Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) is the only Indian company among top 10 firms to get a foreign labour certification for the H-1B visas for the financial year 2018, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labour, reported PTI.

The H-1B visas are sought after by most Indian IT professionals. This visa programme allows employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in the U.S. on a non-immigrant basis in specialty occupations.

London-headquartered Ernst and Young, a multinational professional services firm, has emerged as the top employer to have received the certification. It accounted for 12.4 percent of all foreign labour certification for the H-1B work visas for the year ending 30 September.

EY is followed by Deloitte Consulting which received 69,869 H-1B specialty occupations labour conditions programme. Indian-American owned Cognizant Technology Corp. was at number three with 47,732 specialty occupations in the labour conditions programme, according to the report.

TCS had received 20,755 H-1B specialty occupation labour certifications. In the 2018 fiscal year, the Department of Labour's Office of Foreign Labour Certification processed 654,360 applications for the H-1B specialty occupations labour conditions programme, of which 599,782 were certified. Among the positions certified, software developers and applications accounted for nearly one-fourth with 285,963 positions being certified, followed by computer systems analyst, computer occupations, software developers, system software, accountants and auditors and computer programmers.

The U.S. Congress has limited the annual number of qualifying foreign workers who may be provided the H-1B status to 65,000 with an additional 20,000 under the H-1B advanced degree exemption.

Before applying for the H-1B visas, the employer submits a labour condition application to the Department of Labour and can proceed with the H-1B petitions only after they receive such a certification from the department.

Inputs from PTI