Only 4% of employees on H1B Visa; Bill not a big hit on co:TechM

The Protect and Grow American Jobs Bill has been re-introduced in the US Congress by two Republicans. But Vineet Nayyar, Vice Chairman of Tech Mahindra says there is nothing to be overly concerned about.Nayyar says the company has only 4,000 employees, which is around 4 percent of the workforce in the US, working on an H1-B visa. So he feels the Bill will not have a major impact on the company and it will be able to absorb the pain.The Bill also asks the minimum wages to be increased to USD 100,000. The average wage of employees working for Tech Mahindra, says Nayyar, is around USD 75,000.Nayyar is of the opinion that everyone acts for their self-interest, and, this move may not be in keeping with US companies. So, its approval for now seems difficult. Even if it is passed, he feels the US may take more than a year to pass the Immigration Bill.The IT stocks hold enough strength to withstand this shock, says Sudip Bandyopadhyay of Inditrade Capital. It would be best though, to pick up stocks that are focussing on new and innovative technologies like artificial intelligence and cloud computing.The passage of this Bill through both the Houses of the Congress seems unlikely as it affects the business of American companies as much as Indian IT firms, he adds.Below is the verbatim transcript of Vineet Nayyar’s interview to Nigel D’Souza and Reema Tendulkar on CNBC-TV18.Nigel: Wanted to understand for Tech Mahindra what is the average wages for employees who are on the H1B visa; that is the first point and secondly, what is the percentage of your total employees that are on H1B visa if you could give us both those two details?A: I think we have about 6,000 employees in US and 2,000 of them are US citizens and about 4,000 of them are on H1B visa at this point of time.Nigel: Your wage per employee?A: It is about USD 75,000.Reema: 65 percent of your US employees would be on visa, right, roughly?A: Yes, roughly that is right.Reema: What percentage would that 4,000 be of your overall employee base and if the minimum wages are increased from USD 75,000 to USD 1,00,000 could you give us a rough estimate of what the impact on the company’s margins would be?A: Our total employees are over a lakh, so in a sense yes it is an issue but it is not an issue which will in any fashion debilitate us. We will always be doing certain amount of readjustments in terms of work which is being done in India and work which is being done in US because I don't think anyone can stop American companies to outsourcing here to India. So I don't see it as a disaster or something to be overly concerned with. Concern, yes, all of us are concerned about it because it is symptomatic of a state of mind of bringing in everything but this has happened multiple times. Watch video for more...