The former immigration chief at Infosys Ltd in the US says that the executive order signed last month by President Donald Trump, as well as some proposed legislation aimed at making it harder for tech outsourcing firms to bring overseas employees into the country on H-1B US visas, will have a detrimental effect on the $150 billion outsourcing sector in India.
Erin Green is among the first corporate executives to open up about the negative impact of the sweeping changes to the current US immigration policies being sought by the Trump administration. These enable overseas workers to get jobs in the US. Last month, the finance minister, Arun Jaitley, also raised his concerns over the plan to tighten the H-1B US visa program with the US commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross
Green, who became part of Infosys in 2011, leaving behind one of the biggest US in-house immigration functions when he left in 2016, says that the executive order issued by the President and the proposed changes to corporate immigration policy are detrimental to the consulting model used by India via the L-1 and H-1B US visas.
Although the details of the President’s executive order are still unclear, many Indian outsourcing firm executives and corporate immigration attorneys are worried that curbs to US visas will see Indian IT outsourcing firms losing out to foreign outsourcing firms, such as Accenture Plc, and IBM.