‘Tremendous value’ brought to American firms through Indian outsourcing

Faisal Husain, the chief executive of Synechron, an IT services company, talks about India’s technology outsourcing sector, which would be impacted by proposed changes to immigration laws in the United States.

Have you found it challenging operating in the US because of the current caps on visas that are issued for foreign workers?

It was maybe being overused by some companies, but I don’t have an issue with the cap. From what I’ve heard the cap would be reached very quickly because some companies were getting blanket numbers – they would get many, many visas processed, which would leave other companies without the option of getting visas for themselves. What has happened is that they have made the requirements to process the visas more stringent. The proposed new bill that is being debated … is the area of concern for us – not what is currently enforced today.

So you’ve found that you’ve been able to secure the talent you need from India and take those employees to the US without any difficulties?

I think the way we look at it is whenever we require workers in the US, we always try to find them locally. That is the quickest way to do and you get locally experienced staff. If we are not able to do that then we look at non-US options – India being one but we also recruit from other places. In some years we have had the situation where the cap has been reached sooner than we thought but in other years the cap has been available.

Do you have a plan if American immigration laws do change?

For us, it’s largely a wait and watch mode. These types of legislations go though many changes and revisions so we don’t know how it will settle. We are hopeful that it will be a balanced law. In general, unemployment may be higher than what everybody would like, but what the government should realise is that there’s actually a shortage of skilled technology workers in the US. I think the Indian outsourcing industry has provided immense value to US corporations.