Indians with US visas tied to jobs stranded due to ban

The March day that his father died, Karan Murgai boarded a plane to India. The new coronavirus was spreading, so Murgai's wife and their two young children stayed home in Dallas. Their separation due to last three weeks became indefinite after US President Donald Trump's executive order that suspends applications for H-1B and other high-skilled work visas from abroad.

Trump said the June 22 order would protect jobs amid high US unemployment because of the pandemic. But Murgai and at least 1,000 others like him, whose US visas are tied to their jobs, are now stranded in India. An IT management consultant for a multinational company, Murgai handles his father's affairs in New Delhi during the day and his US job overnight, worrying about his 4-year-old daughter who has lost her appetite and started throwing fits.

India, with the world's fourth-highest virus caseload, is tallying nearly 20,000 new infections each day, but restrictions on travel have begun to ease, with international commercial flights set to resume this month. The H-1B visa program allows US employers to hire high-skilled foreign workers, mainly for tech jobs.

Employers first have to determine there are no American candidates, and then undertake a lengthy sponsorship process that costs as much as $15,000, making the program highly competitive. Indians account for 75% of the applications for the H-1B program, US government data show. Nearly 85,000 H-1B visas are awarded each year.

Nasscom, a trade association in the Indian information technology industry, called the order "misguided and harmful to the US economy". Indian companies provide technology staff and services to US hospitals, drugmakers and biotechnology companies, Nasscom pointed out. As a result, Indian companies may redirect Indian talent to Canada or Mexico.

India's foreign minister spokesman Anurag Srivastava said the order is expected to impact the movement of Indian skilled professionals, and that the government was assessing the impact on Indian nationals and industry. The H1-B program has created a pathway for a generation of skilled Indian and other foreign workers to build lives in the US, but Trump's executive order places years of investment in education, property and communities at risk said Murgai, who arrived in Dallas with an H-1B visa in 2010 and now owns a house and land there.

"When you're in a place for a decade, you think you've settled down," he said.

"Separating families and snatching away the opportunities from people who have been adding value - that just discourages not even the people who are already in the situation, but also people who might in the future think of coming to your country to make it great."