Infosys brings back 200 employees, their families from US; vacates its largest international market

 The chartered flight took off from San Francisco International airport and brought hundreds of Infosys employees and their families home to Bangalore.

In a move to rescue its employees stuck in the US, India’s second-largest IT firm Infosys Ltd has brought back over 200 employees and their families in a chartered flight. Highlighting the leadership of Infosys, Samir Gosavi, associate vice president of Retail, CPG and Logistics, Infosys, wrote that the chartered flight took off from San Francisco International airport and brought hundreds of employees and families home to Bangalore. The employees included those working on-site in client locations on an H1-B visa and others who had temporarily travelled to the US for work-related purposes.

Few days before the IT firm Infosys took the step to bring back its employees, the US President Donald Trump suspended temporary work permits, such as the H1B and H4 visas, till the end of this year. Donald Trump’s order has barred thousands of people from getting employed or joining work-study programmes in the US. The order has also restricted American companies from hiring foreigners and blocked spouses of foreigners working in the US from entering the country.

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Among Infosys’ international markets, the United States holds the largest share of 61.6 per cent of the company’s revenue. Even as the IT firm increased hiring US locals due to uncertainty in the US policies, many Indian employees work in the US on H1-B visas. Infosys has hired over 10,000 US nationals or permanent residents in the last two years. In the recent virtual annual general meeting (AGM), U B Pravin Rao, chief operating officer, Infosys, said that at present, 60 per cent of Infosys’ US employees are visa independent.

Last year, Infosys had added a digital delivery centre in Arizona, which is the sixth such centre in the US to meet the growing demand for direct in-market engagements. Meanwhile, Infosys employs nearly 2.5 lakh workers in India and is a major recruiter in campus placements across colleges and universities.