H-1B VISA BAN BY US: WHAT TCS, INFOSYS, WIPRO AND OTHER INDIAN COMPANY OFFICIALS SAY? 

US President Donald Trump plans to restrict employment-based visas which is going to affect almost 240,000 people seeking to work in the US. Especially, in the areas across industries from technology to finance and hospitality. 

Experts believe that top leading companies like Wipro, TCS and Infosys will be traded in the red after Trump's decision takes place.  

According to a Money Control report, the visas that would be the most impacted include skilled non-immigrant visa such as H-1B and L-1 and temporary worker visa for unskilled workers H-2B. 

While other visas that could be affected are J-1 (research scholars) and Optional Training Programme, where fresh graduates can seek employment in the US for up to three years under their student visa, Money Control further stated. 

Looking into details, the impact for each of these visa will vary accordingly, with H-1B and L-1 seeing the highest impact. Meanwhile, experts also believe that a ban on the H-1B visa may not have a significant impact on IT players as they have already hedged against that. 

"It is more of pre-election rhetoric and won't have much impact on IT players since they have already hedged against that so it will have the marginal effect. Today the IT stocks are weak because a lot of buying is happening in banking and mid-cap stocks so money is probably rotating," said Sanjiv Bhasin, Director at IIFL Securities.

Even, Vinod Nair, Head of Research at Geojit Financial Services said: "IT spending is estimated to decline by 8 percent in 2020 against a 5.8 percent growth forecasted earlier by Gartner as the focus will turn to cost reduction. A broad-based recovery is expected in the latter half of FY21 powered by spending in healthcare, insurance and education segments. Given positive prospects and stability in business we remain positive on the sector for the long-term."

Experts further believe that there may be some underperformance by IT firms currently but better days would soon approach after the pandemic is over.