Narayan AmmachchiLarge technology companies and IT services providers must have been hit hard, as the United States has continued to refuse work visa (H1B) for high-skilled technology workers from foreign countries.
Companies like Capgemini and Cognizant must have been putting up with the pain silently, because the government data shows both the companies having high rates of H1B visa rejections.
Capgemini saw 80% of its visa petitions rejected in the 2018 fiscal year, while Cognizant’s rejection rate stood at 61%, according to Forbes.
In addition, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) returned 25% of petitions seeking renewal for existing visas.
Other companies bearing the brunt of the Donald Trump administration’s protectionist measures include Infosys, HCL Tech, and Syntel. Even large US tech firms, including Facebook, Amazon and Apple, have also found many of their petitions rejected.
Unlike in the past, technology companies seeking to obtain H1B visa need to prepare extensive paperwork. In the first fiscal quarter of 2019, USCIS sought more information on nearly 60% of visa applications. Such requests, or RFEs as they are known, require the applicants to submit additional paperwork.
“Receiving an RFE from the government can add several months and thousands of dollars in legal fees to the cost of applying for a visa,” reported Reuters citing attorneys.
Analysts say the tightened immigration policy is also hurting the US economy, eroding competitiveness of many American firms.
Moreover, this all comes at a time the United States is seeing shortage in skilled technology workers.
There is no shortage of tech workers, it is a made up crisis, 95% of the 20 million IT jobs in the American companies are outsourced to consulting companies like Cognizant, Deloitte, TCS, Infosys etc. for which majority are done in India- I mean those entry level and mid level jobs- only senior consultant jobs exists in USA for those consulting companies, and consulting companies have 95% Indian citizens, they bring 1 million H1B, B1 visa, J1 visa and other visa employees to do even most of those jobs, American Citizens and green card holders are unable to find full time software jobs including me because full time jobs with American companies are rare, most of IT jobs from American companies are outsourced to Indian based consulting companies, Americans are fired, or replaced for cheap labor, 7 out of 10 US Citizen STEM graduates look out for other professions since they can’t find full time IT jobs here
It is about time to ban Indian IT outsourcing companies from cheating H1B system and taking away H1B quota from people who actually want to work full time in US and have a good job offer/have studied in US. Bringing cheaper “IT consultants” to wait on a bench for projects in US is not a full time specialty employment. So hopefully rejection rates to do 90-100% for these IT bodyshops!