In its latest issue, BusinessWeek has reported that most of the offshore outsourcing companies granted H-1B visas last year were Indian ones, accounting for about 80% of the visa petitions that were approved for the program’s top 10 participants.
This follows requests to Congress by technologically advanced companies to augment the yearly allotment of H-1B visas, whereby highly educated foreigners can temporarily work in the United States.
But this is not likely to go down well with certain critics, however, who believe that this is helping to wipe out jobs for Americans. They claim that these companies low-cost workers are brought to the United. States, trained, and then returned home a year or two later from where they provide tech support and other services from abroad.

As Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) remarked, “These numbers should send a red flag to every lawmaker that the H-1B visa program is not working as it was intended.”
Senator Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) feels, “Valuable high-tech jobs are on a one-way superhighway overseas.”
The quota of H-1B visas allocated has varied quite a bit recently as a result of fluctuations in the U.S. economy and the mixed fortunes of the technology industry. At present it allows for 65,000 such visas. This does not include the 20,000 other applicants from overseas who have advanced degrees from American universities are thus permitted to secure employment in the United States.