(Image source from: Moneycontrol)

Indian Information Technology Company Tata Consultancy Services is the only Indian company among top 10 companies to get foreign labor certification for the H-1B visas for the fiscal year 2018, according to data from the United States Department of Labour.

The H-1B visas are the most sought-after among Indian IT professionals.

The visa programme lets employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in the U.S. on a non-immigrant basis in specialty occupations or as fashion models of distinguished merit and ability.

London-headquartered Earnest and Young, a multinational professional services company, has emerged as the top employer to have received the certification.

In fact, Ernest and Young with 151,164 H-1B specialist occupation labor certifications accounted for the 12.4 percent of all foreign labor certification for the H-1B work visas for the fiscal year 2018 ending on September 30, according to the latest annual report released by the Department of labor early this month.

Ernest and Young are followed by Deloitte Consulting which received 69,869 H-1B specialty occupations labor conditions programme.

Indian-American owned Cognizant Technology Corporation comes at number three with 47,732 specialty occupations labor conditions programme, the Department of Labor said in its latest annual report.

Cognizant is followed by HCL America (42,820), K Force Inc (32,996), and Apple (26,833).

India's TCS is the only Indian company in top 10 for the year 2018.

According to the Department of labor in the fiscal year 2018, ending on September 30, TCS had received 20,755 H-1B specialty occupation labor certifications.

Qualcomm Technologies (20,723), Mphasis Corporation (16,671) and Capgemini America (13,517) are the other companies in top 10.

In the 2018 fiscal year the Department of Labor's Office of Foreign Labor Certification processed 654,360 applications for the H-1B specialty occupations labor conditions programme, of which 599,782 were certified, 8,627 were denied and 45,951 were withdrawn.

It received requests for 1,266,614 position of which 1,223,053 were certified.

Among the positions certified, software developers and applications accounted for nearly one-fourth with 285,963 positions being certified.

This was followed by computer systems analyst (176,025), Computer Occupations (120,736), Software developers, system software (67,262), accountants and auditors (54,2410 and computer programmers (53,727).

California with 309,205 certifications topped the list of States for getting maximum H-1B labor certification, followed by Texas (115,484), New York (95,722), New Jersey (65,232), Illinois (56,196), Washington (52,522) and Pennsylvania (51,471).

According to the Department of labor, a specialty occupation requires the theoretical and practical application of a body of specialized knowledge and a bachelor's degree or the equivalent in the specific specialty.

Congress has constricted the annual number of qualifying foreign workers who may be issued a visa or otherwise be provided the H-1B status to 65,000 with an additional 20,000 under the H-1B advanced degree exemption.

Before applying for the H-1B visas the employer submits a labor condition application to the Department of labor. Firms can carry on with the H-1B petitions, only after they get such a certification by the Department of labor.

-Sowmya Sangam