At a time when the threat of H1B Visa restrictions is looking over the Indian IT Industry, Infosys has decided that it will not apply for H1B visas for junior employees, according to a report in The Economic Times.
A company executive told ET that the company will not be applying for visas for employees with under four years of work experience. “We are talking to clients about offshoring more work to India and the work done by junior employees can be brought to India,” the executive added.
Soon after Donald Trump took over as the President of the United States, a US congresswoman proposed a bill to raise the minimum wage requirement on the H1B visa from $60,000 a year to over $130,000. Earlier this month, the US suspended premium processing of H1B visas. This came as a blow to the large outsourcing market of India that is valued at around $150 billion.
As per the article in ET, Infosys’ inability to apply for visas is creating an issue of retention of employees. An Infosys executive told the newspaper that one of the easiest ways to retain people when they expressed dissatisfaction was to tell them that their visa process will begin. Managers are now having to find different ways of keeping people on board.
However, IT firms and Industry body NASSCOM has been saying that the impact of H1B visa restrictions will be limited and only have a short-term impact. TCS’s newly appointed CEO recently told PTI that is it not overtly perturbed by the overhaul of the visa regime in the US but has sought a “level playing field” with similar policies for everyone.
As per the ET report, TCS has said that it had operated in a self-imposed visa-constrained environment this year and had applied for only 15% of the visas it usually applied for.