Bangalore: The stricter visa rules in India are holding back companies from hiring more expats. According to T.V. Mohandas Pai, although he wants to hire more expatriates for Infosys, the stricter rules are holding him back, reports Business Week. Infosys has around 20 foreign workers and needs many more to help it expand abroad, said Pai, who runs its human resources department. Indian firms are using annual growth averaging 8.7 percent in fiscal years 2006-2009 to reverse a decades-long 'brain drain' to the U.S. and Europe. The government toughened regulations for foreign workers last year after finding out that about 40,000 Chinese building power plants used business visas instead of employment visas, avoiding taxes and taking jobs from locals. The crackdown restricted employment visas to skilled people in senior jobs and limited foreigners to one percent of a project's workforce. "We need to get expats to help us understand the complexity of businesses," said Pai to Business Week. "But instead of helping, the government has tightened the visa rules. The problem in India is policymakers are totally out of line with reality." India is attracting foreign workers facing jobless rates of 9.7 percent in the U.S. and 10 percent in the 16-nation euro region. India doesn't regularly release unemployment data. Little attention was paid to visas in the past decade as the government sought investments from abroad. The number of registered foreign nationals more than doubled to 351,999 in 2007 from 137,474 the year before, according to the latest data from the Ministry of Home Affairs Web site. Matthew Barney, 40, left Wisconsin a year ago and moved his family near Bangalore to become head of leadership development for Infosys. "Indian culture today is similar to the original cultural values that drove the U.S.," said Barney, whose wife is Indian. "Both value hard work and sacrifice today for the next generation to have a better standard of living." The government had said last year that employment visas would only be granted to professionals including technical experts, senior executives and managers. The visas "will not be granted for jobs for which a large number of qualified Indians are available," M. Ramachandran, a Home Affairs junior minister, said in a written statement to parliament. But according to Pai, limiting foreigners will do more harm than good. "We need substantial relaxation in work permit policies. India needs to get many, many more expats," he said.