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In a letter dated May 14, 2007, two US senators-Republican Charles Grassley and Democrat Richard Durbin, asked nine companies a few questions on how they used the H1B visas granted to them in 2006.

"We have been concerned about reported fraud and abuse of the H-1B and L visa programs, and their impact on American workers. We are also concerned that the program is not being used as the Congress intended," noted Grassley and Durbin, justifying the reason behind the exercise.

An extremely sincere effort, one would tend to believe till one looks at the name of the companies that they chose to target the letter at. One would tend to believe that they would be the top recipients of these visas.

But no, there was one filter. American companies were ignored by the senators.

The nine firms who received the senators' letters-Infosys, Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services, Satyam Computer, Patni, Larsen & Toubro Infotech, i-flex, Tech Mahindra, and Mphasis-were all Indian companies.

"Your company," wrote the senators, "was one of the top companies on the list. Therefore, we are requesting your cooperation in providing additional statistics and information on your use of H-1B visa workers."

Microsoft, which was the third largest recipient of such visas; Cognizant, which was the fifth largest, IBM which was the eighth largest; and Oracle which was the ninth largest recipients of such visas in 2006 were not considered important enough by the senators whose answers would be of use to them in probing the alleged "misuse" of these visas.

On the other hand, MphasiS (ironically, now majority-owned by the American company EDS) which got just less than one-fourth of the H1-B visas as compared to Microsoft, was considered important enough to be probed by the senators.

The letter is a shot in the arm for the protectionist lobby in America, which got a huge mileage during 2004 presidential elections when democratic candidate John Kerry made offshoring a major election issue. But Kerry's brand of protectionism (many say populism) as well as that of Lou Dobbs challenged liberal labor policies.

Grassley and Durbin have gone two steps further. Kerry's (and Dobb's) anti-offshoring stance challenged both American and foreign companies who practiced offshoring. Grassley and Durbin's, on the other hand, clearly discriminates between American and foreign (incidentally all Indian) companies. "It is not protecting American workers' interest; it is protecting American companies' interest," says an industry veteran in India. That may or may not be true, but it surely points to trade discrimination.

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