TCS faces visa fraud allegations amid Trump-era scrutiny: Report
By : Sandhya
Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest IT outsourcing firm, is reportedly facing allegations of visa fraud, with whistleblowers claiming the company misused special work visas to sidestep US labour laws. The allegations, detailed in lawsuits and a Bloomberg News investigation, suggest that TCS improperly used L-1A manager visas to bring frontline workers to the US while labelling them as managers.
In 2017, when the Donald Trump administration intensified its focus on employment visas, Anil Kini, a former IT manager for TCS in Denver, alleges company executives instructed him to falsify internal organisational charts, Bloomberg reported. The purported aim was to misrepresent frontline employees as managers, aligning with visa applications to evade federal scrutiny.
Anil Kini, along with two other former TCS employees, filed lawsuits under the federal False Claims Act, accusing the company of exploiting the L-1A visa system, the report said. These visas, intended for managerial transfers, are less regulated than H-1B skilled-worker visas, which have stricter wage and educational requirements. Anil Kini's lawsuit was dismissed earlier this year, but he has appealed the decision, it added.