Obama Plans L-1B Visa Reform to Ease U.S. Entrance for Indian Workers

During this year’s edition of SelectUSA Investment Summit held in Washington DC, President Obama announced a series of reforms of the L-1B visa program in order to facilitate foreign companies’ ability to temporarily relocate non-immigrant workers to the U.S.

 

President Obama hopes that this move will attract more investment to the country, highly discourage job-shopping practices, and prevent large scale discrimination of foreign workers such as India’s IT professionals trying to work in the U.S.

 

“And this could benefit hundreds of thousands of non-immigrant workers and their employers; that, in turn, will benefit our entire economy and spur additional investment,”

 

he told investors gathered at the SelectUSA Investment Summit on Monday.

 

The principal executive official also said that America was “open for business” and that the goal of the summit was to find the most appropriate means to make it as simple and as attractive for global companies to bring to the U.S. their non-immigrant workers, invest more, and create new jobs.

 

Mr. Obama also expressed his eagerness to do business with the international companies willing to invest into America, which is currently the most stable, strongest and ever growing market in the world.

 

At the summit, there were more than 2,500 participants who represented more than 70 countries and 500 US officials and financial and economic development experts. The most notable country was India, which had had a hard time with expanding its US operations due to the U.S. constraining visa application requirements.

 

According to Obama administration, the highly anticipated L-1B visa reform will be clarified by the Department of Homeland Security. The new rules, however, will allow global companies to bring their own employees in the U.S. without challenging job opportunities for US residents.

 

On Monday, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and SelectUSA released the ‘US Business and Investment Climate Report’ as a reference guide to all summit participants willing to expand their operations in the U.S. or invest in the U.S. economy.

 

The report provides 10 reasons to invest in all 50 U.S. states, while outlining the economic strengths and growth potential of each state or US territory open for business. Also, the report mentions the major tax incentives a new business may benefit from in each federal state.

 

An Indian official said that although the US-India business relationship had grown “by leaps and bounds,” this relationship resulted in a $100 billion worth of bilateral trade business.

 

The CII announced that India heavily invested into a wide range of US business sectors such as technology, biotechnology, telecommunications, financial services, mining, manufacturing, and many others. But, the CII noted that currently the U.S. is the sixth largest source of foreign direct investment into India.

 

Vinai Thummalapally, the first Indian American ambassador in US history and Executive Director of SelectUSA, expressed his gratitude to the current federal authorities for trying to make it easier than ever for Indians to do business in the U.S. He also noted that he had never seen a better time for his fellow nationals to expand their business in the U.S. than 2015.