Has immigration really become an obstacle to the development of India-US relations?

According to the Indian Express, Su Jie will hold talks with Thomas Shannon, US Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and senior Trump administration officials. Recently, the news that Trump will cancel the H 1-B visa has been rampant in India, and the murder of an Indian engineer in Kansas a few days ago has made the issue of personnel safety and immigration in India the focus of recent relations between the two countries.

The Indian media generally commented that Su Jiesheng's trip will mainly express his concern about the relevant policy remarks that the United States will cancel the H 1-B visa to the Trump administration. Indian officials recently said that the Indian government has been keeping close communication with the Trump administration and members of Congress on the issue of visa immigration, believing that Indian IT companies in the United States have made important contributions to the economic growth of the United States. Recently, after the news that a US Congressman submitted the draft H 1-B visa reform to Congress was exposed, the Sensex stock index of Infosys and other companies fell sharply, losing nearly 50 billion yuan. At the same time, a large number of professionals with such visas in the United States and India have to postpone their plans to visit relatives in India because they are worried that they will not be able to enter the country after leaving the country.

An Indian engineer working in Silicon Valley said in an interview with India's Business Ethics, "Some Indian engineers whose visas have expired have been put on hold indefinitely for administrative reasons. Some of these people have already bought houses in America, and some children need to go to school. Many people have to shelve their plans to return to China to visit relatives for fear of not being able to re-enter. "

IT is reported that the H 1-B visa is a work visa provided by the United States for the introduction of foreign professional and technical personnel, including IT companies such as Infosys, Wypro and Tata Consulting Services in the United States, which rely on the H 1-B visa to hire highly educated engineers from India to work in the United States. According to the data released by the Indian Software and Service Industry Association, 65% of the annual income of Indian IT enterprises comes from the United States. If this kind of visa is cancelled, the labor cost of IT enterprises in the United States and India will increase greatly.

At the same time, the so-called "hate murder" against an Indian engineer in Kansas recently deepened the Indian government's concern about the safety of Indians in the United States. According to the Herald newspaper of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the body of Sri Niwas, an engineer who died in the United States, was cremated on Tuesday after being transported back to India. The mother of the deceased was heartbroken and insisted on not letting Sri Niwas's younger brother go back to work in the United States. "I will never let him go back to America. I told Sri Niwas to go back to India if he felt unsafe, but he always said he was safe. " The father of the deceased also expressed concern about the safety of Indians in the United States. On the same day, the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the US and Indian governments are communicating on the personal safety of people in India. The U.S. Embassy in India also said that the top officials of the U.S. government and Kansas government made a solemn response to Sri Niwas's death and strongly condemned the incident.

Swalan Singh, an expert on international issues at Nehru University in India, told this reporter that Indian Foreign Secretary Su Jie should have ended his term of office on the eve of Trump's inauguration, but the Indian government extended his term of office for one year out of consideration of the rich diplomatic experience of the United States, especially the current implementation of the "US priority" policy and the promotion of US immigration policy reform after Trump took office. These measures will seriously affect India's economic interests. Indian IT enterprises and IT professionals in the United States, in particular, have played an important role as a bridge for the development of bilateral relations, and the recent killing of Indian engineers in the United States has undoubtedly boosted Su Jiesheng's trip to the United States. Meanwhile, the 3.2 million Indians in the United States and their millions of relatives in India are increasingly worried about the personal safety of Indians in the United States. When elections are about to be held in five Indian state parliaments, whether the personal safety of Indians in the United States can be properly handled will have an impact on whether the People's Party can win local elections, which is also one of the important factors for Su Jiesheng's visit to the United States.