Bangalore:  Barack Obama’s reelection has renewed hopes in tech community that immigration reform will get the top priority. And the president in the acceptance speech said “fixing our immigration system” would be one of the policy issues he would address “in the coming weeks and months.”

The Indian IT company’s are facing lot of problems over U.S. visa norms. Unites States accounts for more than half of the over $70 billion in software exports from India, forcing the companies to sub contract work with U.S. based temporary consultants while their own employees are sitting idle on the bench. This is resulting in higher costs and lower margins, further eroding Indian IT companies' competitive advantage in a weak demanding environment.

Under Obama’s government, the visa norms made it extremely difficult for the companies to send their employees on projects at client locations. On the contrary, the visa fees have soared, and even rejection rates.

In 2011, approval of L1 visas were 28 percent lower, according to the data from independent public policy think tank National Foundation for American Policy. On the other hand visa approvals rose by 15 percent from rest of world; this led to concerns over discriminations which singled out India. On the other hand more than 25,000 Indians fly to U.S. on work assignments for software companies, and over 40 percent of work permits are usually under the L1 category.