The Hindu Business Line : `Small firms may gain from new H1-B system'

Bangalore April 5 Large Indian IT firms preferred to remain circumspect after the US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) decided to take the lottery route for the first time to allot H1-B visas this year.

But, industry observers feel that the lottery system will give a fair chance to everybody, which should benefit the smaller firms. The rush for H1-B this year saw over 1.5 lakh petitions till April 3 for 65,000 visas.

Wait-and-see

On the face of it, the lottery system is seen as not favourable for large firms such as TCS, Infosys, Wipro and Satyam, who normally apply in bulk for H1-B visas. Infosys and Wipro decided not to comment on the introduction of the lottery system by USCIS.

"We have to wait and see," said Mr T.V. Mohandas Pai, head of human resources at Infosys Technologies. Infosys has over 10,000 employees with H1-B visas and the company last year had filed some 3,500 petitions.

Mr Avinash Vashistha, CEO of Tholons, an advisory firm said the large firms were much more organised in terms of their H1-B visa requirements and that the introduction of a lottery system would not impact them. While, the earlier system of visa allotment (first-come first-served) favoured the large companies, the lottery system will help the SMEs, he said.

L-1 route/biz visa

Moreover, the large companies, who have been working with various US clients for a longer time can always take the L-1 route or may send their employees using the business visa, Mr Vashistha said. The L-1 visa is an intra-company transfer visa, which only allows the employee to remain in the US temporarily.

Smaller companies like Aztec Software stand a fairer chance to get H1-B visas, said the company's CFO, Mr V. Sundararajan. Aztec has filed some 15 petitions for H1-B this year.

"We have filed several hundred petitions based on our business forecast and hope a good percentage of those gets accepted," said Mr Mohan Sekhar, Chief Delivery Officer and board member, iGATE Global Solutions. "Going forward, we also expect some kind of legislation in US Congress to increase the current quota to accommodate the business needs."

Reiterating the need for raising the cap on H1-B, apex industry body Nasscom said: "The cap should be large enough to allow market forces to operate freely within it, as happened when it was 1,95,000 till two years ago. Constraining the supply when demand is high gives rise to problems for both US companies as well as Indian IT companies."

"We are hopeful that the US will quickly raise the cap, so that this does not become a constraint for the US companies (which badly need such professional talent), nor does it inhibit trade in the IT sector," Nasscom said.

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