The Indian IT giants TCS and Infosys are accused by the US for unfairly getting a major part of the total number of granted H-1B visas by putting some extra tickets in the lottery system, which are places the Trump administration wants to give through merit-based immigration policy.

An official in the Trump administration said at a White House briefing last week that a small number of giant outsourcing firms is flooding the system with applications which naturally enhances their chances of success in the lottery draw.

Read more at:US accuses Infosys and TCS of cheating in H-1B lottery to unfairly corner lion's share of visas 

The senior official said, “You may know their names well, but like the top beneficiaries of the H-1B visa are firms like Tata, Infosys, Cognizant, they apply for visas in a very large number, more than they get, by putting extra tickets in the lottery lots, and then they'll get the lion's share of visas,"

A follow up question was put on why Indian companies were singled out for a mention. Responding to, the White House said Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Cognizant were the top three recipients of H-1B visas. Also, those three companies have an average wage for H-1B visas from $60,000 to $65,000 per annum. By contrast, the median Silicon Valley software engineer's wage is probably around $150,000, the official said.

Also read: H-1B visa: cautious optimism among India seekers after Donald Trump’s step

All the three Indian tech giants denied to pass any comment on the US administration words.

The H-1B visas presently were granted through random lottery system with about 80% of H-1B workers being paid less than the median wage in their fields.

"Only about 5 to 6 per cent, depending on the year, of H-1B workers command the highest wage tier recognised by the Department of Labour, there being four wage tiers. And the highest wage tier, for instance, in 2015, was only 5 per cent of H1B workers," he said.

He said workers are often brought in well below market rates to replace American workers, again, sort of violating the key-rule of the programme, which is supposed to be a means for bringing in skilled labour.

"Instead you're bringing in a lot of times workers who are actually less skilled and lower paid than the workers that they're replacing," he said.

So if the current system that grants visas randomly regardless of skills or wages is changed to a skills-based awarding, it would make it extremely difficult to use the visa to replace or undercut American workers, he said.

"Because you're not bringing in workers at beneath the market wage. And so it's a very elegant way of solving very systemic problems in the H-1B guest worker visa," he said.

 Read in detail: US blames Indian Tech Firms