H1-B visa and IT companies

When someone gets employed with an IT company, it is assumed that he/she will soon fly away to foreign shores, preferably to the USA.  And some interesting data has emerged from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

At present, the quote set by the US Immigration for H1-B visa is 85,000 and the number one recipient of H1-B visa’s in FY13 is not Infosys or TCS but Cognizant. With an employee strength of 1,56,700 the company issued 9281 H1-B visa’s in 2012 compared to 5095 in 2011. TCS is at number two, with an employee strength of 2,54,600 and it issued 7469 visa’s. Infosys is number three at 5600 visa’s. At fourth place was Wipro with 4304 visa’s. Accenture came in net with 4037 visa’s, HCL Tech with 2070 visa’s  and the Mahindra group, including Satyam and Tech Mahindra issued 1963 visa’s.

IBM had the biggest employee strength, with 4,33,362 employees but it issued only 1846 visa’s much better than 987 in 2011. The last in the top 10 list is Microsoft which issued 1497 visa’s, just a bit marginally higher than 1384 visa’s in 2011.  So as the battle continues to rage in the US about issuance of H1-B visa’s and even outsourcing, IT companies continue to do well. Only now with the US Govt planning to cut spending, one had to wait and see whether it affects the issuance of H1-B visa’s too.