H-1B visas would no longer be granted, according to Vivek Ramaswamy: "Lottery system needs to be replaced by...

 H-1B visas would no longer be granted, according to Vivek Ramaswamy: "Lottery system needs to be replaced by...  

In addition, if Ramaswamy is elected US President in 2024, he will "gut" the current lottery-based visa system and replace it with one that is based on merit.

The H-1B visa system for immigrants has been referred to as "indentured servitude" by Vivek Ramaswamy, an Indian-origin Republican contender for president of the United States in 2024. If elected US President in 2024, he has promised to "gut" the current lottery-based visa system and replace it with a meritocracy-based one.  

The H-1B visa is highly sought after by IT experts in India. This non-immigrant visa enables US-based businesses to hire foreign workers for specialised tasks requiring theoretical or technical expertise.

The ability of technological enterprises to hire thousands of workers annually from nations like China and India is a crucial instrument. For the fiscal year 2021, US corporations increased their application volume by more than 60%, submitting 780,884 for just 85,000 spots.

Even though Ramaswamy promises to create a visa system that is solely based on merit, he has previously used the lottery-based H1B visa system 29 times. Roivant Sciences, a biotech business founded by Vivek Ramaswamy, received approval for 29 applications to engage workers on H-1B visas for the period of 2018 to 2023.  

"A real meritocratic admission process needs to take the place of the lottery method. It amounts to an indentured servitude that exclusively benefits the employer who sponsored the H-1B foreigner. I'll gut it, he declared in a statement Politico was able to access. Ramaswamy added that "people who come as family members are not the merit-based immigrants who make skilled contributions to this country" and that "the US needs to remove chain-based migration."  

At the first GOP debate in Milwaukee, Ramaswamy also spoke about his own experience with immigration during his opening remarks. He claimed that some 40 years ago, his parents arrived in the nation with very little money.  40 years ago, my parents emigrated to this nation on nothing, he added. I later founded multi-billion dollar businesses," he continued.  

The Indian-origin candidate for president left his position as Roivant's CEO in February 2021, although he continued to serve as the board of directors' chair until he declared his candidature for president in February of this year. Using Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, Roivant along its subsidiaries had 904 permanent workers as of March 31. Of those, 825 were based in the US.  

The harsh posture espoused by former US President Donald Trump on H-1B visas is reflected in Ramaswamy's viewpoint. Trump, who employed a number of foreign workers for his companies on H-1B visas, initially had a strict stance against H-1B workers before moderating it. In an effort to reduce the amount of immigrants coming to the US, Trump temporarily banned new work visas and barred hundreds of thousands of foreign workers from finding employment there during his presidency.  

The US issues 65,000 H-1B visas each year, of which 20,000 are reserved for holders of advanced degrees from the US. Nearly three-quarters of H-1B visas now issued go to professionals from India. Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Indian-American congressman, submitted a bill in July of this year that would double the annual intake of highly talented foreign workers with H-1B work visas. Additionally, the measure called for tripling the number of H-1B visas that might be issued each year, from 65,000 to 131,000, in order to empower American firms to work in crucial technology industries.