Heat on Indian Companies Over U.S. Work Visa

On June 26, Senators Dick Durbin and Chuck Grassley released information revealing that foreign outsourcing firms that use the high-skilled H1-B visa programme extensively are also among the heaviest users of another category, known as L visas. Durbin and Grassley say these companies are abusing the L visa programme, which is intended to allow multinationals to transfer foreign managers and specialists within a company to US offices.

The Senators allege that outsourcing firms are not engaging in transferring at all, but instead are hiring foreign workers expressly to bring them to the US — and to take the place of American workers. The newly released data show that of the top 20 L visa users in fiscal year 2006, 14 are offshore outsourcing firms, including Tata Consultancy Services, Satyam Computer, Wipro, Infosys, Patni Computer and Accenture.

(infotech.indiatimes.com)