The “killer provision” of a ban for H-1B workers on client site placement, which could prove to be devastating for the interests of big Indian IT firms, remains in place despite the deal that was reached at the 11th hour between key senators regarding certain provisions of the new immigration bill.
The continued presence of the provision in the new immigration bill, which a key Senate panel passed yesterday, would not only badly impact on Indian IT firms, but according to industry sources could also disrupt the operational capabilities of a wide array of important American firms as well. “The ban on all client site placement for H-1B workers is the most damaging of all provisions of Senate Bill 744, which was not addressed by any of the amendments proposed by Senator Hatch today,” the President of the US India Business Council, Ron Somers, says.
Somers went on to add that the provision effectively completely bans companies that have more than 15% of their workforce on H-1B US visas from putting those workers at client sites or being able to contract for the services of the said workers.
Somers claims that the operational capabilities of firms in the United States would be disrupted should this provision become law by preventing firms from being able to source their work from the best and most competitive service providers. Somers calls it: “The height of micro managing US industry, in what I would describe as ‘maximum government’ and flies in the face of the global free-market model” on which the United States is built.