The bill was intended to prevent fraud and misuse and we fully support any measure that would do that. However, instead of focusing only on that, [the bill] has put a condition that any company with more than 50 employees [in the U.S.] -- if more than 50% of the employees have H-1B and L1 visas, they will not be entitled to any more visas.
The majority of [Indian] companies that operate here have significantly more [than] 50% of their workers on H-1B/L1 visas. Hence this bill would mean that we won't be able to get anyone over. That is the killer provision. If this bill gets passed it will completely disrupt our business model. It will also impact our customers, because it will cause problems at all those projects that need a physical presence. And clearly, since it would seemingly impact our ability to compete in the U.S. with other service providers, it is an indirect trade barrier and would be seen as protectionist measure in our country. Putting up a restriction like that is clearly impacting only Indian companies.
In the Japanese example, the entire manufacturing process was happening in the U.S., so they could hire those permanent workers. [In our case,] the majority of the manufacturing happens in an offshore center somewhere. People come here on a temporary basis. There are positions that could be permanent, such as sales and solution architects. And clearly the choice would be to hire locals because they understand the environment and they understand the customers.
Unlike the auto model, [Indian companies] need people to come here on a short-term basis and then go back. Having said that, our success rate has been low in the attempts that we made to hire in the U.S. The acceptance rate was less than 25% of the offers made because these applicants had the choice of either joining a U.S. company or an Indian firm, and they always went there (to a U.S. company). Currently there may be a little more ease in resources, and that gives us an opportunity to hire local people. Before this meltdown happened, companies like Microsoft and Cisco had, at any point in time, more than 4,000 open jobs. [And] because they couldn't fill them [locally], they were hiring people from India.
And [Indian] companies such as TCS and Wipro announced centers [in the U.S.] before Durbin-Grassley [was filed] and are hiring [U.S. workers] already.
I think the U.S. already had an already robust [prevailing wage] process in the H-1B bill. I think that works quite well.
On average Indian companies get 12,000 H-1B visas a year. People stay [in the U.S.} for an average of two years here; it isn't as if you are accumulating H-1B visas over time. How could a few thousand people impact the wages so much?
No, I would not say so. It's about the total cost of a company to get an H-1B visa person here. The total cost of these employees is not cheaper than like-to-like skills.
I think there will be business models that have to change. The work that was done on site will then move either to offshore back to India or to nearshore centers in Canada and Latin America if it has to stay in the same time zone. The global sourcing model will continue.
If those highly skilled workers are available as Americans, then Indians companies would hire them. Does the downturn offer them an opportunity? Surely it does. The fact is that Wipro itself has more than 2,300 American workers. These are good jobs that have been created here by these Indian companies.