US protectionism: Infosys hires Americans

Infosys Technologies Ltd, India’s second-largest provider of software services, plans to boost hiring in the US if a proposal to restrict the country’s work visas becomes law, said B G Srinivas, a company executive.

The recruitment would be in addition to existing projects, Srinivas said in an interview from London, where the senior vice president heads the company’s operations in Europe and manufacturing-services unit worldwide. Bangalore-based Infosys has budgeted 1,000 new US employees by the end of 2010.

“We have already started the hiring engine, but we haven’t hired yet,” Srinivas said in the telephone interview. “All actions have been taken, including locations where this hiring will happen, what kind of profiles -- those plans are in place and we can execute at any time.”

Infosys, whose clients include General Electric Co and General Motors Corp, has about 10 per cent of its 104,900 employees in the US, mainly Indians on H-1B foreign work visas. The proposal by Senators Dick Durbin of the Democratic Party and Republican Charles Grassley would require the company to replace half of them with Americans. They submitted the bill in April as the US battles its highest unemployment rate since 1983.

“The first signs of protectionism are there,” Krishnakumar Natarajan, the chief executive officer of Infosys’s smaller rival MindTree Ltd, said in an interview this week in Bangalore. “The sentiment is clearly, ‘Hey, when there are job losses here, why should they go outside?’”

A possible US law limiting foreign visas comes as Armonk, New York-based International Business Machines Corp, the world’s largest provider of computer services, adds staff in India and challenges Infosys, larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and their peers in their home market.

Infosys has risen 57 per cent in Mumbai trading this year, compared with a 62 per cent gain at Tata Consultancy. The benchmark Bombay Sensitive Index has advanced 62 per cent.

The Durbin-Grassley bill “obviously is a concern if it gets implemented in full and with no time lag,” Srinivas said. “Over a period of two years, we can easily manage.”