Vivek Ramaswamy is himself the child of immigrants.
Washington:
Calling the H-1B visa program “indentured servitude,” Indian-American Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has vowed to “strip” the lottery-based system and replace it with meritocratic admissions if he wins the 2024 race for the White House.
The H-1B visa, the in-demand visa among Indian IT professionals, is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in specialized occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise.
Tech companies depend on them to hire tens of thousands of workers from countries like India and China every year.
Mr Ramaswamy himself has used the visa program 29 times.
From 2018 through 2023, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services approved 29 applications for Ramaswamy’s former company, Roivant Sciences, to hire workers under H-1B visas.
Yet the H-1B system is “bad for everyone involved,” Mr. Ramaswamy was quoted by Politico as saying.
“The lottery system must be replaced by actual meritocratic admissions. It is a form of indentured servitude that only benefits the company that sponsored an H-1B immigrant. I will unlearn it,” he said in a statement, adding that the US must eliminate chain-based migration.
“The people who come as family members are not the meritocratic immigrants who make skills-based contributions to this country.”
Mr Ramaswamy stepped down as CEO of Roivant in February 2021, but remained chairman of the company’s board until February this year, when he announced his presidential campaign.
As of March 31, the company and its subsidiaries had 904 full-time employees, including 825 in the U.S., according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
When asked about the discrepancy between the Republican presidential candidate’s policy position and his past business practices, press secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the role of a policymaker “is to do what’s right for a country in general: the system is broken and needs to be repaired.”
“Vivek believes that regulations overseeing the U.S. energy sector have been seriously violated, yet he continues to use water and electricity,” she said in a statement. “This is the same.”
Mr. Ramaswamy, himself the child of immigrants, has made headlines for his restrictive immigration policy agenda.
He also said he would use military force to secure the border and deport U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants.
H-1B visas are highly sought after and demand for these workers continues to increase. For fiscal year 2021, U.S. companies submitted 780,884 applications for just 85,000 available slots, an increase of more than 60 percent.
Mr. Ramaswamy acknowledged his own experiences with immigration during his opening statement at the first Republican debate in Milwaukee.
“My parents came to this country 40 years ago with no money,” he said. “I have gone on to build billion-dollar companies.”
Mr. Ramaswamy’s position on H-1B visas is reminiscent of the 2016 Trump campaign, when then-candidate Donald Trump, who has also hired a number of foreign workers under H-1B visas for his companies, previously took a tough attitude towards these foreign workers. he later softened his rhetoric.
As president, Trump temporarily suspended new work visas and barred hundreds of thousands of foreign workers from entering the US as part of his sweeping efforts to limit the number of immigrants entering the US.
Each year, the US issues 65,000 H-1B visas open to everyone, and 20,000 to those with an advanced US degree.
In July, Indian-American Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi introduced a bill proposing to double the annual influx of highly qualified foreign workers on H-1B work visas coveted by Indian professionals.
The bill also aims to double the number of H-1B visas available annually from 65,000 to 130,000 so that U.S. employers, including in critical technology sectors, can attract the best talent from around the world. Currently, almost three-quarters of H-1B visas go to Indian professionals.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
