NEW DELHI | BENGALURU: As the debate on outsourcing and visa abuse by India’s largest software exporters gathers momentum ahead of the US presidential elections next year, representatives of India’s $146 billion information technology industry will increase efforts to counter a new immigration bill, which if passed into law, can disrupt their business models.Industry lobby Nasscom said it will step up efforts to reach out to politicians and lawmakers to address their concerns over the bill, which proposes severe restrictions on Indian IT companies and significant curbs on how they conduct business in their largest market — North America.“Temperatures always rise during elections. While we can’t ignore it, we should not also overreact,” said R Chandrashekhar, president of Nasscom. The bill introduced by Senators Dick Durbin and Chuck Grassley aims to cut down use of H-1B visas and has reignited the debate on misuse of work permits, which will only intensify with the upcoming elections.“The H-1B & L-1 Fraud and Abuse Act lives up to its name. When passed, it will end the discrimination against American tech workers and the exploitation of Indian tech workers,” said Donna Conroy, executive director of the Chicago-based tech advocacy group Bright Future Jobs.The new bill seeks to prohibit firms from hiring H-1B employees if they employ more than 50 people in the US and more than 50% of them are H-1B and L-1 visa holders. About 70% of the H-1B visas in 2014 went to workers from India, according to a report in the New York Times on November 10 that cited figures from the US Department of Homeland Security.Earlier this year, entertainment giant Disney came under scrutiny from lawmakers after it laid off 250 US employees. Reports also surfaced that the US government was investigating an outsourcing contract involving utility firm Southern California Edison and India’s largest software exporters, Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys . Other similar contracts are said to have also come under the scanner of the government.“In years past, all presidential candidates have pledged to stop the outsourcing of tech jobs. However, these were vague platitudes that lacked any concrete solutions. The introduction of this bill will have a significant effect on election rhetoric because it is, for the first time, providing specific, detailed steps that all presidential campaigns will reference in speeches, proposals, etc.,” added Conroy.Chandrashekhar told ET that it is still unclear whether the law will be passed, but it definitely has the potential to vitiate the atmosphere.“The bill in its entirety may not be passed, but some elements of it may be attached to some other piece of legislation, like we saw in the case of the Border Security Law,” said Chandrashekhar. He added that given that next year is election year, the debate is only going to gain momentum. Infosys and Wipro declined to comment on the matter. India’s largest software firm TCS and US-based Cognizant , which has most of its 219,000-odd employees in India, also declined to comment. Gagan Sabharwal, director of Global Trade Development at Nasscom, said that while the bill is nothing new and both Senators have tried to bring similar legislation in the past, they are respected politicians and the bill may act as an influencer whenever there is a debate on the subject.“Our efforts to clarify misconceptions on outsourcing have been ongoing and we will continue to reach out to these politicians and others, not with rhetoric but with facts,” he said. “Our reach out in the US will obviously increase. I think that is the order of the day.” Experts such as Ron Hira said that while the media exposure on the H-1B controversy is unprecedented this time, the bill still had a long way to go before becoming law.“Of course, there’s an old saying: ‘The easiest thing to do in Congress is to introduce a bill. The hardest is to get one passed and signed into law,’” said Hira, an associate professor of public policy at Howard University.“So, there’s a long way to go before anything actually gets passed. It all depends on how much momentum the reformers can generate - with growing US media scrutiny there will be more momentum. We haven’t seen this much media exposure of H-1B abuse before. Grassley could also help to put pressure on the Obama Administration take some actions on its own,” added Hira.(Jochelle Mendonca in Mumbai contributed to this story)