Dive Brief:

• Nearly 86% of the H-1B visas issued by the U.S. government for workers in computer occupations are for people from India, according to a Computerworld analysis of government data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

• There were a total of about 76,000 H-1B visas issued to people in computer occupations in 2014.

• China came in second place behind India — with just over 5% of H-1B visas for computer jobs going to Chinese workers.

Dive Insight:

There has been heightened attention on the issue of H-1B visas this year, starting with a lawsuit filed by former Southern California Edison workers who claimed they were victims of discrimination when they were fired and replaced by H-1B workers earlier this year.

​IT services providers "apparently cannot get enough Indian programmers, which has little to do with a shortage of competent natives for these types of jobs, but a lot to do with the industry's business model," said Lindsay Lowell, director of policy studies at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of International Migration.

But court cases like the one initiated by SCE may soon put the offshore IT services industry in a position of having to defend their business model.