Posted on 06/08/2015 6:51:07 AM PDT by ConservingFreedom
NEW DELHI: Immigration and visa issues, which have long plagued the information technology sector, could come back to hurt Indian IT services companies this year as the US heads towards Presidential elections in 2016.
In the US, the biggest market for the Indian IT services sector, "this will be a bloody, contentious election and immigration reform is right up there for discussion," said Phil Fersht, founder and chief executive of HfS Research. "The displacement of US IT and back-office jobs will be a significant issue leading up to 2016."
India's $146 billion IT outsourcing industry has been a beneficiary of the temporary US work visas that are required by skilled foreign workers to work in that country. The employees working at client locations in the US are issued H-1B visas, which have a cap of 65,000 a year.
The US Congress in recent months has been considering Bills that seek to triple the cap of H-1B visas to 195,000. There is, however, a growing discontent about the H-1B visa process among skilled workers in the US, who say the visas are a way for big companies to hire cheaper foreign workers.
Recent examples they cite include electricity company Southern California Edison and entertainment company Disney where local employees were laid off and replaced by H-1B visa holders. The layoffs have prompted some US Senators to call for investigations into the visa process used by the companies.
"US workers who have trained a temporary visa-holding replacement as a condition of their severance describe it as a profoundly humiliating experience. These workers see a direct connection between the US government's H-1B visa policies and their job loss, and they are furious," said Patrick Thibodeau, senior editor at Computerworld.
The US workers see this as a case of foreign workers on temporary visas replacing citizens and permanent residents and not as an India-specific issue, he added.
The people ET contacted for this article said it was too soon in the run up to the presidential elections to say how the issue of visas would play out, but they all agreed that the larger immigration reform would be addressed by the contestants.
"The Democrats will attempt to capture the Hispanic vote by being pro-immigration with a path to citizenship for illegals. The Republicans are more mixed but tend to be pro-business and therefore pro-H1B," said Peter Bendor-Samuel, CEO of consulting firm Everest Group.
"Among the two announced candidates on the Democratic side, Senator Bernie Sanders is a critic of the H-1B visa programme. If he raises the temporary visa issue, it may be to challenge former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's support for raising the visa cap," said Computerworld's Thibodeau.
Indian industry body National Association of Software and Services Companies says it does not see much action on the legislative front in the visa issues but it does respond to the administrative changes that keep cropping up.
"Any laying off of workers anywhere in the world is unfortunate, but this is truly a result of business decisions taken by companies across the world...as they look for ways to grow and increase shareholder value," said Shivendra Singh, vice president at Nasscom.
Indian companies generate thousands of jobs in the US and also contribute to support science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education in the US, Singh added.
All the top Indian IT firms — Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro and HCL Technologies — do have tie-ups and programmes for STEM education in the US, in addition to offices that hire local people. However, except Infosys, none disclosed data about either the total number of their US employees or the number of their US workforce on temporary visas such as H1B and L1 in their latest annual reports.
"Most of the US is unaware of the benefits - and best practices -Indian service providers are contributing to the US economy. I would also encourage bodies such as Nasscom to invest in more US activities to promote their contributions to global services and economic growth," said HfS' Fersht.
H-1b needs to die.
I’m just all broken up about that.
Agreed, if they want to get a job here get a green card or apply for citizenship the old fashioned way, come over here and compete for jobs just like everyone else, and if they beat a us citizen for a job, then oh well.
LOL! Indian IT services companies will be hurt if and only if the next President stands up for the American worker.
Currently, it is at 65,000 per year. The proposal is 195,000 per year. The GOP-e will settle for 120,000 and tell us they cut it by 75,000.
India isn’t going to suffer. This is only for the workers who come here to work stateside. MILLIONS more are employed doing work for America via the internet.
F*** them all in the heart.
Any time I call the help desk with an IT issue at work.
"Hallo. My neme is Jeem."
IF it ends, without bloodshed.
That statement is deliberately deceptive:
(1) The H-1B Visa quota - per year - is 85,000, which includes another 20,000 visas for workers with M.S. and Ph.D degrees.
(2) The visa is automatically renewable for SIX years.
(3) Universities, non-profit research laboratories, and government agencies may hire unlimited numbers of H-1B’s, none of them count against the quota, and those visas are renewable up to TEN years.
(4) Foreign STEM graduates of USA universities may work in this country for up to THREE years by extending their Student Visas or by transitioning to Internship Visas.
(5) The most conservative estimate of H-1B workers now in the USA is 550,000. Record keeping on H-1B Visas is so defective that some estimates go as high as 750,000.
(6) The quota for H-1B Visas was dramatically increased in 1999. Since 2000, the median wage for USA Information Technology workers has been stagnant for 15 years.
Correction: the 1965 Immigration Act needs to die, taking all the guest worker programs down with it. Anything less leaves room for fraud by another program.
The H-1B visa program is, to the delight of wannabe slave owners like zuckerberg, a government program designed to depress domestic wages. The program admits aliens who must be employees of foreign-owned companies to work in the US. Their pay is determined not by US standards but by the employing foreign company, and is given to the employee by that foreign company. So we are employing people to displace Americans, and who are being paid on foreign wage scales which compare very unfavorably to US scales.
Face it, what multi-billionaire doesn’t want a few more bil even if it means using slave labor. Why doesn’t obama still think that, “at some point, you’ve earned enough?” Can you say “bribes”?
Since Ted Cruz wants to increase the number of H-1Bs by a factor of 7 or 8 then I guess he’ll be getting all their donations.
Then the Indian IT service companies won't be hurt at all.
So that more of us are dependent on government money. H-1B is a socialist program.
I’d like to take a guess on the company I work for. Let’s see, 300,000+ employees worldwide, the U.S. contingent looks to be from 50-70% H1B and/or green card. The Indians tell me that the Muslims from Pakistan and Bangeladesh get green cards faster than them because of the rules. Either way, the American born IT worker is continuing to be let go or just not hired. Then you have the massive employment of foreigners not in the country by IT companies so they don’t need visas...we’re done for.
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