The impact of H-1B visa restrictions continues to be felt by Indian IT companies. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has announced that it will stop hiring new employees on H-1B visas in the United States and focus on expanding its workforce through local recruitment, Chief Executive K. Krithivasan told Business Standard in an interview.
H-1B visas are non-immigrant visas that enable US companies to hire foreign professionals in specialized fields such as science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM), and IT. TCS has been the largest employer of H-1B workers in the US, hiring 98,259 individuals between 2009 and 2025. This year alone, it employed 5,505 H-1B professionals, surpassing tech giants like Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Meta. However, Krithivasan emphasized that the company is now taking a new approach.
On renewing current H-1B visas, he noted that the company’s strategy has always been to send employees to the US with plans to rotate them back or integrate them with local talent. He added that decisions on who will have their visas renewed will be made when appropriate, emphasizing that the company aims to boost local workforce participation.
The remarks follow US President Donald Trump’s significant hike in the application fee for companies hiring H-1B visa workers. The fee has been raised to $100,000 per application to discourage companies from relying on the program to bring in foreign talent at existing levels, amid an increasingly heated national debate on immigration.
