Thousands of foreign workers in India face a deadline Saturday to be out of the country in a visa clampdown aimed at cracking down on tax-dodging expats and unskilled labour. The changes will affect expatriates working in India on a business visa, which under the new rules will be reserved for a smaller pool of senior executives, trade consultants and other specialists.
Those who fail to meet the government's new criteria for the business visa will have to leave India by Saturday midnight and can return to the country to work only if they meet the stricter criteria for a full employment visa. "If a foreign national is employed in India, he must have the right kind of visa," Home Secretary G.K. Pillai said in New Delhi this week.
The number of expatriates affected by the change was not known, but experts said they expected thousands to be caught in the net. Viral Thakkar, a partner at global consultancy firm KPMG in Mumbai, said he saw the stricter rules as aimed at keeping foreigners out of semi-skilled jobs. Immigration lawyer Poorvi Chothani also said the changes in the rules were to target tax-evading foreigners.
Earlier, business visas were given to a wider range of occupations and employees were allowed to come for six months without paying taxes. "The problem comes when companies bring in people and send them back within six months and then get a new batch of people. As a result the government gets nothing," said Chothani of the Mumbai-based LawQuest legal firm.