Demand Grows Despite H-1B Fight, TCS Exec Says

The chop-shop fallout continues. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) caused an uproar in India recently after he called Indian IT outsourcing companies chop shops during debate on a proposal to double their fees on H-1B and L-1 work visas. The proposal passed—with no nays in the Senate—and the Indian government is now pondering its next move. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government might challenge the U.S. at the WTO, The Economic Times reports. The Economic Times also reports that many Indian IT executives want more push-back from Nasscom, the industry lobbying group.

Not everyone thinks this is such a big deal, though. Vish Iyer is the head of Asia Pacific for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS:IN), one of India’s biggest IT services companies, and he was in Bloomberg’s Hong Kong office the other day to talk up the company’s expansion in China and other parts of the region. Iyer says the new fee and the anti-India rhetoric coming from U.S. politicians isn’t that worrisome. “We must distill the news and politics,” he explains. “We have seen this in the past.” TCS employs 700 people at a center it opened three years ago in Cincinnati, Iyer adds, and the company is expecting more business from American companies, no matter what the politicians say. With the passage of Wall Street reform, for instance, “we see a phenomenal growth in demand from the U.S. banks,” says Iyer. “They need help from people like us.”

Read the original story at BusinessWeek Eye on Asia Blog