Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal made an unexpected admission about the Indian tech industry’s take on delays related to H-1B visa appointments in the country. In a recent interview, he suggested that fears associated with the US nonimmigrant work visa may have been blown out of proportion as the Indian industry is expecting to see things becoming “better” soon enough.
It marks a sharp reversal from how EAM Dr S Jaishankar and Ministry of External Affairs addressed the immigration and H-1B debate some time ago.
Speaking to CNBC-TV18 on the heels of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump’s phone call, Goyal also claimed that the H-1B visa issue was not brought up during theIndia-US trade dealtalks.
H-1B left out of India-US trade deal talks
During the recent interview, Piyush Goyal openly admitted to not having discussed H-1B visas with his counterparts so far. He then turned to how the Indian industry was reacting to the matter in light of the Donald Trump administration’s swift policy changes targeting the ‘specialty occupations’ visa category.
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“I had discussed this with our Indian industry, and they don’t seem to be perturbed at all about the restrictions on H-1B,” Goyal told CNBC-TV18. “They are very confident that wherever they require it, they will get it. In fact, some people also told me it will become better, because a lot of the fringe applications will go out, and serious players will now be looking for entry of their people into the US to serve high-tech products and high-tech requirements.”
H-1B vs Outsourcing: Piyush Goyal on which works for Indian economy
Further sharing his own views on the visa issue, he said, “I personally think H-1B lost its significance significantly post-COVID, when we all saw that working from home, we could do a lot of work.”
He attributed the supposed decline in H-1B interest to the rise in Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in India.
With Indians alone making for over 70% H-1B approvals in the US in recent years, America-based multinational corporations have particularly taken an interest in the high-skilled talent workforce coming from the South Asian country. As a result, companies have invested in setting up offshore business units elsewhere, with India emerging as a top destination for such operations.
“We’ve already seen the impact of that with the growing number of GCCs that are now operating in India,” Goyal argued. “Almost 1,800 GCCs now operate in India. The world and large corporations recognise that you could do the same work from any other offshore location, instead of getting people into very high-cost economies like the US. Getting anybody to the UK, London, or New York, or any such place, is a very expensive proposition.”
Goyal went on to speak highly of India’s position as a growing GCC hub, as it allowed workers to stay in the country with their families. “They earn in India. They pay taxes in India. They spend in India, adding to our economy and economic activity,” the Indian minister added. “They earn in India. They pay taxes in India. They spend in India, adding to our economy and economic activity.”
Echoing the same sentiment at the NDTV Profile Conclave 2026, Goyal said that he hadn’t heard of any company asking him to talk to his US counterparts on the issue of negotiating for more H-1B visas.
“The world recognises so much, which could’ve been done at home during Covid, can be done offshore,” he told NDTV this past week. “Rather than struggling to take people from India to the US, and pay them top-dollar salaries because the cost of living in the US at $90,000 per capita income vs $3,000 per capita income in India, are humongously high.”
He argued further that such an arrangement results in the US paying more to the person. However, outsourcing work to India’s GCCs results in more job creation in the country itself and making the business “more attractive and profitable” for all those behind more than 1,800 GCCs in India.
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Sharp U-turn from previous take on immigration?
The Commerce Minister’s recent remarks on H-1B indicate a drastic change in how India views the immigration issue. While Goyal now argues more in favour of US businesses outsourcing talent to India instead of doubling down on H-1B approvals, External Affairs MinisterS Jaishankar had a starkly contrasting take on the matter.
In December, Dr Jaishankar warned that countries like the US and those in Europe would end up being “net losers” if they continue their severe crackdown on immigration and foreign workers.
While at India’s World Annual Conclave 2025 in New Delhi, he answered a question on backlash against immigration by saying, “A lot of these are issues which they have to resolve because, in many cases. The actual crisis has nothing to do with the mobility of the incoming workforce.”
“If there are concerns, let us say, in the United States or in Europe, it is because they very consciously and deliberately, over the last two decades, allowed their businesses to relocate. It was their choice and strategy. They have to find ways of fixing it, and many of them are.”
Jaishankar further insisted mobility and the use of talent across borders was a “mutual benefit,” adding, “That they would be net losers if they actually erected too many roadblocks to the flow of talent.”
“As we move into an era of advanced manufacturing, we will need more talent, not less, and talent cannot be developed organically at a high rate. There is a certain structural impediment out there. In their own societies, you can see the tension.”
What is the H-1B crisis?
The current “crisis” regarding the H-1B work visas was particularly intensified in December 20205, as thousands of visa interviews in India were severely postponed and ultimately cancelled amid outrage over new social media policy changes.
Contrary to Goyal’s claims, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal had also emphasised in late December the Indian government had received heard multiple reports of people being “strandedfor an extended period of time because of scheduling or rescheduling issues of consular appointments.”
“While we do understand that visa-related issues pertain to the sovereign domain of any country, we have flagged these issues and the concerns of our nationals to the US side,” Jaiswal added after the US government made it mandatory for H-1B workers and H-4 dependents to make their social media profiles public for vetting. “We hope that these delays and these disruptions will be addressed.” |
