US senators question TCS, Wipro over H1-B visas

ELECTION ISSUE: Nine Indian companies have been questioned by US senators about their recruitment processes.

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Washington: With outsourcing becoming an election issue, two US senators have questioned 25 top H1-B visa users, including nine Indian firms, about their recruitment process for professional workers, a majority of whom come from India.

The nine Indian companies to get the questionnaires were Infosys, Wipro, Satyam, Tata Consultancy Services, Cognizant Tech Solutions, Patni Computer Systems, I-Flex Solutions, Larson & Toubro Infotech Ltd and Mphasis Corporation.

"The H-1B programme can't be allowed to become a job-killer in America," Democrat Dick Durbin and Republican Chuck Grassley said in a letter to the top 25 firms that used nearly 20,000 of the 65,000 available H-1B visas last year.

"We need to ensure that firms are not misusing these visas, causing American workers to be unfairly deprived of good high-skill jobs here at home," they said in the letter sent April 1, the day the US Citizenship and Immigration Services began receiving H-1B visa applications for fiscal year 2009 beginning October 1, 2008.

"By the end of the day today, all of the H-1B visas for the year will likely be spoken for," Durbin and Grassley said, suggesting "that the loopholes in the H-1B and L-1 visa programmes are allowing for the outsourcing of American jobs".

Apart from the Indian companies, the 16 American organisations that got the letters included Microsoft Corporation, US Technology Resources, Intel Corporation, Accenture, Cisco Systems Ltd, Ernst & Young, Deloitte & Touche, University of Illinois at Chicago, Google Inc, Prince George's County Public Schools, JP Morgan Chase and Motorola.

"I have no doubt that we'll hear arguments all day as to why the cap on H-1B visas should be raised, but nobody should be fooled," Grassley said.

"The bottom line is that there are highly skilled American workers being left behind, searching for jobs that are being filled by H-1B visa holders," he said. "It's time to close the loopholes that have allowed this to happen and enact real reform."

The senators' campaign comes even as two recent studies by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) point out that H-1B visas that bring in foreign professionals, including a large number from India, are creating jobs in the US.

The studies also supported Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates' contention that an arbitrary cap on H-1B visas is making it hard for American businesses to fill skilled positions and forcing them to outsource jobs.

The letters to companies, the senators said, are part of an effort to determine if the H-1B programme is being used for its intended purpose - to fill a worker shortage for a temporary time period.

Durbin and Grassley said they expect the companies to cooperate and answer their questions to ensure that accurate information is being used to address future reforms of the programme.