Visa

Two US senators Dick Durbin and Chuck Grassley plan to reintroduce a stricter H-1B visa reform legislation this year, making it mandatory for outsourcing companies such as TCS, Wipro and Infosys to hire local American workers before seeking any H-1B visas for their Indian employees.

The move, if implemented, would drastically increase costs and make it difficult for the Indian IT companies to send employees onsite at a time of wrenching economic slowdown. The bill will also ask these companies to pay the prevailing wages to H-1B workers, making offshore outsourcing more attractive, and onshore resources costlier by 20-30%.

"The Durbin-Grassley bill would require all employers seeking to hire an H-1B visa holder to pledge that they have made a good-faith effort to hire American workers first and that the H-1B visa holder will not displace an American worker," senator Grassley's office said in a statement.

Companies such as Wipro, which serves US customers including Citi and GE by sending H-1B visa holders to the country, say such regulations will be unfortunate, if introduced.

"If a restriction of this kind is introduced, the playing field will get unevenly poised," said Pratik Kumar, Wipro's HR executive vice-president. Wipro had sent about 3,000 people on H-1B visas in the past two years.

Granted by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, around 65,000 H-1B visas were issued to immigrants from companies such as Microsoft, Cisco, TCS, Infosys and Wipro last year. Each H-1B visa costs around $6,000.