Crackdown on Indian Outsourcing Firms

In outlining the investigation, Durbin and Grassley are making details of the visa program public for the first time, including the number of visas awarded to non-U.S. companies. The nine firms, led by Infosys and Wipro, use 19,512 of the H-1B visas, or 30% of the 65,000 visas allowed each year. This indicates that Indian outsourcing companies participate more actively than previously thought, garnering for themselves visas that could otherwise go to U.S. firms. "This is information that we never had before," says Ron Hira, a public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology who has studied the issue closely.