Outsourcing firm Infosys says it will create 10,000 U.S. jobs
Infosys, a global tech outsourcing giant accused by President Trump of stealing American jobs, announced Tuesday that it plans to hire 10,000 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. Locations of the other hubs were not announced. 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 of local universities and community colleges during a news conference at the state Capitol in Indianapolis.
Criticism of outsourcing firms, including Infosys, has ramped up in light of Trump’s “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 companies such as Infosys often use them to displace American workers and depress overall wages.
Last month, Trump reiterated his campaign promise to protect American workers and their wages as he signed an executive order to overhaul the decades-old H-1B visa program.
Infosys’ U.S. outposts are to focus on technology and innovation, including artificial intelligence, digital technologies and big data, serving companies spanning a variety of industries such as financial services, manufacturing and pharma.
Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb praised the Tuesday announcement, calling it “game changing.”
“We’re celebrating our futures together in Indiana’s tech ecosystem,” Holcomb said. “You can’t even spell Indiana without starting with India.”
But some experts question whether the deal is a good one for Indiana, given the generous financial incentives offered by the historically frugal state, which top out at $31 million and include tax credits worth as much as $15,000 per worker hired.
Ron Hira, a Howard University political science professor, said he doesn’t think state officials “thought this one through,” noting that the incentives are subsidizing a company that specializes in helping other companies offshore IT-related jobs.
“It’s absolutely crazy for the [Indiana] government to subsidize the offshoring of its own citizens’ jobs. But that’s precisely what these tax breaks do,” said Hira, who is an outspoken critic of the H-1B visa program. “Hiring U.S.-based onsite workers, whether H-1Bs or Americans, still means that much work will be offshored.”
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 as long as they pay H-1B visa holders at least $60,000 a year. That threshold still falls below the market rate for American tech workers.
In 2015, the Labor Department 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 with 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.
Jan writes for the Washington Post. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
UPDATES:
1:55 p.m.: This article was updated with information about financial incentives and with comments by Ron Hira.
This article was originally published at 11:35 a.m.
