Indian IT industry body Nasscom rebutted the statements made by the White House on Indian companies getting the lion’s share of H-1B visas. The industry body said that in FY 2015, only 6 of the top 20 H-1B recipients were Indian companies. Further among the companies named, the two Indian companies namely TCS and Infosys together received 7,504 approved H-1B visas in FY 2015; which is only 8.8% of the total approved H-1B visas.
Nasscom said that every reputable data source in the US has documented a growing shortfall between the supply and demand for computer science majors in the U.S. workforce, especially in cutting-edge fields such as cloud, big data, and mobile computing.
“The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that there will be ~2.4 million unfilled STEM jobs by 2018, with more than 50% of these vacancies in IT-related positions. All Indian IT companies cumulatively account for less than 20% of the total approved H-1B visas; although Indian nationals get ~71% of the H-1B visas. This is a testimony to the high skill levels of Indian-origin professionals, especially in the very coveted STEM skills category,” said Nasscom.
The annual number of Indian IT specialists working on temporary visas for Indian IT service companies is about 0.009% of the 158-million-member U.S. workforce. A Nasscom Survey also finds that the average wage for visa holders is over $82,000 apart from a fixed cost of about $15,000 incurred for each visa issued which includes visa cost and related expenses. This is over 35% higher than the minimum prescribed exempt wage of $ 60,000
Nasscom is of the view that all companies, including US, Indian and other global companies tend to hire locally and bridge the skills gap by bringing in highly skilled professionals to temporarily work in the US on H-1B and other visas.
Indian IT companies follow the global delivery model with US and global counterparts working with more than 75% of the Fortune 500 companies, to enable them to become more competitive globally, creating jobs locally in the US.
Nasscom reiterated that “Indian IT Industry is a “net creator” of jobs in the US and supports nearly half a million jobs directly and indirectly.”
