According to data of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Indian IT giants became the biggest consumers of the non-immigrant work visa – L-1 visa – for the fiscal years 2015 and 2016.
L-1 visas are available to employees of an entity or corporation with offices in both the U.S. and overseas. The visa allows such foreign workers to transfer to the U.S. office for employment after having worked in the related overseas office for at least one continuous year within the past three years of applying for the L-1.
In the list of approved L-1 petitions for the fiscal years 2015 and 2016, the recipients with maximum visa approvals were IT companies – TCS, Infosys, Wipro and IBM. TCS – Custom Computer Programming Services got the highest L-1 approvals – 1606 for the fiscal year 2015 and 1,615 for 2016.
In wake of the Buy American Hire American Executive Order of April 2017 however, there may be a shift in the trend above. Immigration and visa agencies are adopting and implementing new policies and rules in order to protect the economic interests of the U.S. workers as also to safeguard the country against terrorism.
Sukanya Raman, Immigration Executive
