Wipro on Friday expressed concern over the likely procedural impact of the proposed immigration reform bill in the United States, which accounts for more than 50 per cent of its IT services revenues.
The IT major said compliance to procedures itself will create compliance cost and higher turnaround times, which would fundamentally affect competitiveness.
“What we all are worried about is procedural impact that will have on us”, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the company’s IT business, T K Kurien, told reporters in response to queries.
“It’s not so much about cost; the procedure itself has a way of, kind of slowing you down and that’s what is worrying”, he said.
“Compliance to procedures itself will create compliance cost and higher turnaround times, which will fundamentally affect competitiveness”.
According to the Bangalore-headquartered, New York Stock Exchange-listed company, 36 per cent of employees in the US are locals, and Wipro Chairman Azim Premji said this would eventually go up to 50 per cent.
“Good thing is it (immigration reforms) is going to be operational only next year”, Premji said, and expressed hope that some clauses, particularly relating to visas, would be made “practical” as it affects as much to American companies as Indian ones.
Officially called the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernisation Act, 2013, the Bill being pushed by the Obama administration gives the domestic IT professionals in the US a 60-day period to find a new job after they lose the existing one, among several other sweeping reforms.
The bill has been already introduced in the US Senate and Congressional hearing is expected to begin today.
Obama has already backed the Bill that seeks to put curbs on the use of H-1B visa for those companies which have a higher ratio of work force under this category.
The bill specifies that if an employer has 50 or more employees, and over 30 per cent but less than 50 per cent are H-1B or L-1 employees (who do not have a green card petition pending), the employer will need to pay a $5,000 fee per additional worker in either of these two statuses, the outline of the bill said.
In case the employer has 50 or more employees and more than 50 per cent of these workers are H-1B or L-1 employees who do not have a green card petition pending, then the companies will have to pay a $10,000 fee per additional worker in either of these two statuses.