How the Indian IT Industry Lobbies to Keep H-1B Visas Flowing

Indian outsourcing firms provided undisclosed lobbying cash to former Republican officials to influence President Donald Trump on H-1B visas.

In April 2018, John Engler, the former GOP Governor of Michigan, proudly released the findings of a blue-ribbon commission at the Council on Foreign Relations, an influential think tank, about the challenges faced by the American workforce.

The report, oddly enough, included a demand that then-President Donald Trump avoid reforms to visa programs used by corporations to import foreign workers. The Trump administration had pushed for rule changes designed to curb visa abuses, such as using foreign workers to lower wages. In the past, H-1B foreign workers have been tapped to replace laid-off American workers — in some cases, workers only received severance payments if they trained their foreign replacements.

The report called for the administration to "open doors to more highly educated immigrants" and to "reconsider measures that have created new obstacles for many foreign students and foreign workers on temporary work visas such as H-1B."

The report did not disclose Engler’s other position. A few months before the publication of the Council on Foreign Relations report, Engler had been hired as a paid lobbyist to the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), an industry group founded in Delhi that advocates on behalf of India’s largest IT outsourcing firms.

The Times of India reported on a hiring spree by NASSCOM at the time, noting that the industry group was working furiously to "change the perception in the Trump administration and other stakeholders about how the $180 billion [IT industry]" impacts the American economy and to promote the "continuation of the current H-1B visa programme."

During this period, NASSCOM brought on several other lobbyists. The group hired former Bush administration Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham as an H-1B lobbyist. Abraham helped the group attempt to influence Trump administration officials and the media. Like Engler, some of these appearances lacked disclosure of his paid role at an Indian outsourcing industry group.

Abraham, in a 2018 opinion column for the Des Moines Register, argued that the Trump administration should do more to acknowledge and promote the benefits of Indian IT companies, which he claimed would "result in more jobs for American workers." The newspaper identified Abraham only as a former cabinet secretary, not a paid lobbyist.

The undisclosed influence peddling by NASSCOM’s hired guns to promote H-1Bs were among dozens of similar incidents over the last decade from related industry groups – including direct lobbying, media campaigns, and litigation – to maintain the flow of foreign workers, often coming to this country to work at lower paid wages than Americans.

Behind the scenes, Indian outsourcing firms, Silicon Valley giants, Wall Street banks, and a variety of university-based research institutes maintain a vast political infrastructure to maintain the flow of a variety of foreign worker programs, such as the H-1B and OPT visas. NASSCOM is one of many such groups:

– The ITServe Alliance is a lobbying group for 2,600 largely South Asian IT outsourcing companies. The group mobilized on Capitol Hill in 2023 to push for the HIRE ACT legislation and to increase the "H1B visa cap," according to a press release. A deleted part of the ITServe Alliance website boasts that the group was pivotal in litigating to overturn the Trump administration’s previous wage hikes for H-1B visas, noting the group took “the bull by the horn” and fought the rule, “Rescinded the DOL Interim Final Rule, which was devasting to the H1B holders as no one can afford to pay those enhanced wages ... We successfully challenged the H–1B wage level increases by suing USCIS and DOL.” The group has hosted Hillary Clinton and other political VIPs for paid speeches at its events. See below.

– TechNet is one of the largest traditional Silicon Valley lobby groups specializing in lobbying for foreign workers. Last August, the group hosted a push for more foreign visas during a side event at the Democratic National Convention featuring Kamala Harris’s brother-in-law Tony West, a general counsel of Uber, and Brad Smith, the chief executive of Microsoft. The organization hosted a similar event at the RNC with IBM’s Gary Cohn, a former Trump economic adviser.