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Indian IT sector leaders will meet both US lawmakers and officials from US President Donald Trump’s administration later this month to lobby against any major changes to visa regulations that could hurt the country's $150 billion industry.
R Chandrashekhar, head of Indian IT industry body Nasscom, said details of the visit were still being finalised, but chief executives from some of India's big IT companies would be part of a delegation visiting Washington in the week of 20 February.
Indian IT service companies use H-1B visas to fly engineers to the US, their biggest market, to service clients, but some opponents in the United States argue they are misusing the programme to replace US jobs.
Earlier in the week, Nasscom warned that a bill, introduced last month by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, unfairly targets some of its members and will not solve a US labour shortage in the tech sector.
India's IT firms, led by Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro, have seen growth slow in 2016, as customers delayed spending ahead of the US presidential election.
IT players told Reuters late last year they planned to speed up local hiring, acquire US firms with bigger local workforces and make a renewed push on automation to counter the regulatory threat.
Speculation that Trump may issue an executive order curbing the H-1B programme sent shares of IT companies tumbling this week.
An Indian consultant working for Infosys in the US said many of his colleagues were "dejected," while another engineer working for Cisco in North Carolina said management had called in an immigration attorney to reassure employees.
India's Ministry of External Affairs said it had expressed its concerns to the US government.
Vikas Swarup, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson told reporters on Thursday:
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