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US tells India it is mulling caps on H1Bs to deter data rules
- petre 7y agoThis is quite a silly threat as it would reduce brain drain. Cool, go ahead, keep smart Indians in India while also not spying on Indian citizens because their data is also kept in India. Win-win for India.
- gopkarthik 7y agoPompeo said the Trump administration would push for free flow of data across borders, not just to help U.S. companies but also to secure consumers’ privacy. How does 'free flow of data across borders' help secure consumers' privacy? Setting caps on H1Bs is the US governments prerogative though this will have adverse impact on US-India relationship.
- NTDF9 7y ago> How does 'free flow of data across borders' help secure consumers' privacy? This is not about consumer privacy. This is about corporate profit. Visa, Mastercard and other US banks want to maintain fewer datacenters around the world. They already have them in the US (because US law) and they possibly also feed that data to US govt. With such localization laws, US corporations are having to invest in other countries. They are lobbying to bully other countries for profit and this administration is ready to support profits at any cost.
- paxys 7y agoMaintaining foreign data centers isn't really an issue for large companies. All cloud providers already support various data residency and compliance requirements. Companies are happy to follow these laws if it means more business for them. It is the US government which has a problem because it wants direct access to data from foreign countries & corporations. In fact Microsoft was involved in a very long legal battle with them over it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._United_Stat....
- wtmt 7y agoIn this context, let me mention one point. India does not yet have a data privacy law (it relies on some interpretations of the IT Act). So people's data may be better protected by laws in other countries that have such laws (regardless of how comprehensive they are) than if the data were to reside in India. The co-founder of Paytm (the CEO's brother) has been caught on video saying that it can provide all its customers' information in exchange for money. Oyo Rooms decided to funnel all hotel guest information to local police directly regardless of whether there was a crime or not and if the police requested for some data or not. There are many such instances where data privacy is not valued at all.
- gopkarthik 7y agoYes, I agree that India sorely needs comprehensive data protection laws. IIRC the IT rules act only concerns with sensitive personal information which includes bank accounts/cards. Though I'm not sure if individual transactions are covered under this. Given that MasterCard & Visa are only intermediary's between Indian companies and banks, Indian companies(PayTM, PayU, CCAvenue) already have access to all available data as the one who've initiated the transaction. In fact MasterCard/Visa processing the data outside the US actually increases the exposure of data and no amount of US data protection laws will help.
- devoply 7y agoIf you don't let us steal all your user data, we won't brain drain your country. Sounds like a good deal for India other than the remittances sent back by citizens.
- pixelrevision 7y agoThis was pretty much how I read it.
- throwaw4324 7y agoExcept that the rulers have relatives and neighbors whose sons and daughters are desperate to leave India. India has long stopped caring about Brain-Drain (well, they'll rot there for the most part), so this is likely to be a big issue.
- belltaco 7y ago>The move, however, was not solely targeted at India, the source said. >“The proposal is that any country that does data localization, then it (H-1B visas) would be limited to about 15% of the quota It does sound targeted at India and perhaps China because they are the largest countries with English speaking populations and take a large percent of visas. I doubt the European countries or most other countries will be affected by this since they have way smaller populations and fewer people looking to work in the US. Anyway I am not totally opposed to restricting new H1B visas to 15% since work based green cards are 7% max per nationality causing long delays. They just need to make sure that people waiting for green cards close to a decade while on H1B are not affected by this. However, if this does happen, it will accelerate offshoring to India tremendously and end up benefiting work immigration friendly countries like Canada. Microsoft already has a large campus right across the border in Vancouver, and other companies will follow suit with setting up in Canada and India.
- mailmrg 7y agoif free flow of data across countries helps in privacy then HIPAA should not have rule that healthcare data of US citizens need not be stored only in US. Will USGOV relax that norm ? the Indian govt rules are about storing financial data within the country and not gmail data.
- snr 7y agoHuh. Why did they not include communication (Gmail) data?
- 0xab 7y agoThere's so much wrong with this. HIPAA doesn't talk about US citizens or distinguish different types of records based on any properties of the people that those records cover. The words citizen do not appear in HIPAA or HITECH. HIPAA applies to any records by covered entities, which is what it discusses, regardless of who those records refer to. There is no requirement in HIPAA that PII must be stored in the US. This is such basic info it's in the HIPAA FAQ from HHS https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/special-topics/cloud-computing/index.html https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/special-topics/c.... Question 9 is unequivocal, you can store data outside of the US, but you need to think about any dangers or risks associated with this. Which is totally logical. There are lots of reasons to have issues with the US. But not what you're talking about.
- mac01021 7y agoThe efficacy of this as a deterrent seems to depend on the notion that India would like its citizens to be able to obtain H1 visas from the US. Is that the case?
- lettergram 7y agoCould go either way (more or less). So probably
- ineedasername 7y agoI wouldn't think India would be much deterred by the move. Those workers represent a very small drop in a very large bucket. An extra 50,000 Indian workers seeking work in India instead of the US (or in some other non-US country) is practically nothing.
- NTDF9 7y agoYes and no. Yes, because it directly affects the business of large outsourcing companies. It also drops remittances, one of the largest sources of dollars for India. No, because for many decades, India has been trying to keep their smartest citizens to build their own country. Making local companies, serving at local hospitals, teaching at local schools and universities. They want their own Google, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Adobe instead of Indian citizens working in the US for US corporations. They were just unsuccessful for so many years because countries like US drained the well-educated so much. Ultimately, this will be a great deal for India. India doesn't want remittances. They want their own companies to make software that the world wants to buy.
- darklajid 7y agoHelp me understand the first part. Why do you need a US visa (well, THAT visa - I understand a 'fly over for a meeting' visiting visa) as an outsourcing company? What I mean is: How are the outsourcing companies affected by this?
- kinkrtyavimoodh 7y ago
- paxys 7y agoAs an Indian - good! This will help the local IT industry tremendously.
- ma2rten 7y agoYeah, I don't see how this is bad thing for the Indian government. They can prevent brain drain. However, it's a very bad thing for Indians in the US and US employers.
- el_programmador 7y agoIts also good for the freelancing/gig economy. Now even big companies will be forced to look for outsourcing or remote hiring options as the talent pool starts leaving that country.
- ETHisso2017 7y agoI wonder, how much do Indians prefer emigration vs remote work? Assuming pay is equal
- butu5 7y agoRemote Work!
- a-ve 7y agoConsidering IT hubs like Bangalore[1] and Chennai[2] are running out of water, most prefer emigration. [1]https://www.news18.com/news/india/on-verge-of-acute-water-crisis-bengaluru-may-turn-uninhabitable-in-next-few-years-warn-experts-2130111.html https://www.news18.com/news/india/on-verge-of-acute-water-cr... [2]https://www.livemint.com/industry/infotech/work-from-home-reduce-use-of-washrooms-how-it-firms-are-beating-water-shortage-1560830696830.html https://www.livemint.com/industry/infotech/work-from-home-re...
- kamaal 7y agoThey are not going to run out of water. I was born and raised in Bangalore, Have been in places around Bangalore all life. And water struggles have been forever. Bangalore has water infrastructure problems, not water shortages. We will fix them in time, like we always have.
- thevardanian 7y agoThis to me is hilarious. This is precisely what drove India away from America. Not to mention that America quite literally supported the genocide of millions of people 1972 just to spite India. So it's no surprise that the foreign policy continues this kind of momentum.
- sk0g 7y ago> America ... supported the genocide of millions of people 1972 just to spite India. Mind expanding on that? How did the genocide in Africa by Africans have much to do with either of those countries?
- ETHisso2017 7y agoBangladesh. Nixon sent an aircraft carrier group to prevent India from helping them gain independence from Pakistan. During the crisis, the Pakistani military, whose high command was mostly Punjabi, engaged in what was arguably state-sanctioned mass murder and rape against Bengalis.
- macintux 7y agoI'm guessing 1971, the Bangladesh/Pakistan split and war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bangladesh_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bangladesh_genocide
- nsenifty 7y agoIt may be a little exaggerated (or not, depending on who you ask), but I think they're referring to the 1971 Bangladesh genocide. The US was largely complicit on this due to their favorable foreign policy towards Pakistan at that time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bangladesh_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bangladesh_genocide
- belltaco 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bangladesh_genocide#US_complicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bangladesh_genocide#US_co...
- fourier_mode 7y agoInstead of worrying about location of the servers, the real point should be which government should be in control of the data. Even if the data is located in India under US government pressure on a company, say for some investigation, the US would still be access the data; the companies can still sell the data to other US-based companies. Or, is location being used metaphorically over here?
- devoply 7y agoPerhaps. But you still have oversight and physical access. You could bug the servers. You could monitor their network and so on. Your courts could create orders against the data on your servers. Also it's very dangerous as we have seen to have all your citizen's data exposed as it could allow like a country to better socially engineer your public and determine outcomes of elections. I would double down and say if you do that, I will ban all H1Bs from leaving the country. Let's see how Trump and Silicon Valley feels about that.
- fourier_mode 7y ago> You could bug the servers. You could monitor their network and so ... determine outcomes of elections This is again irrespective of the server's locations.
- bigbigs 7y agolol. If you don't change your data rules, we'll shoot ourselves in the foot by removing the cheap labor that we've become addicted to.
- jimmaswell 7y agoIt would be a good thing in the long term. Too many programming jobs are taken up by things like this, especially jobs for fresh college grads. I wouldn't mind harsh limitations on all software offshoring/worker importing in general.
- addicted 7y agoRight, because college grads in STEM fields are just really struggling to get good high paying jobs right now.
- sadris 7y agoRAND corporation found that the H1B program reduced tech worker's salary by 9%.
- jimmaswell 7y agoTook me a while to get an offer out of college even with an internship of experience, years of volunteer coding contributions, etc. And got some absurd offers in the range of 30k before finding a real one.
- kelnos 7y agoThere are no (talented) fresh college grads who are having trouble finding programming jobs. The whole "they took our jobs" fallacy is just that: a fallacy.
- jimmaswell 7y agoLook for some of the negative posts from posters on the cscareerquestions subreddit. This is an attitude of someone either living in Silicon Valley or just repeating what they've heard. Edit: Here's two people, OP and the comment. https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/bpj0m2/i_cant_find_a_cs_job_after_almost_a_year_of/enux8ax/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/bpj0m2/i... Getting hired as a new grad is hell - it's impossible to make a resume any two people can agree is presentable enough, 1/500 postings respond to you, the employment gap out of college grows and grows, and student loan repayments loom around the corner, making you wonder if you'll have to get some McDonalds job just to pay them once they enter repayment.
- nilsocket 7y agoReason for storing financial data within the country is, because in India corruption rate is high and no.of tax paying citizens are very less. Indeed it is important for us to store financial data within the country to stop non tax abiding citizens. Money laundering is also a huge problem. Citizens were being educated, not to take cash in large amounts, for the same reason. Even after demonetization, government was not able to get rid of black money. Edit: grammar
- csdreamer7 7y agoHow would requiring information be stored in the country prevent corruption? Countries can already demand any business records of their citizens from a business as a condition of doing business in that country or citizens. The US requires that any fin business that does business with US Citizens report to the United States government or be cut off from the US financial system. A lot of international banks responded by closing the accounts of Americans rather than deal with the costs of compliance.
- nonamechicken 7y agoI don't know much about this topic (finance). But since I see news reports regularly of Indians depositing black money in foreign banks, I am posting this. I am not really sure if this 'financial data must stay in India' requirement could solve the problem of black money. >The total amount of black money deposited in foreign banks by Indians is unknown. Some reports claim a total of US$1.06 - $1.4 trillions is held illegally in Switzerland. Other reports, including those reported by the Swiss Bankers Association and the Government of Switzerland, claim these reports are false and fabricated, and the total amount held in all Swiss bank accounts by citizens of India is about US$2 billion. In March 2018, it was revealed that the amount of Indian black money currently present in Swiss and other offshore banks is estimated to be ₹90 lakh crores or US$1500 billion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_black_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_black_money Getting Switzerland to release that information isn't that easy. I have been hearing about it for at least 5 years, may be more. Even 4 days ago, there were reports like this: https://www.businesstoday.in/current/economy-politics/noose-tightens-on-swiss-account-holders-details-of-at-least-50-indians-being-shared/story/356528.html https://www.businesstoday.in/current/economy-politics/noose-...
- averros 7y agoOh, good. More H-1B slots to people from countries where C.S. education is not dominated by diploma mills.
- nilsocket 7y agoMaster Card and Visa are failing, because we have something better in place. BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) developed by National Payments Corporation of India. - Transferring money from one personal account to any new account (adding a beneficiary account) would take more than 4 hours. - One needs to login each and every time to transfer money. - There is a chance of forgetting password and account being locked on multiple tries. - Extra charges for transferring money. All this problems were solved by BHIM new UPI (Unified Payments Interface). - Linking bank account with app (takes less than 1 minute) - Transferring money doesn't have any extra charges - No password, but 4 to 6 digit pin for transaction. - Safe, transaction can be done only from mobile which is linked with bank. Additional benefits, There is no need to give personal information, one can provide UPI address or Virtual UPI address. In Google Pay app, If my Gmail account is xyz@gmail.com Then my UPI would be, xyz@ok{bankname} If my bank is SBI,Then my UPI is xyz@oksbi Mentioning this address, anybody can make a payment or request one. Edit: Formatting
- nunez 7y agoI completely believe it. I spent two months in Hyderabad. India is WAYYY ahead on the payments game. Every business, no matter the size, accepted mobile payments (usually PayTM, but I saw support for PhonePe, Zeta and others). The US is super behind on this; very, very, very few retailers accept Square Cash, more accept PayPal, none of them accept those payments easily. Any app that does mobile banking requires KYC verification. For mobile payments, usually support soft KYC, which you can easily fake, but only lasts 180 days. For anything else online banking related, hard (in-person) KYC was required. Every terminal supported credit/debit cards (though using international cards was a crap-shoot, and AMEX even more so) and all of them expected Chip + PIN. People were legitimately surprised when they saw that I had to sign. Some didn't even ask for the signature because they weren't used to it. Everything in India uses SMS OTP and requires an India phone number to receive it. This was super annoying before getting a Indian SIM card, but once I did, I realized how nice of a system this was. There were many things about the India experience that I wasn't a fan of; paying for stuff was definitely not one of htem.
- kamaal 7y ago
- scarejunba 7y agoBit of an empty threat. Probably hurts America more than India.
- writepub 7y agoMore Americans travel to India on business than Indians seeking H1-Bs. If the US wants to limit work visas to Indians, India should limit any work based travel of Americans to India.
- sethherr 7y agoThis is a joke? You realize work visas are different from travel visas, right?
- cobbb 7y agoThe Problem is TRADE not H1B visas . ... Simple example every Enterprise level company has IT department in US. the CTO or the VP of the company wants to save money by going to offshore business model ... so how does this work, let say an infrastructure IT support in company consists of ( storage, database, network , System admins etc say about 150 employees) then a new CTO or VP of IT comes in and he decides to go for offshore model then enters the cheap low tech incompetent service companies from Asia bids these projects here .. let say 200 Million dollars for 5 years 24/7 support .. so these Body shopping company decides to have about 60 employees offshore and 10 employees onshore here in USA using H1b visa ... now the CTO of the company feels happy for saving money and starts firing ..sorry (Let go) of those 150 citizens..... this happens in every company across this country i know because I've seen it All.. now those employees who given their flesh and blood to those projects over years gets emotionally raged...at the time of KT( knowledge transfer) to those H1B onshore slaves.. saying you guys are taking our jobs away. and all that BS. BUT they forget One big Logic/common sense..that they lost their jobs because satanic .. crooked CTO's or VP of IT of their own company and due to the company it self .... not because immigrant came over H1B visa.. Let say for the argument of emotional mob .. that the H1b is completely removed by some revolution...do you really think the jobs will come back hahaha... those body-shopping companies will be more happy because that will give them a chance to make more money.. they will make 100% offshore and then they wont even keep those 10 h1b resources onshore.. they will make a deal with those crooked CTOs to operate everything from offshore ...so the emotional mob will be still unemployed even after H1B is removed .. the solution is the current administration should bring up the trade barriers a Bill to stop offshore business model completely which they wont do since this country is built and run by Rich CEOs.......