Outsourcing firm says it will create 10,000 new jobs in U.S.
Infosys, a global tech outsourcing giant under fire from President Donald Trump for stealing American jobs, announced Tuesday it plans to hire 10,000 new U.S. workers over the next two years.
The firm, based in India, plans to open four U.S.-based “hubs,” starting in Indianapolis in August. The company expects that the Indiana site will create 2,000 jobs by 2021, said Vishal Sikka, chief executive of Infosys .
“We want to create a culture of close proximity,” said Sikka, touting the company’s desire to train and hire graduates from local universities and community colleges during a news conference hosed at the state capitol in Indianapolis.
Critics have recently ramped up their attacks on outsourcing firms, including Infosys, in light of Trump’s forceful “America First” rhetoric and the companies’ rampant use of H-1B visas to bring tech workers to the U.S.
The visas are supposed to be used to import high-skilled foreign workers in the tech and science fields, but critics say firms like Infosys often use them to displace American workers and depress overall wages.
Trump last month reiterated his campaign promise to protect American workers and their wages as he signed an executive order at a Wisconsin tools manufacturer to overhaul the decades-old H-1B visa program.
The U.S. outposts will focus on technology and innovation, including artificial intelligence, digital technologies and big data, serving companies spanning a variety of industries from financial services to manufacturing and pharma.
Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb praised the announcement Tuesday morning as historic and “game changing.”
“We’re celebrating our futures together in Indiana’s tech eco-system,” Holcomb said. “You can’t even spell Indiana without starting with India.”
Infosys, founded in 1981 and headquartered in Bangalore, was the first Indian IT company to be listed on NASDAQ. It has more than 200,000 employees worldwide in consulting and IT services.
Multinational outsourcing firms, many of which are based in India, are exempt from the federal requirement that they not displace American workers provided they pay H-1B visa holders at least $60,000 a year. That threshold still falls below the market rate for American tech workers.
The Labor Department in 2015 cleared Infosys of any wrongdoing after American technology workers at Southern California Edison complained they were wrongly displaced by foreign workers on H-1B visas. The company maintained it had complied by U.S. immigration laws.
Separately, the Justice Department was investigating whether Infosys and other U.S. and outsourcing companies discriminated against American workers on the basis of citizenship, according to a Reuters report in 2015.
“ If this is indeed a response to President Trump’s statements then it demonstrates the power, but also the limitations, of the bully pulpit,” said Ron Hira, a public policy professor at Howard University who specializes in high-skill immigration and the American engineering workforce.
“ A few individual cases of self-reform, no matter how large they may be, are no substitute for real reform – by both the administration and Congress.”