TCS Among Top 10 Firms To Get Foreign Labour Certification For H-1B Visas
TCS received 20,755 H-1B specialty occupation labour certifications and is the only Indian company on the top 10 list.
Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. is the only Indian company among top 10 firms to get a foreign labour certification for the H-1B visas for the fiscal year 2018, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labour.
The H-1B visas are the most sought after among Indian IT professionals. The visa programme allows employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in the U.S. on a non-immigrant basis in specialty occupations.
London-headquartered Ernst and Young, a multinational professional services firm, has emerged as the top employer to have received the certification.
With 1.51 lakh H-1B specialist occupation labour certifications, EY accounted for 12.4 percent of all foreign labour certification for the H-1B work visas for the year ending Sept. 30, according to the annual report released by the Department of Labour earlier this month.
EY is followed by Deloitte Consulting which received 69,869 H-1B specialty occupations labour conditions programme. Indian-American owned Cognizant Technology Corp. comes at number three with 47,732 specialty occupations in the labour conditions programme, according to the report.
Cognizant is followed by HCL America, K Force Inc., and Apple Inc. According to the Department of Labour in the fiscal year 2018, ended Sept, TCS had received 20,755 H-1B specialty occupation labour certifications. Qualcomm Technologies, Mphasis Corporation, and Capgemini America are the other companies in the list.
In the 2018 fiscal year, the Department of Labour’s Office of Foreign Labour Certification processed 654,360 applications for the H-1B specialty occupations labour conditions programme, of which 599,782 were certified, 8,627 were denied and 45,951 were withdrawn. It received requests for 1,266,614 position of which 1,223,053 were certified.
Among the positions certified, software developers and applications accounted for nearly one-fourth with 285,963 positions being certified.
This was followed by computer systems analyst, computer occupations, software developers, system software, accountants and auditors and computer programmers.
California, with 309,205 certifications, topped the list of the states getting the maximum H-1B labour certification, followed by Texas, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Washington and Pennsylvania.
According to Department of Labour, a specialty occupation requires the theoretical and practical application of a body of specialised knowledge and a bachelor’s degree or the equivalent in the specific specialty.
The U.S. Congress has limited the annual number of qualifying foreign workers who may be issued a visa or otherwise be provided the H-1B status to 65,000 with an additional 20,000 under the H-1B advanced degree exemption.
Before applying for the H-1B visas, the employer submits a labour condition application to the Department of Labour. Companies can proceed with the H-1B petitions only after they receive such a certification from the department.