Refuting the U.S. government’s comment on H-1B visa lottery misuse violation by Indian companies, IT industry body Nasscom on Monday said that only 6 of the top 20 H-1B recipients were Indian.
The apex body also said the two Indian firms, TCS and Infosys, together received only 7,504 approved H-1B visas in FY 2015; that is about 8.8% of the total approved H-1B visas.
“Nasscom would like to clarify on the statements made by the White House on Indian companies getting the lion’s share of H-1B visas; and highlight that in FY 2015, only 6 of the top 20 H-1B recipients were Indian companies,” Nasscom said in a statement.
Last week, a U.S. administration official had said that Indian companies like TCS, Infosys and Cognizant were getting the lion’s share of H-1B visas. “…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,” the official had said.
In its statement, Nasscom also said all the Indian IT companies cumulatively accounted for less than 20% of the total approved H-1B visas. Citing data, including from the U.S. labour department, the apex IT body said there was a growing gap between the supply and demand for computer science majors in the U.S. workforce, especially in cutting-edge fields such as cloud, big data, and mobile computing.
“The annual number of Indian IT specialists working on temporary visas for Indian IT service companies is about 0.009% of the 158-million-member U.S. workforce,” the Nasscom statement said. Indian nationals get about 71% of H-1B visas,this only served as “a testimony to the high skill levels of Indian-origin professionals.”
Since the new government took charge in the U.S., there has been much concern among the Indian IT companies regarding regulatory changes in the H-1B visas.
“Indian IT Industry is a “net creator” of jobs in the U.S. and supports nearly half a million jobs directly and indirectly,” Nasscom stated.
‘India in talks’
“We are in talks with the U.S. government on the issue,” said Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. “The discussions are not regarding the [Indian] companies but are on the [U.S.] law governing H-1B visas and the commitment made by the U.S. [on the number of such visas]. We are not questioning any country's sovereign right to issue visas, but the number [of H-1B visas] and the process.”
