US visa rules yet to be eased: Tata Consultancy Service

Mumbai: India’s largest software exporter TCS has said that domestic IT companies, which count America as their biggest market and are heavily dependent on it, are yet to benefit from the increasing warmth in the Indo-US ties.“At this point in time, there is not much of a change that has happened. Going forward, there could be changes. Let’s hope it would be good for us,” Tata Consultancy global HR head Ajoy Mukherjee said.

 

He said there is no change in the rules that governs sending professionals under the H1-B visa regime, where the companies’ requirements have overshot the quota fixed by 65,000, nor the L1 visas. The domestic IT companies net almost 75 per cent of their revenue from the US and Canada.

 

As per the US government data released last week, H1-B visa applications totalled a record 2,33,000 in the fiscal 2016. As against this, the maximum it can issue annually is just 85,000 work visas, including 20,000 for those having master's degrees.