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BENGALURU: Infosys chartered a flight to carry again 76 workers and their households — a complete of 206 folks — from the US. These are workers whose visas have expired or are nearing expiry.
A Qatar Airways flight with the staff left from San Francisco to contact down in Bengaluru on Monday morning. Most of the staff have been on H-1Bs and a few on L-1s. Some of them have been searching for extensions of their statuses, however immigration legal professionals instructed TOI that extension requests are nonetheless paper-primarily based and with the pandemic forcing folks to work remotely, workers stranded aren’t getting any reduction. An e-mail despatched to Infosys didn’t elicit a response.
Infosys affiliate vice-president Sanjeev Bode in a LinkedIn put up mentioned, “Some of the Infosys employees were stranded in the US because of their visa expiration. All international flights were suspended because of the pandemic. Infosys came to their rescue. The company booked a chartered flight exclusively for over 200 employees and families from the US to India. At the time of writing, the flight has landed safely in Bengaluru, bringing an end to weeks of dilemma related to the uncertain situation.”
Many workers took to social media to laud the corporate’s gesture and the administration’s efforts to prioritise security of workers. Nasscom had requested US authorities for a 90-day grace interval for professionals to depart the US following the expiration of their H-1B/L-1 visas. But there’s been no change to date.
Infosys has 17,709 workers within the Americas. Less than 50% of the US workers are on H-1Bs and L-1s. H-1B visas enable workers to stay within the US for up to six years as specialty occupation professionals. L-1 visas are used for intra-firm transfers, and permit workers to keep for up to 5 years.
This just isn’t the primary time Infosys has used chartered flights for workers. During the Bhubaneswar floods, it had chartered a flight to take over 500 workers essential to their tasks to its different centres, together with Bengaluru, to keep away from disruptions to shoppers.