indica News Bureau

A legal U.S immigrant holding a green card has filed a lawsuit against an outsourcing and consulting company for what he claims was discrimination and violations of U.S. workplace laws, according to a published report.

Nitin Degaonkar, an Indian business executive, filed suit in the Northern District of Texas against Infosys Limited, one of the largest Indian outsourcing company, alleging the firm hired him in January 2017 but passed over him for joba at U.S.-based companies in favor of lower-paid Indian H-1B visa holders, Breitbart reported.

Degaonkar, as a green card holder has full legal rights against age and national discrimination, claims in the suit that Infosys “discriminatingly denied me fair, well-deserved, and rightful opportunities of work, positions, commensurate compensations, promotions, salary raise and opportunities of career advancement on the basis of my national origin as a US Worker, a Protected Individual and my Age,” according to the report.

The Indian outsourcing giant late last year agreed to pay California $800,000 in a settlement of a case that alleged the company evaded taxes by using B-1 business-visit visas for hundreds of foreign workers instead of the more expensive and difficult to get H-1B, according to published reports.

California officials had claimed that Infosys was responsible for “falsifying documents, false reporting and/or falsely identifying their employees for the purposes of procuring the wrong immigration visa for their employees that were traveling to the United States” from 2006 to 2017, according ot published reports.

Infosys, a publicly traded company listed on the New York Stock Exchange with than US$12 billion in annual revenue and 116,000 employees, has clients in 46 countries in various business lines including digital services and cyber security.

The lawsuit also alleges the firm excluded Americans from a benefit program provided to Indian workers, according ot the report.

“Infosys has facilities of loans to employees, in particular, the loan scheme for the purchase of vehicle. However, the facility is made exclusive for the NonImmigrant H1-B Visa employees; the US Workers cannot avail this facility,” the suit claims according to the report.

The H-1B visa program has become a controversial issue in recent years because it allows companies to import workers rather than hire people already in the US.