India’s Infosys pledges hiring of 10,000 in U.S.

Outsourcing firm plans to open four sites, one of them in Indiana.

Infosys, an India-based outsourc ing company, helps big employers cut jobs and save money. In the era of President Donald Trump, that could make Infosys a political target.

On Tuesday, Infosys moved to show that it can hire Americans, too.

The company said it would hire 10,000 workers in the United States in the next two years, making it the latest Asian technology company to portray itself as a jobs creator as Trump threatens to take action against companies he sees as hurting American workers. Infosys also said it would open a technology and innovation office in August in Indiana, the home state of Vice President Mike Pence. It would be the first of four such sites in the United States, the company said.

Infosys was light on details in discussing its plan. For example, it said it would hire 2,000 people at the Indiana location by 2021 but did not explain how that squared with its two-year plan to hire 10,000 workers.

Still, the announcement puts Infosys in notable company. Others, like Alibaba Group of China and SoftBank of Japan, have similarly made vows to hire large numbers of Americans. In the case of Alibaba, it has said its businesses will help create 1 million jobs. The promises are so large, in fact, that many experts doubt all the jobs will materialize.

The Infosys announcement comes just weeks after Trump signed an executive order that directed government agencies to review employment immigration laws to promote “Hire American” policies. The order also instructed the agencies to offer suggestions for how to reform the H-1B visa program, which operates as a lottery to bring skilled labor to the United States, usually technology workers.

As one of the largest beneficiaries of the H-1B program, Infosys could be hit hardest by changes to the system. In 2014, the company received the third most visas of any company in the program. Major U.S. technology companies like Facebook and Qualcomm also use the program to hire foreign talent, arguing that they cannot find enough skilled workers in the United States. Still, outsourcing companies like Infosys have caused the most controversy.

One sug gestion — that H-1B visas be given to companies paying the highest wages — could hit Infosys, which usually does not offer wages as high as the likes of Facebook. To that end, a new operation in the U.S. could help offset those difficulties.

Indian outsourcing companies have also discussed doing more of the back-end technology work they help with in India or other countries.

As a technology consulting and outsourcing company, Infosys helps large companies — in industries including health care, banking, energy and media — offload the costs, and oftentimes the staff, required to support complicated, back-end computing systems.