NEW DELHI: A day after US President Donald Trump heralded what sounded like economic protectionism with his call for "buy American and hire American" in his inaugural speech, Indian information technology (IT) industry observers say the change in stance of the biggest market is a reason to worry. "The Indian IT services majors should be more concerned by President Trump's stance on outsourcing than any other factor over the past 20 years," said Phil Fersht, CEO of research firm Horses for Sources Reiterating his protectionist stand, Trump said in his inaugural speech on Friday: "Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families. We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength."Earlier this month, two US Congressmen reintroduced a bill to curb the use of H-1B visas , requiring workers on the H-1B visa to pay a minimum of $100,000, up from $60,000 now. The bill also removes the Master's degree exemption to the cap on the number of visas available. Similarly, the US Labour Department last week sued software giant Oracle accusing the company of discriminatory hiring practices against White, Hispanic and African-Americans in favour of Asians, particularly "Asian Indians".Experts fear more lawsuits to be slapped on companies which have high dependence on foreign workers, especially Indian majors, such as Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).Peter Bendor-Samuel, CEO of IT consultancy firm Everest Group , said the rising cost for H-1B visa, which stands a little above $10,000 per applicant, and the proposed restrictions on the number of visas may impact the profit margins of the firms but they will not challenge the underlying economics of the model.The $150-billion Indian outsourcing industry has been a favourite punching bag of American politicians for over a decade. But this time around, things are more serious to be dismissed as just an election rhetoric. Senator Jeff Sessions, who has been a critic of the H-1B visa process, referred to "abuse of H-1B visas for foreign workers". But the Indian IT industry has maintained that it does not abuse the process, and invokes the lack of skilled labour in the US as the reason for workers to travel to on-site locations.Sensing the mounting anti-outsourcing sentiment, Infosys and TCS are already bracing to deal with the changing circumstances. Infosys COO Pravin Rao told ET on Friday , "We continue to hire and invest locally. However, given the skill shortages in the US and the availability of technically skilled workforce in various global markets, we also rely upon visa programmes to supplement these skills."Earlier this month, the companies also addressed the issue of local hiring as the best way to mitigate any adverse visa-related decisions by the new administration. Vishal Sikka, CEO, Infosys, said: "Local hiring is a very good thing, especially in innovative areas, bringing contextual innovation to our clients, not only in the US but also in Australia... and other geographies."Software services industry body National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) told ET that the Indian IT industry is aligned to President Trump's plans to create more American jobs. "We are looking forward to working with the new administration, and we are planning to go there in February and meet with key people in the administration and decision-making legislative bodies and share these perceptions," R Chandrashekhar, president of Nasscom, told ET.Som Mittal, former Nasscom president, said it was important to understand the demand-supply skilled talent gap. "If there are three times more applications that come for H-1B visas, it shows there is huge demand in the US. So, their job is at this point in time to increase the number of visas rather than put restrictions," he said, adding that a "hard-nosed businessman like Donald Trump" cannot let the US industry come down. Mittal further said India is one of largest markets for US-origin products in the world at present, and a protectionist attitude by America will hurt its own interests. "These are large markets and protectionism will not help because America cannot produce only for itself, America has to produce for the world," he said.Another expert, who did not wish to be identified, said: "If you look at every other President, they've come through the Washington route and Trump hasn't. So, it's an unknown. And anything unknown means uncertainty, unpredictability."He added that the campaign was rather toxic. Whenever there is uncertainty of that kind, there is concern and caution. Others think the visa issue is not as bad as it is made out to be. "In the H-1B legislation, the marginal additional cost to be paid for visa by firms is not that much greater. They also have the ability to hire locally for the same resources, without having to pay that much more," said Sid Pai, a technology-strategy expert, who earlier headed the research firm ISG in India.