Many foreign students graduating from top colleges will have to leave the United States this summer. Some of them, wielding lucrative offers from Wall Street investment banks and other American businesses, will have to start at those companies' overseas offices thousands of miles away. Few may think to blame far-off foreign companies for their plight, but India's thriving outsourcing industry is guzzling ever more of the coveted H-1B visas that thousands of foreigners would need to stay in the United States. The H-1B visa, set up to attract the world's best and brightest to America, is being put to a starkly different use: It is now a critical tool for Indian outsourcing vendors to gain expertise and win contracts from Western companies to transfer critical operations to places like Bangalore.
See "Outsourcers corner market for U.S. skilled worker visas", Anand Giridharadas, International Herald Tribune, April 11, 2007