The Trump administration has accused the Top IT companies of rigging the lottery system to get more share in H-1B visas. The companies have not replied on the allegations levelled by the Trump Government. Now Trump wants a clear verification of these issues.
It has been accused that the top recipients of the H-1B visa are companies like Tata, Infosys, Cognizant — they will apply for a very large number of visas, more than they get, by putting extra tickets in the lottery raffle, if you will, and then they’ll get the lion’s share of visas,” the senior official said, according to transcript of the briefing posted on White House website.
In an official briefing the White House response said Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Cognizant were the top three recipients of H-1B visas. “And those three companies are companies that have an average wage for H-1B visas between $ 60,000 and $ 65,000 (a year). By contrast, the median Silicon Valley software engineer’s wage is probably around $ 150,000,” the official said.
He said contracting firms that are not skills employers, who oftentimes use workers for entry-level positions, capture the lion’s share of H-1B visas. “And that’s all public record.” All the three Indian firms refused to comment on the US administration comment. The official said H-1B visas presently were awarded through random lottery with about 80 per cent of H-1B workers being paid less than the median wage in their fields.
“Only about 5 to 6 per cent, depending on the year, of H-1B workers command the highest wage tier recognised by the Department of Labour, there being four wage tiers. And the highest wage tier, for instance, in 2015, was only 5 per cent of H1B workers,” he said.
He said workers are often brought in well below market rates to replace American workers, again, sort of violating the principle of the programme, which is supposed to be a means for bringing in skilled labour.
“Instead you’re bringing in a lot of times workers who are actually less skilled and lower paid than the workers that they’re replacing,” he said.
