TCS, Infosys got only 8.8% of total H-1B visas: Nasscom's rebuttal to US

Indian IT firms account for less than 20 per cent of the H-1B visas

Indian IT industry's apex organisation has said that the two top companies -- TCS and Infosys -- got only 8.8 per cent of the H-1B visas for placement of workers in the United States.

"Of the six Indian IT companies, software majors TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) and Infosys received 7,504 H-1B visas in FY 2015, which is 8.8 per cent of the total H-1B visas," said the National Association of Software Services and Companies (Nasscom) in a statement here.

The apex body's clarification was in response to a US official last week accusing top Indian IT firms TCS and Infosys of unfairly cornering majority of the H-IB visas, by applying more in the lottery system.

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Only six Indian IT firms were among the top 20 recipients of the H-1B visas in fiscal 2015 for their professionals to work in the US, said Nasscom.

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week to reform the H-1B visas norms by replacing the lottery system with a merit-based immigration policy.

"Every reputable data source in the US has documented a growing shortfall between the supply and demand for computer science majors in the US workforce, especially in cutting-edge fields such as cloud, big data, and mobile computing," asserted Nasscom.(read more)