IT stocks sink as US considers plans to change H-1B visa norms

Information technology (IT) stocks crashed in trade today after Washington said it was planning to "revise" the definition of employment and specialty occupations under the H-1B visas by January, a move which will have an adverse impact on Indian IT companies in the US.

TCS  dropped 0.92%, Wipro was down 0.92% and Infosys lost 2.95% on the BSE.

The BSE IT index fell 423 points or 2.88% to 14,254 on the BSE. The index had closed at 14,677 level on Wednesday.

Top losers on the IT index were MindTree (16.42%) Mastek (5.16%), Mphasis (4.91%) and HCL Technologies (6.24% ).

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said on Wednesday that the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) plans to come out with its new proposal by January 2019.

It will "propose to revise the definition of specialty occupation" to increase focus on obtaining the best and the brightest foreign nationals via the H-1B programme.

It will also "revise the definition" of employment and employer-employee relationship to "better protect" US workers and wages, the DHS said.

Such a move, which is part of the Unified Fall Agenda of the Trump administration, is likely to have an adverse impact on the functioning of Indian IT companies in the US and also small and medium-sized contractual companies in the IT sector, which are mostly owned by Indian-Americans.

The H-1B visa, most sought-after among Indian IT professionals, is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise.

The technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.