Concerned that high tech overseas companies are abusing the H-1B visa program to take jobs away from qualified but better-paid Americans, two senators on Monday demanded detailed information about the program from nine foreign companies (most of them headquartered in Mumbai, India).
Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Monday sent letters (.pdf) to the nine companies seeking information on the number of H-1B holders each employed, how many jobs each company outsourced, the range of salaries and efforts made to hire American workers. If companies had laid off American workers and replaced them with H-1B holders, the senators wanted to know.
The companies that received letters are: Infosys Technologies, Wipro
Ltd., Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Patni Computer Systems, I-Flex
Solutions Inc., Satyam Computer Services Ltd., Larsen & Toubro
Infotech Ltd., Tech Mahindra Americas Inc. and Mphasis Corp.
Last month, Durbin and Grassley introduced legislation that would make it harder for companies to displace American workers with cheaper foreign labor. But high tech companies such as Microsoft have been clamoring for Congress to up the number of H-1B visas available, saying demand in the U.S. outstrips supply. Currently, the government issues 85,000 H-1B
visas (with some exemptions that raise the number to 100,000). This year, the government accepted applications for H-1B visas for only two days before reaching its limit.
