7 Indian companies received less H-1B visas in 2016: Report

Washington, June 6 : Top seven India-based outsourcing companies in the US received fewer H-1B visas in 2016 as compared to 2015, and as a group their numbers dropped 37 per cent, according to a new report.The companies experienced a drop of 5,436 approved petitions (37 per cent) in 2016 as compared to previous year, a report by the National Foundation for American Policy–a Washington-based non-profit think-tank said.It said the 9,356 new H-1B petitions for the top seven Indian-based companies approved in fiscal 2016 represented only 0.006 per cent of the US labour force.“While the threat of job loss has long been exaggerated by critics, it reaches illogical proportions when discussing fewer than 10,000 workers in an economy that employs 160 million workers nationwide,” the National Foundation for American Policy said in a statement after releasing the report. According to the report, the number of approved new H-1B petitions for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) declined by 56 per cent from FY 2015 to FY 2016, from 4,674 to 2,040, a drop of 2,634. For Wipro, the petitions declined by 52 per cent between FY 2015 and FY 2016, a drop of 1,605, going from 3,079 to 1,474 approved petitions for initial employment during those years. For Infosys, it declined by 16 per cent (or 454 petitions), with 2,376 approved H-1B petitions for initial employment in FY 2016, compared to 2,830 in FY 2015, said the report, which based its research from government data.