Indian conglomerate Tata is the lowest average wage payer in the United States to its employees working under the H-1B visa, according to a Reuters analysis of US Labor Department filings.
Tata, in the most recent fiscal year offered $67,950 on average, barely above the $60,000 floor set by law for the H-1B program. Another Indian tech giant, Wipro, does slightly better at an average of $72,794. Both the companies feature at the bottom of the list, followed by Teaneck, New Jersey, headquarterd Cognizant, offering an annual average of $75,641.
The new proposed legislation — High-Skilled Integrity and Fairness Act of 2017 — that has been tabled in the US House of Representatives calls for doubling the minimum salary of H-1B visa holders to $130,000. If passed, the legislation could send the Indian IT services industry into a tizzy. There have been reports that CEOs of multiple Indian technology companies, would be meeting US President Donald Trump, on February 20, to lobby against any major changes to visa regulations that could hurt the country’s $150 billion industry.
Infosys pays an annual average salary of $81,662 to its H-1B visa holder workers. Incidentally, Infosys Co-Founder N R Narayana Murthy, has urged Indian technology companies, to stop sending Indians to the US and hire local talent. “They (Indian software companies) must recruit American residents in the US, Canadians in Canada, British people in Britain etc. That’s the only way, we can become a true multi-national company and in order to do that, we should stop using H-1B visas and sending a large number of Indians to those countries to deliver services,” Murthy was quoted as telling to NDTV, by news agency PTI.
According to Reuters, Facebook, which depends on foreign guest workers for more than 15 percent of its workforce, pays an average annual wage of $145,028, a number that is slightly better than the proposed new salary figure of $130,000. However, the figure $145,028 is still an average, and there could be hundreds if not thousands who could lose their jobs.
Besides Facebook, other firms that have guest workers more than 15% of their entire workforce include Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro and Tata.