US Court Asks Infosys to Provide Info on B1 Visas

District attorney in Texas asks software co to clarify on allegations of visa misuse    The ongoing backlash in the US against India's $70-billion outsourcing industry gained further momentum when a district attorney in Texas asked Infosys on Tuesday to clarify on allegations of visa misuse by Jack Palmer, currently working with the company. The district attorney has launched an independent investigation on the use of B1 visas based on an ongoing case filed by Palmer in a district court in Alabama. For India's growing outsourcing firms competing with established US rivals IBM and Accenture, allegations of misusing work permits and local anti-offshoring sentiments are increasingly becoming a tough challenge to deal with. 
Earlier this year, Palmer, who has been working with the company as a principal consultant since August 2008, filed a complaint saying Infosys was illegally sending employees on B1 visas to work full time in the US, though the visa was only meant for visitors who come for meetings, conferences and business negotiations. Infosys CFO V Balakrishnan has said the company would co-operate with the district attorney's request and provide the needed documents. A spokeswoman for Infosys said in an email response that her company takes the legal compliance obligations very seriously. 
"As we have announced on May 23, 2011, we received a subpoena from a grand jury in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The subpoena requires us to provide information to the grand juryregarding our sponsorships for, and uses of, B1 business visas. We intend to comply with the subpoena and to cooperate with the grand jury's investigation," she said in an email response. Som Mittal, president of Nasscom, said in an interview last week that such allegations are because of interpretation issues around work permits. "We continue to support an overhaul of immigration and believe there is a need for a separate services visa category," he said. 
In his allegations, Palmer said he was asked to write "welcome letters" for Indian employees so they could come on B1 visas and when he refused and complained to the 'whistleblower team' in Infosys, they did not investigate the matter thoroughly. He also said had received threatening calls from the company. He also accused Infosys of not paying taxes in the US. Senior executives at some of the top tech firms say such allegations are opportunistic and aimed at leveraging anti-outsourcing sentiments for monetary claims. 
"A company like Infosys represents the entire industry because of its brand, there's no way this company can ever misuse work permits to save few Dollars," said a senior official at one of the multinational tech firms that competes with Infosys for business. The US is the biggest market for Infosys from where it draws over 60% of its revenues. Infosys has 15,000 employees in the US and is growing this number rapidly. The use of visas by Indian IT firms has been a controversial issue and the US government last year doubled the fee of H1B visas, used to send temporary workers to the US. Indian IT firms responded to this by saying that they would increase their local workforce in the US. According to Palmer, Infosys was using B1 visas to circumvent the problem around H1B visas. 
This case could make matters even more difficult for Indian IT firms. It has drawn the attention of the foreign media and of Senator Charles Grassley who has asked secretary of state Hillary Clinton and homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano to investigate the matter. Infosys has requested that the case should be put under arbitration. Palmer's attorney, Kenny Mendelsohn, in response to an email questionnaire to ET last week, said several other current and former employees of Infosys had contacted him and provided additional information that Infosys has violated US visa and tax laws and the fact that Palmer has been retaliated against. 
According to him, most of these employees have said that if subpoenaed to court, they will testify to these facts under oath while a few others were scared because after seeing how Infosys retaliated against Palmer and how he had been threatened. He also said he had been contacted by other employees who were considering filing suit against Infosys. Mendelsohn said Palmer was not being paid his dues by the company and that he had been put on bench.