TCS, Infy account for 8.8 per cent H-1B visas

Mumbai: A day after the US accused India’s leading IT firms TCS and Infosys of flouting immigration norms to corner a lions share of

H-1B Visa, the industry body Nasscom refuted the allegations saying that only six of the top 20 H-1B Visa recipients were Indian companies in FY15.

Among the companies named by the US White House on its website, the industry body pointed out that TCS and Infosys together received just 7,504 approved H-1B Visas in FY2015, which is only 8.8 per cent of the total approved H-1B visas.

“You may know their names well, but like the top recipients of the H-1B visa are companies like Tata, Infosys, Cognizant — they will apply for a very large number of visas, more than they get, by putting extra tickets in the lottery raffle, if you will, and then they'll get the lion's share of visas,” a senior White House official had said.

However, Nasscom said that the Indian professionals are actually addressing the huge shortage of highly skilled workforce needed in cutting-edge fields such as cloud, big data, and mobile computing.

“Every reputable data source in the US has documented a growing shortfall between the supply and demand for computer science majors in the US workforce, especially in cutting-edge fields such as cloud, big data, and mobile computing.  

“The US Department of Labor estimates that there will be over 2.4 million unfilled STEM jobs by 2018, with over 50 per cent of these vacancies in IT-related positions.

“All Indian IT companies cumulatively account for less than 20 per cent of the total approved H-1B visas; although Indian nationals get 71 per cent of the H-1B visas. This is a testimony to the high skill levels of Indian-origin professionals, especially in the very coveted STEM skills category,” Nasscom added.    

The annual number of Indian IT specialists working on temporary visas for Indian IT service companies is about 0.009 per cent of the 158-million-member American workforce.

A Nasscom survey also found that the average wage for visa holders is over $82,000 apart from a fixed cost of about $15,000 incurred for each visa issued includes visa cost and related expenses.

This is over 35 per cent higher than the minimum prescribed exempt wage of $60,000.