A former employee of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has accused the Indian IT giant of manipulating the system and engaging in visa fraud to circumvent U.S. labor laws and H-1B visa regulations, according to a report by Bloomberg. Anil Kini, who previously worked as an IT manager at TCS’s Denver office, claims he was instructed to falsify internal organizational charts and misclassify employees as part of a cover-up orchestrated by company executives. This current petition is an appeal following the dismissal of his initial lawsuit earlier this year.
Kini alleges that TCS misclassified frontline workers as managers to utilize L-1A visas for their relocation to the U.S. He asserts that this practice began in 2017 during the first Trump administration when employment visa regulations were tightened. He claims that senior management directed him to alter internal documents and misrepresent frontline staff to evade scrutiny regarding visa requirements. Kini is one of several former TCS employees who have filed federal lawsuits against the company under the False Claims Act.
L-1A visas, which are designed for managerial transfers, are reportedly less regulated than H-1B visas, which have stringent educational and wage criteria. Kini’s lawsuit was dismissed earlier this year, but he has since appealed the ruling. The report indicates that TCS accounted for over 6,500 of the 90,000 L-1A visas approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) from October 2019 to September 2023, a number greater than the combined total of the next six companies. Furthermore, a Bloomberg investigation revealed that TCS reported significantly fewer managerial positions in its U.S. operations compared to the number of L-1A visas it obtained, citing a 2022 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) report that indicated fewer than 600 executive or managerial roles among its 31,000 U.S. employees.