Notion of Indians replacing US workers is mythical: Nasscom prez

US President-elect Donald Trump has raised the rhetoric on H1-B visa once again. He said he would not allow Americans to be replaced by foreign workers. IT stocks were down this morning on the back of this news. Speaking to CNBC-TV18, Nasscom President R Chandrasekhar said that the notion that Indian IT workers replace American workers is mythical. He said all businesses across the world including US are under tremendous pressure to adopt technology. "US is deficient in skill sets and needs to adopt technology to stay efficient. Trump will look at all ramifications from a business perspective," believes Chandrasekhar. Sudin Apte, CEO & Research Director at Offshore Insights concurs with the thought and says that there is no need to press the panic button post Trump's comments. "I don't think we need to worry at this stage. There is no reason to believe Trump-related immigration risk as a major headwind", he said.He further added that top Indian companies have started increasing local hiring in US. Below is the verbatim transcript of R Chandrashekhar & Sudin Apte’s interview to Anuj Singhal, Latha Venkatesh & Sonia Shenoy on CNBC-TV18.Latha: What we feared now appears to be kind of closer to taking shape with President elect Trump actually speaking about H1B visa should we worry that a hunk of business might go away?Chandrashekhar: This notion that Indian IT workers and particularly H1B workers go to the US and replace American workers on a one to one bases and end up doing the same job in the same way is a powerful one and an emotive one, but completely mythical and far remote from reality. The reality is that all businesses across the world including in the US are under tremendous pressure to adopt technology in order to stay competitive and in order to continue to create jobs.No doubt the US produces a lot of technologies that the world uses, but it is also hugely deficient in the skill sets that are needed for the adoption of these technologies. All the US government statistics also indicate that and that is where workers from India actually help in enabling them to transform their businesses. Therefore what the workers who go there from the IT sector do is to enable that transformation of the business which enables corporate America to stay competitive and create jobs in the US. Trump himself being a business I am sure will actually look at all these ramifications from an overall business perspective and from the commitment that they have made to create more jobs in the US. Technology everywhere in the world today eliminates some jobs and creates new jobs and the new jobs do require different skills and newer skills. Latha: They can still make life difficult by making visas more expensive? Even if jobs are not lost do you see a clear impact on margins?Chandrashekhar: Even if visas are made more expensive, the way it would work is that it would actually add to the cost of getting the resources and the human resources that are so much needed in the US economy. I have talked about the very well documented shortage of skills. What we are concerned about and what we have emphasised repeatedly is that we are very opposed to the discriminately application of these provisions. The most important thing is they should be applied uniformly and we are certainly hoping that when all these aspects of the issue are seen that a balanced view will be arrived at keeping all these factors in view.Sonia: The other big issue that everyone is facing is that it is not so much about job loss but it is also about whether until you get more clarity on these H1B visa issue there could be a further cut back in clients spending and pushing forwards of clients decisions. Something that we have seen even before Donald Trump got elected would that be your fear as well?Apte: As R Chandrashekhar said some of these points are still speculative. Last time also on your channel I had mentioned, in fact couple of times I have mentioned that there is an increase in protectionism and that poses a risk. However, I still continue to believe that as far as off shoring or outsourcing to India is concerned as far as US and UK are concerned they have come to a stage where it’s no reversal is feasible. So, I do believe that it is in the interest of the corporate there. While there may be increase in sort of procedural delay, increase in visa fees and some of those overheads for getting a visa, but I do really think that there will be a total reversal or deporting of people as some of the sections are talking about I really don’t think we need to worry or press a panic button at this stage. Let us see how it evolves. I do understand that people like Jeff Sessions have been appointed as Attorney-General etc so some indications are there that he possibly will be following through one of this promise of his election though he might have done u-turn on some others but let us wait and watch.I think it is in the interest of the company, so it is not only Indian IT industries that need to worry about. It is also companies like GE, Citi, Cisco, Microsoft several other firms who really need to be worried also. So, I do believe that it will taper off. It may yield only into some measures related to defining the post, justifying why this person is not available in US etc some of the stuff that you have seen in continent of Europe and Scandinavian countries when you need to send a person from here. Anuj: Are you saying that this would be more of an irritant than a massive business headwind?Apte: At this point in time there is nothing to believe that this will be a massive headwind. So, let us wait for things to evolve. There has been a flip-flop that he has been doing continuously. I know that there are some indications, some concerns of course businesses needs to plan and there is also other way to look at. This is not new some of these things may not be as severe as these, but some of these things - difficulties in getting visas especially H1B has been happening for some time now. I do believe that industry in a sense is preparing itself to handle some of those things. So, two options, I know for sure that some of the top Indian IT industry or Indian IT companies are doing, one is recruiting local –locals, so you have not much of a difficultly of H1B and second thing is that also promoting near shore or other components of global delivery and also push somewhat off shore so these two things people are trying to do. As you move to platform, as you move towards the delivery of technology via not so much person dependant mechanism then some of these things also will help in addressing these issues. So, I won’t surely look at this as a panic button or a massive headwind.