to game the system, they might decide... We’ll get a software engineer from India, even though there are a bunch of software engineers here... because we can pay him or her less. And that then undercuts the labour market and wages” in the U.S.

Mr. Obama’s remarks were in a reference to the H1B visa category in which software engineers would fit into.

It is unclear whether he inadvertently strayed into the realm of H1B visas in the course of making his thoughts on the issue known, but Mr. Obama made it clear he will ensure that the high skilled visas will not be manipulated. — PTI

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