For the 1.9 million employees at India’s top IT services firms, the American dream is getting harder to pursue. The companies’ H-1B visa approvals have fallen sharply this year as the Donald Trump administration tightens rules around work visas and green cards, pushing the industry towards more offshore work from India and greater local hiring in the US.
According to official US data, India’s six largest information technology services firms—Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp, Infosys Ltd, HCL Technologies Ltd, Wipro Ltd and Tech Mahindra Ltd—were given 11,041 H-1B visas as of 31 March 2026, down 40% from the previous year, when these firms collectively got about 18,469 visas.
H-1B visas allow Indians to temporarily work in the US in specialized occupations including IT services. To be sure, the US federal government follows an October-September financial calendar.
Of this total visa count, Infosys, India’s second-largest firm got 3,195 approvals, the highest among the six top firms. Significantly, the Bengaluru-based company was the only one in this list to get more approvals than in FY25.
On the other hand, Mumbai-based TCS saw the steepest decline in the cohort, falling by 3,242 from a year ago to about 2,885.
“IT services companies are lowering their reliance on H-1B visas with the incremental $100,000 visa costs coupled with a wage weighted selection process giving a preference to higher wage talent, thereby acting as a barrier to entry level jobs,relatively lower pay IT jobs,” said Sushovon Nayak, lead IT analyst at Anand Rathi Institutional Equities.
“What is likely to happen is that sub-contractor costs will increase as IT firms shift more people offshore, with most onshore work done by sub-cons,” added Nayak.
For now, theare not worried, as they have been working around the issue.
“Over the last several years, Cognizant Technology Solutions has significantly reduced the dependency on visas, while increasing local hiring and our nearshore capacity,” said its chief executive Ravi Kumar during an analyst call in October last year.
On the other hand, chief executive K. Krithivasan said the firm had deployed even “fewer people than the number of approvals each year” and that this was a “part of a consistent reduction in dependency on visa-based talent over time”.
While the H-1B numbers may be updated, approvals for the H-1B visa cycle for 2026-27 are “wrapping up”, according to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which said registrations for H-1B visas had fallen this year.
“This data is a clear sign that the days of abusing the program with mass, low-wage registrations are over, and that the program is better serving its intended purpose of attracting highly skilled foreign workers and protecting the wages, working conditions, and job opportunities of American workers,” the US agency said in a post on X on 22 May.
The US government has also tightened restrictions on green card applicants in the US when it said foreign nationals applying for it have to return to their home country. Green cards allow foreign nationals to live and work in the US permanently.
This impacts H-1B visa holders, as many of them live on H-1B visa extensions while applying for a green card, the total limit for which is 9,800 per year. Larger applications and fewer green card slots lead to backlogs that can span decades.
The new rule, announced on 22 May, upends the lives of people with H-1B visas who may have lived in the US for years. They would now have to physically return to their home country to apply for a green card, rather than doing it while staying on in the US. For people from countries such as India or China, which have green card backlogs stretching across decades, this is a significant disruption to their lives and careers.
Flak for new rule
At least five US lawmakers have flayed the new green card norm.
“They’ve been lying when they say they support immigration ‘the right way’. This radical policy will target people here LEGALLY, including people married to Americans and parents of US citizen children. It will separate families for months or even years, devastate communities, and kill jobs. We have to do everything we can to stop this insanity,” said Arizona’s Democrat Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari, in a post on X.
A second lawmaker said the move would result in a talent drain. “The US will have a significant exodus of top researchers, scientists, and industry leaders in multiple fields, ranging from medicine to technology to advanced manufacturing,” said California Congressman Ted Lieu, also a Democrat, on X.
An immigration lawyer said this rule could be legally challenged.
“I can tell you that the new policy memo was, in my view, released in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act and I anticipate litigation will be quickly filed,” Greg Siskind, co-founder of Siskind Susser P.C, a Memphis-based immigration law firm, said in an emailed response to Mint‘s queries.
The Administrative Procedure Act controls how US government agencies make rules and run daily operations. It ensures unelected government agencies cannot create laws in secret without inputs from the public.
Relentless clampdown
The country’s authorities have continued to clamp down on immigrants over the last 12 months.
In March, the US Department of Labor proposed new rules mandating an increase in base wages for new H-1B visa applicants, a move that could raise costs for large . In September 2025, Trump signed a Presidential Proclamation requiring firms to pay $100,000 annually for every new foreign worker brought in under an H-1B visa, up from $1,000.
Also in September, Republican senator Charles E. Grassley and Democrat senator Richard J. Durbin jointly wrote to K. Krithivasan and S. Ravi Kumar, chief executives of TCS and Cognizant, respectively, seeking responses on claims of race-based discrimination, and substituting American workers with low-cost H-1B employees.
A month later, Tom Cotton, Arkansas’ Republican senator, introduced the Visa Cap Enforcement Bill in the Senate, aimed at removing the long-standing exemption for colleges, non-profits and research institutes from annual H-1B visa limits.
Earlier in October, Ohio senator Bernie Moreno proposed the Halting International Relocation of Employees (HIRE) Act to increase taxes on firms hiring offshore employees from their IT vendors.