Cognizant leads pack garnering 9,281 visas.
Bureau Report
WASHINGTON, DC: Indian technology companies bagged almost one third of the H-1B work visas granted in 2012, according to new data from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.
According to the data, of the top 12 companies which bagged more than 40,000 of the 134,740 H-1B visas approved in 2012 all had a strong India presence, reported The Economic Times. They included Cognizant, in first place with 9,281 visas, followed by Tata (7,469), Infosys (5,600), Wipro (4,304), Accenture (4,037), HCL America (2,070), Mahindra and Satyam (1,963).
The US currently makes 85,000 H-1B visas available annually. But more can be approved under exceptions — and evidently was in 2012 — allowing those who have demonized the program to say India-based companies have grabbed half the H1-B visas, said the Times report.
The new data has galvanized the so-called anti-offshoring groups, dubbed xenophobes by supporters of the program, who say H-1B visas, instead of addressing the US skill shortage as it intended to originally, now merely facilitates off-shoring and providing employers with cheap, temporary labor — while reducing job opportunities for American high-tech workers.
“There are two reasons these firms hire H-1Bs instead of Americans: 1) an H-1B worker can legally be paid less than a US worker in the same occupation and locality; and 2) the H-1B worker learns the job and then rotates back to the home country and takes the work with him,” says Ron Hira, a public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and tech immigration expert who is one of the most vocal critics of the program, said the Times.
Hira and his associates are using the new data to drum up opposition to the so-called I-squared Bill, promoted by a bipartisan group of 10 US Senators, that would raise the H-1B visa cap immediately to 115,000 and then allow it to rise further to 300,000.
Other supporters of H-1B program like Duke University’s Vivek Wadhwa say the it replenishes a dwindling talent pool in US. Some 60% of PhDs and 40%of Master’s students in US are foreign students, and denying them H-1B visas means US is forsaking the people it educates to home countries such as China and India where entrepreneurship is booming, says Wadhwa, the report said.