US Govt's Announcement Raises Anxiety: H-1B Visa Fee Hike Leaves Bhopal Parents With Wards In US Worried

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The 10-fold hike in H-1B visa fees announced by US President Donald Trump has caused concern among the parents in the city with sons or daughters studying or working in the USA.

Those already holding H-1B visas won’t face any problems, for now, but no one is sure of the future, given Trump’s mercurial temperament. 

Arvind Mittal, a professor at MANIT whose son works for a company in the US after obtaining a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), sees no cause for panic. His son was on a student visa for five years and is now working on an H-1B visa.

“It is the new applicants who will have to pay USD 1,00,00 as fees. The renewals will cost the same as earlier,” Mittal said, adding that Trump might have his own reasons to make the decision. 

The parents whose wards are studying in the US or working there on an L1 visa (issued for working for a particular company or organisation), however, are worried.

“It is the employers who pay the fees for H-1B visa, and very few companies would be willing to pay the huge sum (around Rs 85 lakh) to retain the services of their employees,” said a teacher at a technical institution whose daughter is working on an L1 visa for a leading financial company in New York. 

She said that her daughter won’t be able to afford paying that much money from her own pocket and would most probably relocate to India. She, however, is hopeful that big US corporations will oppose the fee hike and the US government may change its decision. 

Businessman Pramod Geete, whose son is a software engineer in the US and is working on an H-1B visa, says that there was some initial panic following the announcement due to a misinterpretation of the decision.

“Once it was clear that the fee would remain unchanged for old H-1B visa holders, the panic subsided,” he said.

Will affect big companies more

IIIT Bhopal's Director, Ashutosh Kumar Singh said, "The decision to hike H-1B fees ten times will not significantly impact the service class. It will mainly affect big US companies. We should also keep in mind that the H-1B visa system has not been discontinued. The fee has been increased, and it is a huge hike. But the companies that can or want to pay can still hire talent from India or elsewhere."