Cognizant flags US and Europe work visa risks in its annual report

Cognizant has flagged obtaining work visas as one of the critical risk factors in the United States (US) and Europe, its key markets, as the anti-immigrant stance hardens across these geographies, according to its annual report.

“Changes in immigration laws or policies, or varying applications of immigration laws and policies, have limited the availability of certain work visas in the US, which could exacerbate competition for skilled labour. Our business has experienced in the past and may experience in the future employee attrition at levels which could cause us to incur increased costs to hire new employees with the desired skills,” the company said.

Most Indian IT services companies have been reducing their dependence on H-1B and L-1 visas to send employees to the US over the last decade and instead looking to hire more locally, especially from colleges.

However, they have also maintained that the availability of skilled talent in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) in the US is no match for that in India.

The US raised the cost of new H-1B visas to $100,000 in September in a move to deter technology companies from bringing in skilled workers from abroad and push them to hire more locally.

Cognizant said that since a substantial portion of its workforce in the US, the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU) relies on visas, any restrictions on such visas or immigration, increased costs of obtaining visas, or higher wages required to be paid to employees on visas may affect its ability to compete for and provide services to clients.

“The political environment in the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries in recent years has included significant support for anti-immigrant legislation and administrative changes. Many of these recent changes have resulted in, and various proposed and enacted changes may result in, increased difficulty in obtaining timely visas, whether as a result of visa application rejections, delays in processing applications, significantly increased costs to obtain visas, prevailing wage requirements for our employees on visas or otherwise, which could in turn impact our ability to staff projects,” it cautioned.

Even in the EU, many countries continue to implement new regulations to ensure compliance with the EU Directive of 2014 to harmonise immigration rules for intracompany transferees in most EU member states and to facilitate the transfer of managers, specialists and graduate trainees both into and within the region. Cognizant said such changes have had a significant impact on mobility programmes.

As of December 31, the company had about 351,600 employees, with 256,900 in India, 41,600 in North America, 14,600 in continental Europe, and 7,800 in the United Kingdom.