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IN THIS ISSUE

MAIN FEATURE
Biotechnology : India’s Latest Frontier
BY QAISER AHMAD NAQVI

TRIBUTE
NASSCOM Chief Dies : Farewell to India’s IT Star
A SILICONEER EULOGY

IMMIGRATION
Lifeline for Kin : V Visa
BY RAJA AHLUWALIA

Publisher’s Note • Infotech India
Finance: Annuities • Culture: Raag Malkauns
Internet: Bollywood Awards • Festivities: Holi at Stanford
Community News • Auto Review: 2001 Acura 3.2 TL
Bollywood • Tamil Cinema • Recipe • Horoscope

Publisher's Note:

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal highlighted India’s growing importance as a destination for biotechnology firms. Several U.S. firms are looking for possible Indian partners.

Biotechnology? Many readers must have done a double-take. It was information technology that was supposed to be India’s forte, wasn’t it? Well, recent news reports suggest that biotechnology could well become another scientific frontier where India makes the world sit up and take notice. An expatriate Indian has already pledged his support towards building a biotechnology institute at IIT Mumbai, and M.S. Swaminathan, the famous architect of India’s Green Revolution, is leading public policy in Tamil Nadu to woo biotech firms and investors.

Yet the growth of and spread of biotechnology also has its naysayers. For critics, the question is less about the scientific pursuit of knowledge than the social and economic context of the pursuit. A few years ago, the proposed “terminator” gene by biotech giant Monsanto brought out shrill cries of protests from activists in India, and Indian activists have joined a global band of protesters who worry that the greed of corporate behemoths threaten not only the survival of Third World farmers but also put biodiversity in jeopardy.

Be that as it may, it appears unlikely that the biotechnology bandwagon can be stopped, so what is imperative now is to make sure that policymakers and the government have the integrity, commitment and savvy to make sure the public interest is adequately safeguarded.

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Main Feature

Biotechnology:
India's Latest Frontier By Qaiser Ahmad Naqvi

Biotechnology is the cutting-edge frontier that promises dramatic advances after information technology. India, it turns out, is ready to take on the world, but some critics are wary about the hype, writes Qaiser Ahmad Naqvi.

If you think that information technology is what has ushered India into the global marketplace you could be right; if you think IT is the only show in town, think again. Biotechnology is fast becoming another cutting-edge field where India is all set to make a mark. Consider the following:

• Houston-based entrepreneur Rahul Mehta’s family foundation is making a “significant contribution” toward the establishment of a new Rs. 55 crore ($12 million) School of Biosciences and Bioengineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai.
  
  • The funds have been pledged by the Mehta Family Foundation, set up by Mehta, founder, president and chief executive officer of NuView, Inc., a privately-held software company in Houston.
    
  • The 40-year-old entrepreneur has founded three previous technology firms that have been acquired by other high-tech companies, was in Mumbai March 26 at ceremonies at IIT to launch the Bhupat & Jyoti Mehta School of Biosciences and Bioengineering, named after his parents.
    
    
• India is spending over $1 million attempting to clone a cheetah which vanished from the subcontinent 50 years ago. A team of scientists from Hyderabad’s Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology expects to make the animal copy within five years.
  
  • The researchers will employ techniques similar to those used by American scientists, who are in the process of cloning an endangered Indian wild ox.
    
  • “Biotechnological intervention for the long-term conservation of species is a sound and most modern way of saving species that are headed towards extinction,” team leader Dr. Lalji Singh told the Indian Express newspaper.
    
  • Dr Singh and his team will take the genetic material from live cheetah cells and fuse it with empty leopard eggs.
    
    
• The government of India and Massachusetts-based Therion Biologics are partnering with New York philanthropic grou IAVI to develop and test preventive AIDS vaccines for India.
  

India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the Indian Council for Medical Research have signed a memorandum of understanding with IAVI to construct and evaluate one or more vaccines appropriate for use in India. The vaccines will be tailored to HIV strain C, the subtype of the virus most common in the country. The first of these vaccines will be developed by Therion Biologics, of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Working closely with the Indian team, Therion will design and manufacture a modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA) vaccine that aims to stimulate the production of immune cells that kill other cells infected with HIV. Pending regulatory approval, the partners intend to submit the vaccine to human testing in India within two years.

”Already India has proven itself an international leader in the fight against AIDS and the search for a vaccine, and today’s action strengthens that commitment,” said Seth Berkley, M.D., IAVI’s president and CEO.

After information technology, will bio-technology be the golden frontier of Indian science? Recent events like this strongly suggest that India could quickly become a major player in another cutting-edge area of science, though critics are already warning that the field of biotechnology brings with it a new set of hazards that profit-hungry corporations do not want people to know.

Regardless of what critics say, the next scientific wave is already sending ripples. Bangalore is hosting Bangalore Bio.com 2001 this month offering a common platform for key players in biotech industry and the government, to explore new avenues in the emerging biotechnology market, particularly in the light of the recently announced “Millennium Biotech Policy” by the Karnataka Government. The conference comes at a time when the global biotech market is expected to grow from $2.5 billion in 2001 to $4.5 billion by 2010.

“The Government of Karnataka is committed in its efforts to establish a biotech corridor for the development of the biotech industry in Karnataka,” said state IT Secretary Vivek Kulkarni. “The journey from IT to BT is a natural progression for Bangalore specifically, given the vast global potential held by bio-informatics and its proven excellence in software and scientific development. Bangalore Bio.com 2001 is one such sincere effort to highlight Karnataka as India’s emerging biotechnology capital and the future course that will be taken by Indian biotechnology firms.”

“After India’s software revolution, biotechnology is being described as the next big thing to hit the country.

Multinational and Indian research companies are investing heavily in the industry, encouraged by biotechnology-friendly policies,” BBC correspondent Crispin Thorold reported in a recent report to BBC Online.

In Tamil Nadu, one of the world’s leading agricultural scientists, Professor M S Swaminathan, has helped draw up local policy to promote biotechnology.

Swaminathan was the creator of India’s “green revolution,” a scheme that massively increased crop yields in the late 1960s. He believes that by improving infrastructure and encouraging investment “socially beneficial” biotechnology can flourish.

“We will invite entrepreneurs, non-resident Indians, or even outsiders,” he said. “We welcome anyone who shares our vision of reaching the unreached, or including the excluded in terms of technological benefit.”

Facilities being built to attract businesses include a biotechnology park near Chennai, medicinal plants laboratories near the temple-town Madurai, and a marine center in the south of the state.

An existing women’s biotechnology park near Chennai, will continue to be supported by the government, and a Bioinformatics and Genomics Center will be opened at the state’s main IT industrial park.

Overseas investors are being drawn by India’s enormous natural resources. Tamil Nadu alone has 5,000 species of flowering plants and 22,500 square kilometers of forests.

The area also has a sizeable section of India’s 7,500 km coastline. It is part of the ecological treasure trove that is the basis of much of the local biotechnology.

An estimated 60 percent of the world’s population live within 60 km of the sea. For them, global warming is a real threat to food security.

Topsoil will be washed away leaving marshy saline soil, an environment in which conventional crops won’t grow. It’s a problem researchers at the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation are trying to resolve.

“Our scientists have mapped mangrove trees. They grow in the estuaries, between seawater and fresh water and they have genes for seawater tolerance. We have identified those genes and transferred them to a number of crops, including mustard, tobacco, pulses and rice,” says Swaminathan.

In medicine as well as agriculture, India’s ecosystem has much to offer. Many Indian tribes turn to traditional healers who use locally found plants to treat diseases.

Multinational companies have realized the potential of these remedies in drug development. In recent years, overseas firms have rushed to patent chemicals from natural sources that have been used locally for hundreds of years. These include turmeric, neem, and ginger.

This “biopiracy,” which for many critics is nothing less than the theft of indigenous resources and know-how, is being combated to some extent in the courts. But there is real concern about the motives of the multinational companies who are investing in India.

M.V. Subbiah, chairman of the Murugappa Group, is cautious about the hype surrounding biotechnology.

Over the past 10 years, his large company has been using tissue culture to maximize yields, and increase disease resistance in sugar cane.

But he says that after much consideration, his family have decided not to invest in biotechnology.

“The modification of a gene and what it will lead to is one of the biggest ethical questions we have, and nobody has the answer to it,” he said.

The second reason is that wherever anything has gone into a monoclonal approach, even without biotechnology, diversity has been reduced quite substantially.

“Therefore we believe the same thing will happen here, and the extraordinary biodiversity that we have will be lost to this country.”

The issue of the “terminator” gene rocked the Indian news media several years ago, and brought protesters to the streets.

The terminator gene was developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in collaboration with Delta and Pine Land, a seed company now acquired by biotechnology giant Monsanto, which already has extensive interests in India.

The independence of the Indian farmer, says food expert Devinder Sharma, is anathema to the United States, which has built up a huge biotechnology industry. The U.S., he said, wants to sell not only genetically engineered seeds but the tailor-made fertilizers and pesticides that go with it as cotton farmers in Andhra Pradesh discovered so painfully.

So far, Indian farmers got by very well, putting by a part of their crops for seed in the time-honored way and in the process maintaining the rich crop-diversity of their famed varieties of wheat and rice perfected to suit Indian agro-climatic conditions and to local tastes.

The Indian government which has so far been wary of the interests of the United States food lobby has become lax and last year even allowed Monsanto to set up a $ 25 million research laboratory on the Indian Institute of Science campus at Bangalore.

If the terminator gene does not help the United States destroy India’s crop varieties through cross-pollination it can certainly do it by manipulating market forces, he alleged.

‘’Farmer’s rights are incompatible with the intellectual property rights regime which the United States wishes to foist on the world,’’ says activist Vandana Shiva.

According to Dr Shiva, agriculture based on globalization, genetic engineering and corporate monopolies on seeds will eventually establish a food system in which multinationals will control everything grown and eaten.

Currently, Indian agriculture is characterized by diversity, decentralization. It focuses on improving small farm productivity through ecologically sound methods that are nature-friendly and sustainable.

Small ecological farms are far more productive than the large industrial farms of the United States, although multinationals like Monsanto promote the idea that the world needs biotechnology to be fed, Shiva said.

Notwithstanding the debate, politicians and policy makers now believe that as well as creating wealth, the growth in biotechnology may bring medical and ecological breakthroughs.

Biotechnology, like IT, is knowledge intensive. This gives India’s highly qualified, English speaking but relatively cheap work force a real commercial advantage. The question for India in resolving critics’ doubts is not unlike that in other areas: How to harness the explosive power of market forces and entrepreneurship with effective and accountable checks and balances – this is a skill that the Western countries have acquired in large measure, but for India, as the Enron debacle shows, there is a long way to go.

– Qaiser Ahmad Naqvi is a freelance writer
based in New Delhi.

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Infotech India



SEBI to Probe Satyam ... Bell Labs in Hyderabad ... Aptech Chief Quits — Here is the latest on information technology from India

SEBI to Probe Satyam

The Securities and Exchange Board of India has asked two stock exchanges to investigate an alleged leak of the financial results of Satyam Computer Services ahead of its board meeting, according to newspaper reports.

The Bombay and Hyderabad stock exchanges have been asked to probe the leak, which appeared on two Web sites about 40 minutes before the board meeting, the Business Standard and The Economic Times reported.

Satyam’s shares, which were languishing at an intra-day low of Rs. 217 rupees, surged in evening trade to close up 7.37 percent at Rs. 233. Dealers attributed the rise to the leaked results. Satyam has denied releasing the results before the board meeting. The company, India’s fourth largest software exporter, reported a better-than-expected 164 percent increase in earnings for the January-March quarter.

The reported probe also comes at an embarrassing time for Satyam, when it is planning an issue of American Depositary Receipts. Its subsidiary Satyam Infoway is already listed on the Nasdaq. “We are examining the possibility of anyone accessing the unapproved information even for a few seconds from our Web site due to any technical snag,” Satyam Computer’s company secretary G. Jayaraman told a newspaper.

However, Satyam officials were not immediately available for comment.
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Bell Labs in Hyderabad

Bell Labs has opened its research and development center, Bell Labs India, here in Hyderabad. The new facility, which will complement the activities of the existing Bell Labs R&D facility in Bangalore, will engage in research on emerging technologies such as 3G wireless and Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems). It will play a vital role in the development of Lucent products distributed globally.

Inaugurating the facility here, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu said: “We want to make Hyderabad a major knowledge hub of India and opening up of facilities like this would go a long way in achieving our prime goal. Bell Labs could prove to be very useful in promoting knowledge here and eventually it could become a center of excellence for all the convergence technologies.”

With more than 30,000 employees in 30 countries, Bell Labs is one of the largest R&D organizations dedicated to communications. It has generated more than 28,000 patents since its inception in 1925 and has played a key role in perfecting communications technologies, including transistors, digital networking and signal processing, lasers and fiber optic communications systems.

The Hyderabad facility has 50 software professionals working on the latest communication technologies. Bell Labs in India is engaged in emerging technologies such as broadband and mobile Internet. Lucent has its offices in New Delhi and Bangalore, and project offices at Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kerala, Chandigarh and Jaipur.
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Aptech Chief Quits

Ganesh Natarajan, managing director of Aptech Limited, a pioneer in computer education in India, has relinquished his post and is speculated to have taken up a job in India.

However, as the founder member of the company, Natarajan will continue to be the director of BConnectBWorldwide., a subsidiary of Aptech.

The company’s board has appointed Pramod Khera, executive director, as acting chief executive of the company and Abhay Sinha, executive vice president as the acting head of the software business.
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I feel have reached my peak as far as lobbying is concerned. So said Dewang Mehta nearly six years ago while sitting in NASSCOM’s plush office in Delhi’s Ashok Hotel. But events that would unfold in the next few years would show that he would continue to play that role with sophistication and exemplary skill.

Mehta, the hyperkinetic, peripatetic one-man roadshow for Indian information technology, fulfilled almost all the goals he had set for himself except for two — his desire to make a commercial Bollywood masala movie and obtain a commercial pilot license for which he was training hard.

The once financially fragile 72-member industry forum in 1997 now boasts of 1,000 members and an extremely healthy bottom line, thanks to the inspirational leadership of this dynamo of a man. But the success was not easy and a lot of it can be attributed to his informal style and successful lobbying among government circles.

He also deserves credit for his excellent public relations skills that led to income tax exemption for software exporters and software reproduction legislation, and excise & sales tax exemption for software from a numbers of state governments.

This apart, the NASSCOM chief is also widely credited for convincing the Finance Ministry to reduce duty on software from a peak of 107 percent to zero. He also started the annual software industry shows that have gained popularity over the years.

Humble Beginning

Born in Umreth, a small village in Gujarat in 1962, Dewang’s family shifted to Delhi when he was just six. He passed out from Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in 1979 with the hope of becoming a doctor. Although he got selected in three medical colleges, he chose AIIMS in Delhi.

Unfortunately, he was rejected due to a bizarre admission policy at the AIIMS. He traveled to Mumbai and was admitted into St. Xaviers College, where he opted for political science, French and history as he was toying with the idea of becoming an IAS officer.

After two months of history and French, a dissatisfied Dewang sat for the entrance exam of CA, and in 1984 became a qualified chartered accountant. In 1977, on a vacation to his village, he was introduced to Shyam Benegal, who at that time was making his movie Manthan.

For two months, Dewang worked with Benegal as spot boy. Here, he developed an understanding of the art of movie making. Since then, he got hooked on to the idea of making a movie of his own.

His fascination for writing compelled him to come out with an article, which was published in The Times of India in 1978. This article was his lucky break as Menaka Gandhi, who was the erstwhile editor of Surya magazine, appointed him to write for the magazine at a princely salary of Rs. 600.

Not to remain content as a mere writer, in 1982, he along with two other journalists formed Asian Travel Writers Association, with the aim of promoting Indian writing on travel and tourism. In the same year, he made his first film, a 20-minute documentary on Indian tourism, Glimpses Of India. This documentary won an award at the Commonwealth Film Festival in Leeds in July 1983. This was where he came in contact with computer graphics for the first time. It was an interest that he would carry for the rest of his life.

The IT Connection

In October 1988, Dewang cut short his stay in London at his mother’s request and joined Orissa Cement as general manager for diversification into computer graphics. Besides working in OCL, he continued to dabble in making ad films.

In the meantime, Harish Mehta asked him to find a replacement for the previous secretary of NASSCOM. Unable to find anybody suitable, Harishbhai offered him the job. So in April 1991, Dewang joined NASSCOM on a part-time basis because “he wanted to carry on with his film making.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

He was the icon of Indian software industry to the world. The irresistible Dewang was a shrewd lobbyist who taught an India, tottering under the aftermath of the license-Raj, the art of liaising with the government for the common interest of an industry. His industriousness and optimism saw the premier software association become a powerful voice in the history of Indian industry.

He was the best brand ambassador Indian software could ever dream of. Under his leadership, NASSCOM rescued the “Made in India” label from obscurity and transformed it into a prized tag. The man who had the temerity to coin the phrase “Roti, kapda aur bandwidth” became Indian software industry’s official voice, both on the domestic and the international scene.

“I share a dream with the people of India,” he wrote. “We all wish to see India emerge as a software powerhouse. For this, we not only have to achieve higher revenues and value-addition in software developed in India but, we also have to ensure that we are effectively able to channelize the power of IT to provide basic necessities to all the citizens of India. We have to work together in penetrating IT to every nook and corner of the country. In this direction, it is also important, say in next five years, to aim for 100% literacy in India.”

Dewang’s irrepressible optimism could sometimes drive even a fellow optimist mad. Yet the IT industry gained immensely from his optimism. For starters, the import duties on software were completely taken off under his relentless lobbying through NASSCOM. When the IT industry was worried over the political uncertainty during the last general elections and behind-the-scene maneuvers for government making, Dewang was cool as ever. He had already met prominent politicians from both the Congress and the National Democratic Alliance and had apprised them of the software industry’s aspirations and concerns. When the industry was suffering from post-Y2K blues, Dewang assured that either the Euro conversion projects or the Web boom will come to India’s rescue. The Web boom did.

Dewang’s rise in the Indian industry skyscape was quite meteoric. From just being the president of NASSCOM, Dewang rose up to don the advisory roles in most of the technology missions, commissions, panels and task forces of the government of India.

Dewang was extremely democratic in his approach to life and work. He would always press for consensus. He was also a man of multi-hued interests and talents. He was a film maker, chartered accountant, journalist, computer graphics professional, entrepreneur, he had done it all. In the last 18 years in his 38-year life span, Dewang lit a fire under the software industry. A fire which is hard to tame. His untimely death has come as a shock to the entire IT fraternity. “This is absolutely tragic. Unbelievable. He was a great person and a great personal friend. This is a huge personal loss for me,” said MindTree chairman Ashok Soota.

Here, we recall some of the significant achievements of Dewang Mehta.

• Dataquest IT Man of the Year – 1997
  
• World Economic Forum nominated Dewang as one of the 100 “Global Leaders of Tomorrow”
  
• Software Evangelist of the Year – 1997, 1998, 1999
  
• He was the industry’s voice during the formation of the Union IT policy
  
• Advisor to the IT panels of most Indian states.
  

His Mission

Dewang’s mission was to bring the power and benefit of Information Technology to every man, women and child of India. This would involve, amongst others, the following.

• Computer and Internet in every school/college of India by 2005-2008
  
• Internet/Email at every STD/ISD booth by 2003
  
• Internet through cable TV - reach at least 15 million household by 2003
  
• Employment generation through IT (I.T. Enabled Services)
  
• E-commerce proliferation
  
• Tele-medicine in all villages, taluks of India
  
• E-governance implemented by 2003
  
• IT to help the disabled
  
• IT to emerge as the main movement in India (IT for masses)
  

The man gave all he had and more to the cause of the Indian software industry. His time, life and maybe the passing away all got dedicated to a self-determined mission of promoting Indian software abroad. And he managed the multifarious activities involved with the panache of a skilled acrobat.

At the time he took over NASSCOM the software industry was strong but under-leveraged. He lobbied hard and long for it, both inside and outside the country. He lobbied for it at business forums and in schools and colleges. He contributed to building it up to a level where it became a symbol of success for the country and a beacon of hope for thousands of software enthusiasts.

Recently he had lamented “I am tired, just when things are looking settled this US slowdown starts.” Maybe he should have taken it easy. But then that would not be the Dewang we knew.

Now that he is no more, the void that has been left will become very obvious. Under a big tree other plants cannot grow. And NASSCOM will have to struggle hard to find a worthy successor. The unfortunate part is that the tragic end came at a time when his dynamic presence was most required and when he had a carved a niche from where he could have gone to many other bigger things.

The one-man band of the Indian software industry is no more. But the music must go on.

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FINANCE:

Annuities
A Retirement Planner’s Friend – By Ashok Gupta

With fears growing about the viability of Social Security, the prudent thing is to save for retirement. Annuities can be a very useful tool for this, says financial adviser Ashok Gupta.

Here are three big reasons why annuities, under the right circumstances, may be a very tax-efficient way to accumulate assets for long-term retirement needs.

• Tax deferred earnings
  
• Future payments guaranteed by insurance
  
• Various investment options to choose from
  

Annuity purchase payments are not tax-deductible, so it may not be advisable to put money into an annuity before you’ve contributed the maximum to plans that may be funded by pre-tax dollars. However, qualified plans have some type of contribution limit — $2,000 annually for IRAs and $10,000 for 401(k)s for example. If those limits are too small to achieve your retirement goals, and you can afford to set more aside, an annuity affords an excellent spot for extra savings to grow tax-deferred.

Purchase payments go into a fixed annuity at a guaranteed rate or into a variable annuity whose earnings are tied to the performance of a subaccount invested in underlying variable investment options.

Tax-deferred Earnings

Earnings on an annuity are not taxed until withdrawn, allowing the value of the savings to grow and compound. It’s that tax-deferred feature – combined with a growing assortment of innovative products that offers many levels of growth potential and investment risk –that have popularized annuities among people who still have many years to go before retirement.

Future Payments Guaranteed

The insurance feature of the annuity can be selected to assure payments — for life, for a specified time period, say 10 years, or for life with a certain period guaranteed, meaning that if the annuitant dies early a beneficiary will receive the remainder of the promised payments.

Various Investment Options

It has been shown that unlike other investments, where gains are subject to tax annually, variable annuities allow owners to shift their money among various subaccounts without having to “cash in” and pay tax until they’re ready for a distribution.

Alternatively, a fixed annuity offers safety of principle and earns a guaranteed interest rate for a certain period of time.

Points to Ponder

Of course, like any investment, you shouldn’t purchase an annuity until you’ve closely evaluated how well it suits your financial objectives and tolerance for risk.

Here are some points to help you determine whether annuities are right for you:

Ashok Gupta is a financial planner.
He is based in San Jose, Calif.

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IMMIGRATION LAW:

Lifeline for Kin : V Visa – By Raja Ahluwalia

No more inordinate delays for immigrants who are trying to have spouses or family members join them. A new law will bring enormous relief, says attorney Raja Ahluwalia.

This country attracts immigrants like a magnet, and not all of them enter or remain in this country within the law. The latest gift from the U.S. Congress to illegal spouses and children of green card holders and U.S. citizens in the form of the V visa is worth applauding.

As everyone is well aware (my phone has not stopped ringing), on December 21, 2000, the Legal Immigration and Family Equity Act became law. Among several provisions, LIFE creates a V visa that will allow certain spouses and children of permanent residents to live and work here while their immigration cases are pending.

Due to processing delays and quota backlogs, husbands, wives and children of permanent residents and U.S. citizens often wait abroad months or years to get immigrant visas. Congress passed LIFE to bring families together.

The V visa is available to the spouses and unmarried minor children of permanent residents. Because of quota backlogs, these close relatives have to wait five to six years to get permanent residence.

The V visa is available to the spouse and unmarried children under 21 of permanent residents. The applicant must have been waiting for permanent residence three years or more from the time the INS received a second preference petition filed on his or her behalf. The INS must have received the applicant’s petition on or before December 21, 2000. The INS need not have approved the petition. For example, if a green card holder filed a petition on January 1, 1998 and the petition is still pending, his or her spouse (or minor children) can obtain V visa.

V visa holders can live and work in the United States while waiting to qualify for permanent residence. Prior to LIFE, these relatives of permanent residents often had difficulty getting a visa to visit the United States because the previous law disallowed issuance of non-immigrant visa to someone who is beneficiary of immigrant visa petition except in certain situations.

V visa applicants outside the United States will apply for their visa at a U.S. consulate abroad. The bars for applicants unlawfully present don’t apply. Applicants in the United States, even those here unlawfully, qualify to change status without returning home. Once the V visa holder has a relative petition approved on his or her behalf and a current priority date, he or she can adjust status under 245(a) or 245(i), if qualified. V visa applicants are not inadmissible for having been unlawfully present in the United States more than 180 days.

The law went into effect on the day of enactment, December 21, 2001. However, INS and DOS have not yet issued instructions and/or interim regulations and are not yet accepting applications for V visa from qualified people present in the U.S. As of April 2, 2001, the consulates have starting accepting such applications for V visa.

V visa is a temporary relief, though, because of its limited applicability resulting from qualifying conditions. Since the petition has to have been filed on or before December 21, 2001, the prospective beneficiaries of such applications do not have the same recourse or hope of being united with family utilizing such visa. However, let us hope that this law will set the trend for some permanent law in the future.

– Raja Ahluwalia is an immigration
attorney based in San Mateo, Calif.

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