Another low for H-1B

One hundred companies wanting to hire software programmers ‘‘from India’’ are facing a backlash in the US because of their advertising. An IT industry association, the Programmers Guild, has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to stop this ‘‘abuse’’ of the H-1B programme. The complaints have been filed since May and some 280 more complaints are said to be in the works this year. The Guild’s ire is being directed at job advertisements that say things like ‘‘We require candidates for H1B from India,’’ and ‘‘We sponsor GC [green card] and we do prefer H1B holders.’’ This is a violation of US law since the country’s Immigration and Nationality Act requires that US jobs must be available to US workers, the Guild has said in its complaints. Some 60,000 Indians can go to the US under the H-1B programme every year. For the last two years, this ‘quota’ has been filled up within a month after it it opened.

India joins software UN

China chose open source software for its second giant leap, but India stayed with the world’s popular software standard: Microsoft. But as a host of nations join the Open Document Format Alliance (ODA), Indian states and government departments are throwing their hats in too. By last week, Delhi State, the Election Commission and Allahabad courts had decided to support ODA fully for their paperwork, adding substantially to its kitty. The ODA is a group of companies including Sun Microsystems, IBM and Red Hat that support inter-operability for documents and a uniform worldwide standard for government electronic stationery. It has Belgium, Brazil, China and Malaysia on its side, while France is waiting in the wings. ODA promises to create a long-lasting, free of cost and international standard for all office documents like letters, e-mails and messages that governments frequently update at a cost if they belong to any single company.