Friday, February 12, 2010

India Shooting Itself in Foot, Restricts Visas to High Tech Expatriate Talent

Worms are turning all over the world. Bloomberg.com is running a story that explains: India’s Visa Rules ‘Out of Line’ for Companies Seeking Expats:

T.V. Mohandas Pai says he wants to hire more expatriates for Infosys Technologies Ltd., India’s second-largest software exporter, as the global economic recovery boosts sales. Stricter visa rules prompted by unskilled Chinese workers are holding him back.

Infosys has about 20 foreign workers and needs “many more” to help it expand abroad, said Pai, who runs the Bangalore-based company’s human resources department. Companies in Asia’s third-biggest economy are using annual growth averaging 8.7 percent in fiscal years 2006-2009 to reverse a decades-long “brain drain” to the U.S. and Europe.

The government toughened regulations for foreign workers last year after discovering that about 40,000 Chinese building power plants used business visas instead of employment visas, skirting taxes and taking jobs from locals. The crackdown restricted employment visas to skilled people in senior jobs and limited foreigners to 1 percent of a project’s workforce.

“We need to get expats to help us understand the complexity of businesses,” Pai said. “But instead of helping, the government has tightened the visa rules. The problem in India is policymakers are totally out of line with reality.”


Just in case you thought that only the U. S. did things that seem dumb.

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