Demand and supply: US firms want an increase in the number of temporary visas because it is ‘too low to meet their needs’.

Major outsourcing companies from India have been the biggest recipients of visas in recent years under a programme intended to allow US companies to bring highly skilled foreign workers temporarily to the US, say immigration scholars who testified recently before a House of Representatives judiciary panel.

“Loopholes in the visa programme have made it easy for the outsourcers to bring in cheaper foreign workers, with ordinary skills, who directly substitute for, rather than complement, workers in America,” says Ronil Hira, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Hira, who has studied the programme thoroughly, told the House subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement that four of the five biggest users of the programme from 2007 to 2009 were Indian outsourcing companies: Infosys, Wipro, Mahindra Satyam and Tata. Microsoft was the only company with US headquarters among the top five users. These Indian companies sent 22,766 workers to the US on temporary visas during the two deepest years of the recession.

The hearing marked a new round in a rancorous tug of war over the visas, known as H-1B visas. Granted to foreign workers with at least a bachelor degree to work in the US for upto three years, they have been used by computer companies to bring in technology experts.

US companies are requesting an increase in the annual national limit of 65,000 temporary visas, saying it is too low and inflexible to meet their needs for engineers and scientists during unpredictable variations in the economy. But numerous cases have come to light of US workers who were ousted from jobs and replaced by workers from Indian outsourcing companies, often at lower wages.

As a sign of the growing frustration among US technology businesses and workers, a representative from an engineers’ association instead urged lawmakers to set aside the H-1B debate entirely. The focus instead should be on providing permanent residence visas, known as green cards, to foreign students graduating with advanced degrees in science and mathematics from US universities.

“We are asking this subcommittee to change the subject, from H-1B to green cards,” said Bruce Morrison, the representative from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

He urged legislators to change the law quickly and make green cards available to students who will get their degrees in June.

His plea was supported in a letter from the Semiconductor Industry Association, which represents many large technology employers. Thousands of foreign students who get advanced science degrees in the US do not remain because permanent work visas are not available.

Donald Neufeld, a citizenship and immigration services official testified that auditors had found fraud in about seven per cent of visa petitions, down from 21 per cent in 2008. But Hira confirms that because of low wage requirements in the programme, employers were using it to legally hire foreign workers at significantly lower pay than Americans.

Brendan Kavanagh, who runs a small technology consulting company in Miami Lakes, Florida, had experienced the competition directly, after his contract with a major pharmaceutical company in Illinois was abruptly terminated in September. Instead, three Wipro employees on temporary visas replaced his contract.

Kavanagh, who attended the hearing to press his case with lawmakers, said the company hired him to overhaul a major software system. He also added that many of the workers he managed were Indians with H-1B visas.

“They absolutely misrepresented their skills,” he said. “They are working with very critical software, and they don’t understand the nature of it. Their work affects these patients and employers are using these visas to give away our knowledge,” concludes Kavanagh.

He said the time he took to train the temporary workers had slowed the project and led to disputes with the company, which finally terminated his contract. He said he could not name the company because of a contractual confidentiality clause.