Outsourcing firms swamp visa process
Program for talented foreigners dominated by cheap-labor firms.
Global outsourcing companies are flooding the H-1B visa system with applications.
Théo Négri, a young software engineer from France, had come up with so many novel ideas at his job at an Internet startup in San Francisco that the American entrepreneur who hired him wanted to keep him on.
So he helped Négri apply for a three-year work visa for foreign professionals with college degrees and specialized skills, mainly in technology and science. With his master’s degree from a French university and advanced computer abilities, Négri seemed to fill the bill.
But his application for the H-1B visa was denied, and he had to leave the United States. Back in France, Négri used his data skills to figure out why.
The answer: Many of the visas are given out through a lottery, and a small number of giant global outsourcing companies had flooded the system with applications, significantly increasing their chances of success. While he had one application in last year’s lottery and lost, one of the outsourcing companies applied for at least 14,000. The companies were squeezing out American employers like his boss.
“I had this great American dream that got broken,” Négri said, speaking by telephone from Lyon, France.
Congress set up the H-1B program to help American companies hire foreigners with exceptional skills, to fill open jobs and to help their businesses grow.
But the program has been
failing many American employers who cannot get visas for foreigners with the special skills they need.
Instead, the outsourcing firms are increasingly dominating the program, federal records show. In recent years, they have obtained many thousands of the visas — which are limited to 85,000 a year — by learning to game the H-1B system without breaking the rules, researchers and lawyers said.
In some years, an American employer could snag one of these coveted visas almost anytime. But recently, the outsourcing companies have sent in tens of thousands of visa requests right after the application window opens April 1. Employers who apply after a week are out of luck.
“The H-1B program is critical as a way for employers to fill skill gaps and for really talented people to come to the United States,” said Ronil Hira, a professor at Howard University who studies visa programs. “But the outsourcing companies are squeezing out legitimate users of the program. The H-1Bs are actually pushing jobs offshore.”
Those firms have used the visas to bring their employees, mostly from India, for large contracts to take over work at American businesses. And as the share of H-1B visas obtained by outsourcing firms has grown, more Americans say they are being put out of work or are seeing their jobs moved overseas.
Of the 20 companies that received the most H-1B visas in 2014, 13 were global outsourcing operations, according to an analysis of federal records by Hira. The top 20 companies took about 40 percent of the visas available — about 32,000 — while more than 10,000 other employers received far fewer visas each. And about half of the applications in 2014 were rejected because the quota had been met.
The top companies receiving H-1B visas in recent years, Hira found, include Tata Consultancy Services, known as TCS, Infosys and Wipro, all outsourcing giants based in India; Cognizant, with headquarters in New Jersey; and Accenture, a global operation incorporated in Ireland.
“They have spent a lot of time and money creating a business model that fits within the rules so they can use the visas to offer cheaper labor,” said Bruce Morrison, a lawyer representing an association of American engineers.
For example, federal law requires global companies employing large numbers of H-1B workers to sign a declaration saying they will not displace Americans. But there is a loophole: An exemption cancels that requirement if employers pay H-1B workers at least $60,000 a year — significantly less than an experienced technology worker’s salary in many parts of the country.
Many of the outsourcing firms’ temporary workers earn $60,000 or just a little more, according to federal data compiled by Hira.
Among the immigration visas offered by the United States, the H-1B program stands out for its peculiar rules. The annual quota includes 65,000 visas for foreign workers applying for the first time, while the remaining 20,000 are for foreign students graduating with advanced degrees from American universities. Each year the period for applications opens April 1, and they are accepted first come, first served.
Federal officials allow only one application for each foreign worker. But there is no limit on the number of visas a company can seek. A company with thousands of employees can submit many applications. By law, if applications quickly exceed the quota, officials use a computer-run lottery to select the visa recipients.
Recently, demand for the visas has soared; each year since 2013 the selection went to the lottery. This year, 233,000 applications were received in just seven days, and about two-thirds were denied because the quota was met.
Immigration officials do not acknowledge the outsourcing firms’ advantage. “The selection process is completely random,” said Shinichi Inouye, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency in charge of the visa program. “We cannot speculate as to why one company has more petitions selected in the cap.”
American titans like IBM, Microsoft, Facebook and Google also use H-1B visas and have pressed Congress to increase the annual quota.
Lawmakers have largely overlooked the outsourcing companies’ role in the visa process. On Sept. 30, Congress allowed an extra fee of $2,000, which it imposed five years ago on H-1B applications from the biggest outsourcing companies, to lapse.
Most of the global firms focus on technology, offering services to American companies to upgrade their systems and help them compete.
The companies say they follow all of the rules when they apply for the visas.
Benjamin Trounson, a spokesman for TCS, one of the largest consultants, with 325,000 employees worldwide, said the company serves its customers “using our U.S. and global talent pool that most effectively meets their needs.”
Several consulting companies said H-1B workers were only a small part of their workforce in the United States.
Cognizant said in a statement that it regularly recruits experienced American workers and qualified students, and uses H-1B visas only “to supplement our U.S. hiring in order to fill talent gaps in the market.”