This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, in India worshippers are flocking to the Chilkur Balaji Temple, better known as the "Visa Temple," to seek divine help in securing a U.S. work visa.
Priests bless passports, applicants walk 108 circles around an altar – and thousands believe the ritual offers a holy shortcut to Silicon Valley.
It would all sound like a satire piece, except it isn't. What's unfolding is a ritual economy wherein visas have become a kind of currency of faith.
As the Journal article puts it, "Indian place of worship touts its power to summon divine assistance for people who want to study or work abroad," quoting one participant as saying, "If we come here and pray, we get a visa."
As bizarre as it might seem to picture a deity distributing H-1B approvals, it's no more bizarre than the ways many American companies treat U.S. workers. The H-1B is a temporary work visa intended for highly skilled roles where no qualified U.S. worker is available. Employers must attest that hiring the foreign worker will not harm American wages nor working conditions, applications go through a lottery system and are capped by law. In theory, these safeguards are meant to prevent abuse. In practice, however, the system is routinely gamed, with companies using it as a massive pipeline for cheaper, visa-dependent labor.
So while families in Hyderabad burn incense to improve their immigration odds, Fortune 500 firms in the U.S. are constructing shrines of their own – shrines to outsourcing, offshoring and resumes stamped "foreign worker."
The Visa Temple's premise could just as easily serve as corporate America's HR policy: "If we pray hard enough, maybe we won't have to hire an American."
So laugh, if you like, at the marble floors of India's Visa God. But the real spectacle is how easily U.S. companies avoid hiring Americans and, unlike the temple worshippers, they don't need to walk 108 circles.
They just need to file another visa petition.
