Help me understand the first part. Why do you need a US visa (well, THAT visa - I understand a 'fly over for a meeting' visiting visa) as an outsourcing company?
What I mean is: How are the outsourcing companies affected by this?
Its a business visa to allow exchange of ideas quicker, better.
Imagine GE, a company with a pool of power electronics talent in the US, wants to build specialized power plants for the Indian market. They can't do it remotely from the US. They will fly their US employees to India to study the market, understand rules and constraints, design and consult local Indian teams. The US employees need to stay there for years to build those things.
All that requires India to give US citizens the visa to work for such a long time. And India does give that. Business visas in India are easy to get.
Reverse the roles and if an Indian company wants to use their own pool of talent to do business in the US, H-1b are the only ones available for long term business related work, which got totally distorted by politics over the years.
>L-1 visas are available to employees of an international company with offices in both the United States and abroad. The visa allows such foreign workers to relocate to the corporation's US office after having worked abroad for the company for at least one continuous year within the previous three prior to admission in the US. The US and non-US employers must be related in one of four ways: parent and subsidiary; branch and headquarters; sister companies owned by a mutual parent; or "affiliates" owned by the same or people in approximately the same percentages.[2]
Although when I look at the top companies utilizing them, you see it is Tata.
Still, it's separate from the H1 and not subject to the H1 cap.
Many if not most outsourcing gigs require some people on the ground in the US to drum up new business, liaise with the customer, fulfill compliance requirements ("work must be done in US"), etc.
Our outsourced front end team has 6 people in India and one person in the US to provide management/coordination. As we are getting more offshore folks we will also be getting another onshore person from India.
Yeah, but as it was pointed out -- it could be done by a 6 month visit visa and still the payment comes through at the site in India. So technically the employee could be working for the outsourced outlet and there should be no requirement of a work visa.
What I mean is: How are the outsourcing companies affected by this?