Indian H-1B Visa Holders Plea to US Lawmakers for Green Card

Indian IT professionals working in the United States on H-1B visa have approached US lawmakers for green card approval. The country-specific quotas for the green card have resulted in massive backlogs in last few years.

More than 100,000 Indian IT professionals apply for the green card to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) each year. However, the country-specific quota allows the department to approve only 10,000 of these applications. With the number increasing each year, the backlog of green card applicants is massive.

More than 100 Indian IT professionals have formed a group called ‘Skilled Immigrants in America’. The group claims to have 150,000 members in 25 states of the US. The agonized IT professionals flew down to Washington to meet top American lawmakers and their aides on Monday.

All the green card applicants waiting for the approval are highly skilled Indian IT professionals. Most of these agonized professionals have moved to the US 10 years ago and still waiting for the green card. The group expects the US government to remove the country-specific quota for the green card.

The members of ‘Skilled Immigrants in America’ are Indian techies that have been legally working in the US on H-1B visa. The professionals are highly-paid individuals that are tax-paying and law-abiding immigrants. The group demands the Congress to check the positive contributions made by Indian professionals in the US and solve the problem.

The meeting with top US lawmakers is the awareness drive by the group. A lot of these legal immigrants have major issues like adult kids that are waiting to transfer on F1 visa to get into a college. The Indian IT professionals are demanding the equal rights for their children who have spent more than a decade in the US.

Indian Government To Increase Internet Speed By 4 Times

The government of India in a bid to increase the internet speed has flagged off the procedure of increasing the minimum internet speed to at least 2 MBPS against the existing 512kbps.
The secretary for Telecom,  Aruna Sundararajan has said that the government is aware of the slow internet speed available to users in many parts of the country and that the speeds promised by 3G and 4G networks no where meet the actual speeds received by the consumers. The issue is crucial as the country gears up for a pan India 5G roll out along with the implementation of Internet of Things (IoT) focused applications.

"We are very slow . While we have done a lot on (providing internet) access, we have not been able to actually deliver the quality of service that is required," said Sundararajan.


The telecom secretary also added that India needs better internet speeds to meet the targets of ambitious initiatives like Digital India Programme, digital payments, 5G rollout etc. Answering the question of whether a speed of 2MBPS would be sufficient to accomplish digital transformation, the secretary added.


Asked whether 2 mbps -which is also being pushed for ward by regulator TRAI -will be sufficient for digital transformation, she said, "2 mbps is the basic minimum. We should definitely mandate this. If at all, it should be higher than that. It cannot be lower than that."

The  slower internet  speed issue has come as a challenge for a majority of mobile users in India, particularly when download speeds of videos and other heavy applications is not at all satisfactory. The challenge also comes amid the roll out of faster networks like 4G, particularly after the roll out of Jio services.

Their main concerns in this regard were limited availability of spectrum per operator in 2G/3G bands; low coverage zones such as basements, high-rise buildings, tunnels; and variations due to external factors such as subscriber's device quality and type, number of subscribers browsing the data services, peak off-peak time, transmission bandwidth, website behavior, etc," said sector regulator Trai in its consultation paper on Data Speed Under Wireless Broadband Plans' this year.


A global report published recently which covered about 63 million internet speed tests across the globe placed India at 119th position in a list of 189 countries in terms of internet speed available to users.

Earn Big As A FreeLancer With These Tech Skills

Tech freelancers are on a roll, specially those that are into new-age technologies. A severe shortage of these skills is also encouraging many full-time employees to become independent workers offering their expertise to multiple companies and earning much more than in their erstwhile positions.

A study by Manipal Global Education -one of India's largest education services groups -says that with 15 million independent workers, India is second only to the US (60 million) in terms of the number of freelancers. The study, shared exclusively with TOI, says there's been a boom of freelancers because of growth of internet and mobile phones.

The most common roles that freelancers are present in are data visualisation, data mining, digital marketing and social media, says A P Ramabhadran, CEO, professional learning unit, Manipal Global Education.

"Specific areas like Google digital marketing, data science, analytics, Android and iOS app development programs are witnessing a significant shift towards individuals choosing to be entrepreneurs and freelancers," he says.

Thammaiah B, India managing director at staffing solutions firm Kelly Services, says the technology transformation is helping the sector's gig economy to evolve to a level seen only in the US. "In India, the gig economy used to be an extrapolation of temporary and contract employees. However, that is changing with the innovation required at IT companies demanding newer skills. You cannot have a single homogeneous group of talent anymore in a team. And what you need may be only available when you go shopping for talent with very specific requirements," he says.
On Freelancer.com, one of the largest global online platforms where freelancers can offer their services, the number of registered people from India is the highest, at more than 20% of the total. The portal currently has around 5.3 million people from India, and 3.3 million from the US.

The top projects awarded to Indians on Freelancer.com over the past 12 months include graphic and website design, PHP (programming language), search engine optimisation and internet marketing.

The Manipal report says that despite taking up re-skilling at scale, leading IT firms are struggling to fill the newer technology roles.The report estimates that 65% of professionals in IT firms are struggling to upgrade their skills in the newer technologies. So they need external talent.

"Areas like fintech, health-tech, retail-tech, sales, and analytics are areas that are witnessing interest in hiring freelancers," says Ramabhadran.

The startup boom and the changing ethos with respect to job safety and security are also encouraging employees to take up more independent projects. "The workforce of the current generation is not looking at a safety net. They are willing to take risks to work only on the projects that they want. They are also looking at a balance between work and life," says Thammaiah of Kelly Services. He estimates that at large IT organisations, freelancers account for 2-3% of the workforce. He predicts this will grow rapidly in the next three-four years.

How much money some of the biggest companies make per employee?

The world’s largest companies have many similarities, but the size of their respective org charts is not necessarily one of them.

At the one extreme, companies such as Walmart require a massive workforce in the millions to run retail operations around the globe. But at the other extreme, an energy giant like Valero is able to generate $76 billion of annual revenue with just 0.4% of the employees of Walmart.

It raises the question: which types of companies make the most revenue per employee?
1.Apple: $1.9 million
Apple is the most valuable company in the world, and it also makes the most money per employee. For each of its 1,16,000 employees, Apple makes $1.9 million (Rs. 12.3 crore). This is the most money any firm anywhere makes per employee.


2. Facebook: $1.6 million
Facebook now has a over a billion users, but it’s still run by relatively few people. Facebook has around 20,000 employees, and for each of them, it earns $1.6 million (Rs. 10.4 crore)   in revenue.


3. Alphabet: $1.3 million
Alphabet has nearly doubled its employee headcount over the last five years, but it’s still third on the list of companies with most revenue per employee. For each of its nearly 70,000 employees, Alphabet makes $1.3 million (Rs. 8.5 crore).


4. Verisign: $1.2 million
Number four on the list is Verisign. It has far fewer employees than the bigger companies on the list — Verisign only has 1,019 employees. But its revenues from its domain level registration services, SSL certificates, managed DNS, DDoS attack mitigation and cyber-threat reporting services, it ends up earning an impressive $1.2 million per employee.


5. Visa: $1.1  million
There’s a reason why finance firms are some of the best paymasters — finance firms make a lot of money. Payments giant Visa makes $1.1 million in revenue for each of its 11,300 employees.


6. Mastercard: $906,000
Fellow payments firm Mastercard follows Visa at number 6. Mastercard makes $906,000 (Rs. 5.85 crore) for each of its 10,300 employees.


7. Broadcom: $843,000
Networking company Broadcom is 7th on the list. Founded in 1991, Broadcom now makes $843,000 (Rs. 5.39 crore) per employee.

8. Lam Research: $785,000
One of the lesser-known companies on the list is Lam Research. Lam Research produces semiconductor  processing equipment that’s used in the fabrication of integrated circuits. It has 9,100 employees, and makes $785,000 in revenue for each of them.

9. Qualcomm: $772,000
Joining Broadcom in the list is fellow multinational semiconductor and telecommunications equipment giant Qualcomm. Qualcomm makes $772,000 in revenue for each of its 33,500 employees.

10. Microsoft: $748,000
And rounding up the top 10 is Microsoft. Microsoft might be not be the hottest software company at the moment, and it has more employees than any other company on the list — 1,24,000 of them. But it still makes a solid $748,000 per employee.

Micromax Bharat -1

Micromax Informatics has partnered with BSNL to launch Bharat-1, a feature phone with 4G LTE capability. This will be a direct competition for Reliance Jio's JioPhone. The state-owned telecom operator also claims to trump the JioPhone with a running cost that's even lower than the heavily subsidized JioPhone.
Despite a price of Rs 2,220 against JioPhone's "effective price" of Rs 0, Bharat-1 users will end up spending much lesser than JioPhone users in terms of total expenditure on recharges. Bharat-1 users will get free access to unlimited internet, calls and texts at a nominal price of Rs 97.

On the contrary, JioPhone users will have to recharge their devices with a recharge of Rs 153 for unlimited data, free voice calls, messages and access to Jio apps.

The new Micromax Bharat-1 can be used with any network provider, even a Reliance Jio SIM. This gives the device a huge advantage against the JioPhone as it can only be used with Reliance Jio.
The Micromax Bharat-1 device will be available at a price of Rs 2,220 but this will give complete ownership to the buyer contrary to JioPhone's claim over the device. In order to make the effective price Rs 0, Jio had to layer the deal with a long list of terms and conditions.

According to these terms and conditions, users will have to hand over the device if they fail to recharge the device with a minimum of Rs 1,500 per year which amounts to Rs 4,500 in three years. After the completion of these three years the JioPhone user will be eligible for a complete refund of Rs 1,500.
In terms of specifications, Micromax Bharat-1 comes equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 205 which is paired with 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage. JioPhone also has identical specifications with a 1.2GHz processor paired with 512MB RAM and 4GB internal storage. The device also features a MicroSD card slot that will be capable of reading cards of up to 128GB.

Both devices come with a 2 Megapixel primary camera. Bharat-1 features a VGA selfie camera and the JioPhone features a 0.3Megapixel front camera. Both devices also share an identical QVGA screen with a  size of 2.4 inches. Both Reliance JioPhone and Bharat-1 are powered by 2000mAh batteries.

Despite a lower running cost, Bharat-1 phone, which is bundled with BSNL's voice and data pack, will not be able to achieve 4G LTE speeds. However, the state-owned company plans to launch their 4G services as early as January next year.