BENGALURU: India is among the largest contributors of skilled workforce to the US through H1B visas. The number of H1B visas sanctioned to employees from India far exceeds that of any other country in the world, data available with the US Department of State (Bureau of Consular Affairs) shows.
Of the total 1,59,366 H1B visas sanctioned to all Asian countries put together in 2016, India’s share was 1,26,692.
‘Unfair to blame India’
While the US government has levelled allegations against Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys of “unfairly cornering the lion’s share of H-1B visas by putting extra tickets in the lottery system”, industry representatives said it was an unfair accusation.
“India is the only country which has a huge talent pool for software technology. Local companies in the US want the H1B quota to be increased but the governments have not done that. You cannot blame Indian companies saying that they are applying more because of the lottery system. The basic issue here is that there is shortage of skills in the US,” said V Balakrishnan, former CFO, Infosys.
‘IT Cos have small share’
According to Nasscom, the number of visas secured by IT firms was a small percentage of the total number of H1B visas. It said, “TCS and Infosys received 7,504 approved H-1B visas in FY15; which is only 8.8 per cent of the approved visas. "
All Indian IT firms cumulatively account for less than 20 per cent of the total approved H-1B visas, although Indian nationals get around 71 per cent of the visas.