Infosys Sees Losses from its Hiring Policy

By David North on October 18, 2013

A tiny bit of news appeared in an unlikely source recently – a corporate financial statement.

The news was that IT giant Infosys, one of the biggest of the Indian body shops, or outsourcing firms, has felt it necessary to set aside $35 million to meet costs stemming from investigations and court cases related to its nonimmigrant hiring policies, and to let stockholders know about that in a quarterly report.

These policies include the massive utilization of H-1B workers, primarily from India, to reduce wages, its sometime use of B-1 visas to bring, in effect, workers to the U.S. when that visa should not be used for that purpose, at least in my eyes, and, apparently, some problems in connection with its handling of the I-9 forms (the basic reporting system on the legal status of a firm’s employees.)

Infosys stockholders are not to be pitied; the firm’s last annual report showed $2.7 billion in profits.

Infosys essentially hires low-cost H-1B workers with IT skills and then rents them to other corporations to work on software matters. It has been frequently sued because of alleged discrimination against citizen workers, and particularly older (35+) citizen workers, as we have reported in frequent blogs.

In addition to the suits, which are largely filed by individual citizens, the giant firm has apparently caught the eye of the Feds, because in the usual (soft-soap) text of the quarterly report it says: the firm is “engaged in discussions with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and other government departments.”

Be firm, Mr. U.S. Attorney! Do unto Infosys what Obama did unto the House Republicans!

The news came to my attention because of an item in the internet site, Immigration Daily, of October 15.