Bangalore: According to the data released by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service [USCIS], the New-Jersey based IT services provider, Cognizant, with its major operations overseas, has topped the list of H-1B Visa holding company in the U.S. It is followed by 4 Indian based companies such as the Infosys, Wipro, Tata and Larsen and Toubro occupying the 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th positions respectively.

The United States has the policy of issuing 85,000 H-1B visas, and in that 20,000 are reserved for the advanced degree graduates of the U.S. universities, reports Patrick Thibodeau and Sharon Machlis of the ComputerWorld.

As the revenues are increasing in these offshore firms day by day, they are hiring thousands of employees every year. However, the new visa applications from these top 10 users cover up to 22 percent of the overall visas allowed by the United States every year.

Ron Hira, a Public Policy Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York said that, once again the offshore outsourcing industry has turned out to be the major beneficiary of the H-1B program. He also said that, eight of the top 10 H-1B companies are using offshoring business models and are clearly utilizing the loopholes in the H-1B program.