A spokesperson for Wipro has claimed in today’s Deccan Herald that the company had not received any letter from Senators Charles Grassley and Richard Durbin on the H1B visa issue. Yet. For Wipro’s benefit, and the other eight companies involved, we publish the letter the lawmakers have sent Infosys head, Nandan Nilekani.
***
Nandan M. Nilekani
Chief Executive Officer
Infosys Technologies Limited
6607 Kaiser Drive
Fremont, California 94555
Dear Mr. Nilekani
As members of the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Refugees, we have a responsibility to oversee and evaluate our country’s visa policies. We have been concerned about reported fraud and abuse of the H-1B and L visa programs, and their impact on American workers. We are also concerned that the program is not being used as Congress intended.
While some Members of Congress have focused on increasing the annual cap of the H-1B program, we believe it is important to understand how H-1B visas are being used by companies in the United States. We have received helpful data from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service with regard to H-1B visa approvals in 2006 for the top 200 participating companies. Your company was one of the top companies on the list. Therefore, we are requesting your cooperation in providing additional statistics and information on your use of H-1B visa workers.
First, some groups, such as the Programmers Guild, have analyzed the wages paid to H-1B visa holders. They have found that the average annual salary of foreign workers is significantly lower than that of new U.S. graduates.
Second, a number of consulting firms reportedly recruit foreign workers and then outsource the individuals to other job sites or companies. Many of the top 20 companies that used H-1B visas in 2006 are firms, such as yours, that specialize in offshore outsourcing.
Third, a number of firms have allegedly laid off American workers while continuing to employ H-1B visa holders. The American people are concerned about such lay offs at a time when the demand for visa issuances and the recruitment of foreign workers appear to be increasing.
Because of these concerns, we seek your cooperation in answering the following questions:
NUMBERS
# How many United States citizens do you employ in the United States?
# Is your company an H-1B dependent employer?
# How many visa petitions did you submit to the Citizenship and Immigration Service for Fiscal Year 2007?
# Of the total number of petitions requested, how many have been approved for Fiscal Year 2007, if known?
# How many H-1B visa holders is your company currently employing? What percentage of your total workforce are H-1B visa holders?
# What is the average age of the H-1B visa holders that your company currently employs?
# What is the average number of years of experience of your employed H-1B visa holders?
Please describe your efforts to recruit Americans for the positions for which you employ H-1B workers.
WAGES
# What is the average wage of your company’s H-1B visa holders? What is the median wage? What is the highest and the lowest salaries for those H-1B visa holders currently employed by your company?
# What is the average wage of your company’s workers who are United States citizens in the same occupations?
OUTSOURCING
# Of the 4,908 visas your company received in 2006, how many of those workers are currently employed and paid by Infosys Technologies Limited?
# Of the 4,908 visas your company received in 2006, how many were outsourced to other companies and how many employees’ salaries were paid for by a firm other than Infosys Technologies Limited?
LAY OFFS
# Has your company experienced any layoffs in the United States in the past year? Any lay offs in 2005? If so, how many people lost their jobs?
# If your company has laid off workers in the United States, what job positions were part of that lay off?
# If your company has laid off workers in the United States, how many of those workers were H-1B visa holders?
# If your company has laid off workers in the United States, did any H-1B visa holders replace those dislocated workers, or take over any of the laid off employee’s job responsibilities?
We appreciate your cooperation, and respectfully request that you respond to our questions no later than May 29, 2007.
Sincerely,
Charles E. Grassley
United States Senator
Richard J. Durbin
United States Senator
The letter poses important and relevant questions. The H1-B program was created so that companies may not be limited by regulation while hiring the best talent in the world. Indian companies seem to have been regularly abusing this program in two ways: 1. By not fairly advertising available positions to both Americans and Indians, and 2. By paying Indians a wage that most Americans are unwilling to work for.
It may seem that this is an economic problem– about finding labor in a global market that is willing to work for less. However, there are many social and immigration issues associated with it because it is a visa program. What do talented Indians who are unwilling to work for the low pay supposed to do to get a visa? Is it ethical for a company to only care about its bottom line at the cost of the standard of living of its employees, who work hard to earn its profits? How do Americans compete in this labor market, which they find to be increasingly unfair?
Not only the indian company lot of consultancy firms in US follows the similar path… Fresh post grads are paid way below the American standards in return for getting them a H1B…I believe the consultancy firm follow unethical means to get them the visa…and i also doubt that the immigration dept of US may have some role to play….
The solution is for USA to terminate the H-1B’s for Indians. There are enough East Europeans with better education and motivation to fill the gap.
Hello Mr Ranga !
How much IT Related work have you been engaged in ?. Apart from Big firms – how many smaller firms with a revenue of 10 – 25 million American firms have you dealt with.
Take it easy Sir!.
Naveen,
Never mind your credentials. Like you, I do not want to throw open mine. I say again to Americans remove H1B for Indians. Part if not most of the scam problems will be reduced.
20k H1bs are reserved for non-Americans who do their masters/Phd in American universities (on an F1 visa). Indians, Chinese, Europeans, anyone. Dont see that being removed at anytime. If general H1b is removed or curtailed – part of the free ‘slots’ may be transferred to the masters reserved quota. Or whatever the US congress decides.
I think the questions put forward by the Senate is pertinent and needs to be answered by these companies.
However i think this effort is very limited – why stop at these 9 companies? How about US based companies that have offices in India and use Indians from these locations to replace Americans?
How about companies like Cognizant that is a US headquarterd company but with 80% employees from India?
How are the Accenture India, IBM India, Microsoft India of the world any different than the Infosys, Wipro of the world? Why only target these companies?
Disclaimer: I work in the IT industry but not for any of the companies that was served notices.
I think they should ban any company from applying the H1B, and put rule
that H1B can be applied only by an individual….solves the problem.
Kalyan,
Because these 9 companies applied for the visas in large numbers misrepresenting the facts and then misused them. This includes paying much below market rate on H1, using the visa to get relatively unskilled workers for short periods of time and then offshoring work, applying for the visa with no real onsite client in the US etc. See the letter. For more details you can see the H1b visa clauses. And these companies were the biggest abusers. Microsoft for one doesnt underpay on a H1. Not sure what the stats are for Accenture and IBM, but they will probably not be defrauding and misrepresenting facts while applying for the visa and misusing it after their employee has got a visa.
NEW DELHI: Get a master’s degree from a US university and you could be sitting on an immigration goldmine.
According to reports, a new US Senate proposal would allow limitless H-1B visas and green cards for foreigners with master’s degrees or higher in any field from an American university — or anyone with such credentials in the science, technology, engineering or math fields from abroad.
This week is immigration reform week in the US Congress, as it battles issues like border fencing and temporary worker visas. Like other competing proposals in Congress right now, the ‘Skilled Worker Immigration and Fairness Act’, introduced on Tuesday by senators Joseph Lieberman and Chuck Hagel, also proposes raising the existing annual cap on the controversial H-1B visas from 65,000 to 115,000 for fiscal year 2007.
That number could climb by 20% in each subsequent year, to as high as 180,000 if the previous year’s quota was exhausted.
Right now, there’s also a 20,000 visa cap beyond the existing H-1B quota for foreigners who have advanced degrees in the US. The new Senate Bill would remove that cap. It would also broaden the exemption from the H-1B limit beyond just those with advanced degrees to include foreigners with ‘medical specialty certification based on post-doctoral training and experience in the United States’.
A broad House of Representatives immigration Bill known as the Strive Act contains a similar approach. Commerce minister Kamal Nath has warned of dire consequences if H1-B visas are made a political issue.
But this will become more and more politicised as the US heads for presidential elections in 2008. “Outsourcing” was an issue in the 2004 elections and there is every evidence that it will be one this time as well.
According to government sources, the private sector is woefully inadequate to tackle this perception in the US, even though Nasscom has proposed a “professional visa” which has been forwarded in the CEO’s Forum between US and India.
In a statement, Lieberman, who may even run for president in 2008, said, “To remain competitive, American companies need access to highly educated individuals. But today’s system makes it difficult for innovative employers to recruit and retain highly educated talent, which puts the US at a competitive disadvantage globally.”
The Bill also safeguards these H1-B visas from abuse — it would prohibit companies from advertising jobs solely to H-1B immigrants or indicating preference for such workers. It would limit the number of employees on H1-B to no more than half a company’s workforce. It would also double fines for employers that violate H-1B programme requirements.
The Bill drew immediate applause from Microsoft, whose high-powered chairman Bill Gates recently urged Congress again to allow for infinite quantities of the work permits.
But there are other groups that prefer a Bill introduced earlier this year by two other senators, Chuck Grassley and Dick Durbin that attempts to prevent H-1B abuse by imposing a number of new obligations on employers.
High-tech companies have protested these obligations as too overbearing. Employers would have to certify that they had made a “good faith” effort to hire an American before taking on an H-1B worker and that the foreigner was not displacing a prospective US worker. That Bill’s sponsors on Monday issued inquiries to a number of Indian companies, targeting statistics showing some of them were among the top 20 H-1B recipients last year.
Critics of the exemption clauses say the vast majority of companies that hire foreign workers through the H-1B visa programme do not have to prove, or even declare, that they have searched for American workers first. They say, the lack of such rules is a problem and should be changed, especially as Congress considers increasing the number of H-1B visas. Only companies with more than 50 employees where at least 15% are H-1B workers are required to attest that they tried to find US workers.
Those businesses, deemed ‘H-1B dependent,’ constitute 10% or less of total H-1B users.
Ranga,
like always…you seem to be manga on any topic….you seem to be a dejected citizen who tried to become a IT professional but did not succeed for what ever reasons….but not want to stop the progress of this field……
@ sridhar…. you have the capability to bring down the wordpress.com server :)))
why do u want to cut and paste articles when a url can do the trick???? also is it ur writing / whats the source for the same, pls acknowledge the source of the same?
Vijay
You are a stupid person whose horizon and vocabulary are very limited I have been working in IT long before you started learning alphabets and those who know about H1B scam agree with me. Do you have anything sensible to contribute? Why are you so scared about an alternate view. That tells me what stuff you are made of.
Sridhar,
Dont worry your H1 is safe. And I guess infy, wipro etc. are safe too. The link will really do the trick.
Indians are corrupt-not all of them but most. I think those doing businesses here are absolute crooks. Because of them the good intentions of the U.S. to hire foreigners is not working-they horde all the H-1B. The Indian consulting companies do not hire Americans-but have an american company discriminate-they howl abuse. Indians are not the best IT people. I have seen Europeans do better. Everyone is corrupt but Indians take it too far. Take away the visas from the and give the rest of a relief. If they have too many people in their country then that is their problem, people from other countries should not suffer because of H1-B fraud by Indians. Those are just big companies. What about the abuse from little Indian consulting firms? These little firms also take away visas-which is why the H1B’ s went so fast. Do a sruvey. How many H1-B Indians do established American companies hire-very few. The majority of H1-B’s go to Indian consulting frauds or firms that is.
Pls visit this page:
http://www.globalservicesmedia.com/sections/features/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199600800
What does the country`s leading `ethical leadership` say to this?
Very pertinent questions indeed. I believe that similar questions need to be posed by Karnataka politicians before they grant land and other amenities to the IT companies yearning to have a base in Karnataka. Let us consider this definition for a Kannadiga – Person educated in Karnataka or a person residing in Karnataka for at least past 10 years.
“====================
* How many Kannadigas do you employ in your company offices in Karnataka?
* Is you company dependent on grants from Karnataka Government?
* How many employees have been relocated to Karnataka due to employment in your company?
* Of the total number of people hired by your company in Bangalore / Mysore and other cities in Karnataka during the Fiscal year 2007, how many are kannadigas ?
Lay offs:
* Has your company experienced any layoffs in the Karnataka in the past year? Any lay offs in 2005? If so, how many people lost their jobs?
*If your company has laid off workers in Karnataka, what job positions were part of that lay off?
*If your company has laid off workers in Karnataka, how many of those workers were relocated from other states?
* If your company has laid off Kannadigas, did any out of state person replace those dislocated workers, or take over any of the laid off employee’s job responsibilities?
Please describe your efforts to recruit qualified kannadigas / graduates from universities in Karnataka for which you relocate people from other states.
We appreciate your cooperation, and respectfully request that you respond to our questions no later than May 29, 2007.
===================”
If politicians were really concerned about the welfare of their state these would be the questions that they need to pose to companies requesting land grants , roads and other amenities to set up shop in the state. Please do not mistake this for rhetoric. It is only fair for the host state to get some answers for these questions in exchange for providing the conveniences requested by these companies.
Sacked NRI IT analyst vows to fight on in US
http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/may/24nri.htm
Nassscom reply to senators is full of holes. Nasscom is doing more damage to its own cause!!!!
http://muthry4prez.wordpress.com/2007/05/31/nasscom-reply-is-full-of-holes/
Kannadadha kudi,
Sariaagi pathra bardhidhira. The politicians are the ones who are supposed to be writing letters like this to the business people no? But seems like they are the ones who should answer these questions. Beline yeddhu holana…