Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], October 9 (ANI): India's leading Tech major Tata Consultancy Services Limited (TCS) has responded to the US government's decision to bar it and other IT companies from its Green Card program citing investigations into the alleged abuse of the program.

In a statement on Friday, TCS said, "We have noted the announcement by the US Government on the Permanent Labour Certification Program (PERM) and TCS will comply with any directive from the Department of Labour. Our workforce strategy in the US is anchored in hiring local talent, supported by a robust campus recruitment model. We have built a significant local workforce across 31 offices and delivery centres throughout the country.'

'As we had announced earlier, we intend to hire an additional 15,000 people in the US over the next five years, to further augment our local workforce. Our PERM applications were in single digits in the last two years and hence we do not expect the suspension of the program to impact our workforce strategy and customer engagements," the statement added.

Responding to the same issue, the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) said immigration and skilled talent mobility were two distinct issues and should not be viewed through the same lens.

In an official statement, Nasscom said the US Department of Labour's decision affected a specific immigration pathway, while Indian technology companies had significantly reduced their dependence on H-1B visas over the years, expanded local hiring and built a strong domestic workforce in the United States.

Earlier, in a far-reaching move US Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling announced that the US Government is suspending from the Permanent Labor Certification Program some of the largest IT outsourcing firms in the world which include Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini. The US Labour department attributed the suspension to multiple active federal investigations even as it also suspended US tech majors Microsoft and Adobe from the program.

Sonderling said the companies named had collectively sought millions of foreign workers and received hundreds of thousands of H-1B visa approvals and permanent labour certifications.

'Since 2009, just these companies alone have requested almost 3 million foreign workers. They received over 230,000 H1B Visa approvals and over 100,000 permanent labour certifications that's hundred and thousands of jobs that were taken from American workers,' the Labour Secretary said.

While addressing the News conference on Visa frauds along with Sonderling, US Vice President JD Vance described workers coming in on H1B visas as 'indentured servants'.

'If you are working as an H-1B visa in the United States of America, you're earning $20,000 less than an American citizen hired in the same position. If you were brought in by one of these foreign outsourcing firms, you're making $48,000 less than an American citizen in a similar position. So, I'm sure that everybody here understands the game that is being played. You bring in indentured servants from outside the country, you lay off American workers and, if you're a corporation, you make a ton of money by under cutting the wages of American workers, replacing them with people who frankly shouldn't be in the United States of America to begin with,' he said.

The US Government's announcement came a day after the US Department of Homeland Security proposed new fees for F-1 non-immigrant students seeking to participate in Optional Practical Training (OPT), describing the measure as an effort to protect American workers and strengthen the integrity of the immigration system. (ANI)