India's outsourcers hiring more Americans

India's biggest outsourcers have been setting up shop in lower-wage regions, including South America, for some time, and now they are putting down roots in the United States. As U.S. lawmakers have made it harder for Indians to get work visas, outsourcers have begun hiring Americans, reports Paul Glader at The Washington Post.

Aegis Communications, a call center giant based in Mumbai opened an office on Wall Street not too long ago. Employees earn $12 to $14 an hour and can receive monthly bonus checks as high as $730. Aegis has about 5,000 employees working at nine call centers in the United States and plans to expand to more than 15,000. This practice has launched a variety of new terms into the outsourcing lexicon, including "near-sourcing," "diverse shoring" and "cross-shoring." 

Call center work isn't the only work outsourced by Indian companies moving to the United States. Tech jobs are also migrating back, as Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and others look to expand. U.S. consulting firms like IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Accenture (NYSE: ACN) are increasing their hiring in India, boosting wages there, so Indian rivals are looking more favorably at hiring Americans. These Indian tech giants are proving increasingly competitive in the areas of integration and application development.

Tata expects to hire more than 1,000 Americans this year and locate a total of 10,000 of its employees here. Hilton Worldwide hired Tata in 2009 to handle some back-office systems, which are now being done primarily at Hilton offices in Memphis and McClean, Va.