Vivek Ramaswamy vows to end H-1B visa: 'Lottery system needs to be replaced by...'  

Vivek Ramaswamy, an Indian-origin Republican candidate for the US Presidential elections in 2024, called the H-1B visa programme for immigrants “indentured servitude”. He vowed to “gut” the lottery-based visa system and replace it with a system based on meritocracy if he becomes the US President in 2024.  

H-1B visa is much sought-after among Indian IT professionals. It is a non-immigrant visa that allows US-based companies to employ foreign workers in specialty occasions requiring theoretical or technical know-how. It is an integral tool for technical companies to hire thousands of employees every year from countries like India and China. For fiscal year 2021, US businesses submitted 780,884 applications for just 85,000 available slots, jumping by more than 60 per cent.

While Ramaswamy vows to make a visa system strictly based on merit, he himself has used the lottery-based H1B visa system 29 times in the past. The US Citizenship Immigration Services (USCIS) approved 29 applications for the Vivek Ramaswamy-founded biotech company Roivant Sciences to hire employees under H-1B visas from 2018-2023.  

“The lottery system needs to be replaced by actual meritocratic admission. It’s a form of indentured servitude that only accrues to the benefit of the company that sponsored an H-1B immigrant. I’ll gut it,” he said in a statement accessed by Politico. Ramaswamy further said that the US needs to eliminate chain-based migration and that “people who come as family members are not the meritocratic immigrants who make skill-based contributions to this country”.  

Ramaswamy had also recounted his own experience with immigration while making opening remarks at the first GOP debate in Milwaukee. He said that his parents came to the country with no money around four decades ago. “My parents came to this country with no money 40 years ago,” he said. “I have gone on to found multi-billion-dollar companies,” he added.  

The Indian-origin Presidential candidate stepped down as the CEO of Roivant in February 2021 but remained as the chair of the company’s board of directors until February this year when he announced his presidential campaign. As of March 31, Roivant and its subsidiaries had 904 full-time employees, including 825 in the US, according to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings.  

Ramaswamy’s stance on H-1B visas is similar to the hardline position taken by former US President Donald Trump on the issue. Trump, who hired a number of foreign workers under the H-1B visas for his businesses, took a hardline stance on H-1B workers before softening his position. During his presidency, Trump temporarily suspended new work visas and blocked several hundreds of thousands of foreign workers from employment in the US as part of his efforts to limit the number of immigrants entering America.  

Every year, the US gives 65,000 H-1B visas which are open to all, and 20,000 to those with advanced US degrees. At present, nearly three-fourths of H-1B visas go to Indian professionals. In July this year, Indian-American Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi introduced a bill that proposed doubling the annual intake of highly skilled foreign workers on H-1B work visas. The bill also proposed to double the number of H-1B visas available annually from 65,000 to 131,000 to allow American employers including in critical technology sectors.  

Also Read: Land investment, rental monetisation give 10 times higher profit than apartments: Report

Also Read: Indian nationals contest H-1B visa denial over alleged fraud via lawsuit against US govt

Watch: Multibagger PSU stocks: HAL, Mazagon Dock, RVNL, UCO Bank, among 7 public sector company stocks that deliver multibagger returns of up to 390% in 1 year