Top Indian Outsourcing Group Challenges Claims of H1-B Abuse

India's main outsourcing association this week challenged the contention that flaws in the H1-B visa program are being widely exploited to allow tech companies to bypass qualified American workers in favor of cheap foreign labor. The National Association of Software and Service Companies weighed in on the increasingly volatile immigration issue, saying that if any wrongdoing exists, it is confined to smaller "fly-by-night" operators:

"[T]here is little evidence of such fraud, or that restricting the number of H-1 B visas to a certain proportion of employees in companies of a certain size, will have any effect on visa fraud. In fact, most of the companies that sponsor a large number of visas are publicly listed and ethically managed companies. Visa abuse, if any, would tend to be lesser in such organisations as compared to other small, fly-by-night operators: an area that may need more attention.

Earlier this month, a – video in which lawyers describe how to use loopholes in the visa system to reject qualified American job applicants touched off a furor when it went viral on YouTube. It prompted Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) to send letters to major outsourcing companies. Now Grassley and Durbin are looking into another facet of the debate: L visas. This week, the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services supplied the senators with some data about L visas that raised even more eyebrows. Here's a list of the top 20 companies using L visas. IBM, Intel, HP, Oracle and Microsoft all make the list. Grassley had this to say about the information:

"The information provided today showed that many of the same companies identified as using the most H-1B visas were the same companies that used the most L visas. Under current law, employers can use the L visa program to evade restrictions on the H-1B program because it does not include protections for American workers. This demonstrates the need for additional checks on the L visa program."

For more data and to read the full statements and letters Grassley and Durbin have been circulating, go here. Computerworld also has an interesting story about Cisco placing an ad for a network consulting engineer in the Chicago Tribune earlier this month. No phone calls, said the ad. But when an American who once worked as a NASA engineer called Cisco for more information, he was automatically routed to an immigration law firm. Strange, indeed, considering the advice by the lawyers for legally excluding American workers involved using newspaper ads. Read more here.

UPDATE: Kim Berry, president of the Programmer's Guild, which represents the interests of American IT workers and opposes outsourcing, sent us this rebuttal to NASSCOM's claims. Berry writes that, "NASSCOM is being less than honest to the U.S. Senate."