Senators questioning tech company use of H1-B visa program

Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and , have targeted nine Indian companies that used over a quarter of the 75,000 H-1B visas issued last year.

The senators asked the companies several questions about their visa use, wages and layoffs, to which they are required to respond by May 29.

“I continue to hear how people want to increase the number of H-1B visas that are available to companies. Considering the high amount of fraud and abuse in the visa program, we need to take a good, hard look at the employers who are using H-1B visas and how they are using them,” Grassley said in a news release.

The letters, posted on Grassley’s Web site, were addressed to Infosys, Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services, Saytam, Patni Computer Systems, Larsen & Toubro Infotech, I-Flex Solutions, Tech Mahindra Americas and Mphasis Corp.

India’s Commerce Minister Kamal Nath has denounced the letters. “I am surprised both with the form and the content of the letter,” he said in a statement. “Issues such as work visas are intergovernmental in nature and should be dealt with accordingly.”