It puts restrictions on a practice that the industry follows to keep cost low: hiring engineers, who hold H-1B visas, on short term from bodyshopping firms and deploying them on US projects. However, software companies such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro and HCL Technologies are unlikely to see any problem when they send their own staff to the US, though the paperwork and cost to get the visas would be more now, industry experts said.
Under the policy announced on Thursday, companies have to prove that the staff they send to the US on H-1B visas have “specific and nonspeculative qualifying assignments in a speciality occupation” for the entire visa period. This means such employees cannot be moved between projects and companies once they are in the US. The policy change has not gone down well with the global technology industry, for which India is a top market for talent. “I am worried that the attitude that the administration has on immigration will bruise the American brand,” Dara Khosrowshahi, chief executive of cab aggregator Uber, said at the ongoing ET Global Business Summit.
More Paperwork
Industry lobby group National Association of Software and Services Companies said the new regime will add to red tape. “This will be an unnecessary and expensive paperwork burden that will not make much difference (to companies sending their own staff),” it said in a statement.
Nasscom said its member companies have “demonstrated time and again” that they have control over the employees they sponsor for visas. That they are routinely given visa extensions shows that they also remain a speciality occupation worker, it said.
While this may be true when the software companies send their own staff to work on US projects, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) office said there had been “significant violations” of visa rules by third-party employers.
Third-party firms, or body shoppers, hire employees on their rolls and send them to the US and elsewhere to work on the projects for companies such as Infosys, TCS, Wipro and HCL Technologies.
“USCIS recognises that significant employer violations — such as paying less than the required wage, benching employees (not paying workers the required wage while they wait for projects or work) and having employees perform non-speciality occupation jobs — may be more likely to occur when petitioners place employees at third-party worksites,” the US announcement said. “Therefore, in order to protect the wages and working conditions of both US and H-1B non-immigrant workers and prevent fraud or abuse, USCIS policy should ensure that officers properly interpret and apply the statutory and regulatory requirements that apply to H-1B petitions involving third-party worksites,” it added.
Analysts said this is more of an indirect barrier.
A Bengaluru-based staffing expert said when third-party companies file petitions for H-1B visas to deploy professionals, they eventually employ people on multiple worksites and the fresh policies will put in stringent paperwork to do that. “This (new rule) could result in a sharp decline in filing of H-1B petitions through third-party companies,” said the expert who did not want to be named.