Indian IT companies are confronting an increasingly stringent US immigration environment, though the latest H-1B policy crackdowns under President Donald Trump have not caught the sector entirely unprepared. Major India-based technology firms have systematically lowered their reliance on incoming H-1B personnel over recent years by scaling up local US recruitment, shifting operations offshore, and expanding delivery hubs across international markets. National Foundation for American Policy analyses utilizing USCIS data show that the seven largest India-based tech firms secured 4,573 initial employment H-1B approvals in FY2025, marking a 37% decline from FY2024 and standing roughly 70% lower than 2015 figures. Reductions were evident across prominent organizations, with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) dropping from 1,452 approvals in FY2024 to 846 in FY2025, Cognizant falling from 2,873 to 743, HCL America decreasing from 1,248 to 379, and LTIMindtree recording 401 approvals compared to 798 the previous year. Conversely, US technology enterprises like Amazon (4,644 approvals), Meta (1,555), Microsoft (1,394), and Google (1,050) continued to accumulate significantly higher initial H-1B counts in FY2025.
Evolution of the Traditional Onsite-Offshore Model:
Historically, Indian IT entities heavily depended on an onsite-offshore paradigm, dispatching employees from India directly to client locations across the United States while maintaining primary delivery backbones in India. This structural approach has steadily transformed as US clients increasingly demand local operational teams, prompting Indian firms to hire domestically and build out delivery frameworks in nearshore locations such as Canada and Mexico alongside India. Concurrently, technological advancements facilitate remote execution, minimizing the necessity of relocating large employee cohorts from India to America. While H-1B visas remain critical for specialized functions, project transitions, and direct client interfacing, they now form merely a single component of a diversified workforce strategy.
Financial Pressures, Regulatory Scrutiny, and Compliance Risks:
Upcoming administrative policies threaten to further accelerate these operational shifts. A previously introduced $100,000 fee requirement for specific new H-1B petitions involving overseas workers though vacated by a federal court awaiting anticipated government appeal alongside a Department of Homeland Security proposal for an additional $103,265 fee currently moving through rule-making procedures, have sharply contracted overseas filings. Initial consular H-1B petitions dropped by 91.2% between September 21, 2025, and May 24, 2026, relative to the preceding year. Furthermore, oversight has expanded past visa volume and fee adjustments; the Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General initiated fraud, wage kickback, and worker exploitation investigations, leading Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito to announce the suspension of Cognizant’s PERM filings on September 8. Although enhanced local hiring and reduced H-1B dependency afford firms operational cushioning, persistent vulnerabilities remain in the form of elevated compliance costs, tighter wage mandates, potential green-card processing restrictions, and an overall loss of workforce mobility between India and the US.
