US tech cos play green card to hold on to talent

NEW DELHI: American tech firms are increasingly sponsoring green cards, or permanent US residency, for their employees from India and elsewhere in a bid to hold on to their skilled talent pool at a time when work visa extensions have become unpredictable.

Eight out of the top 10 companies that applied for green cards for their employees in fiscal 2019 were US firms, show data released by the US labour department.

Amazon, which also received the second highest number of H-1B work visas in FY19, filed 3,247 permanent residency applications followed by Cognizant and Google with 2,927 and 2,425 applications, respectively.