Infosys (News - Alert), a business technology consulting and IT solutions company, reported $4.5 million in earnings this past quarter, indicating slower-than-average expansion.

The company also lost 11 percent of its share value. The splash impact affected the competition, Tata Consultancy Services (News - Alert) and Wipro as well, dragging their share values down in tandem. The Economic Times reports that if this slippage continues, Infosys may become snack-food for a competing software developer, Nasscom.

Infosys confided to the Associated Press (News - Alert) that its predicts further losses during the next quarter as it will have to pay the piper for US hirings and visa costs. Every year, the company sends a fleet of its Indian employees to America to train.

In 2010, the US government raised prices on the specific type of visas firms like Infosys need to conduct business in this way. The hikes cost the country of India, in particular, more than $200 million per-year. Fees like this one go mostly toward paying for thickening security at the border between Mexico and America. Infosys suggests that this gesture is directed specifically at non-American companies like itself.

India and the US are finding it increasingly difficult to get along at WTO meetings over the issue. At the moment, things are hovering just under the status of "full scale legal snafu." Both involved parties are doing what they can to resolve the difficulty amicably for a variety of reasons, money among the most important. Relations between the countries have been positive since India opened up its markets in the early 1990's. Now India is the one to accuse America, the great capitalist arc-angel, of hindering free market economies.

S.D. Shibulal, chief executive at the Infosys, acknowledged that the company is looking at some tough terrain to traverse in the near future. This prediction will hold particularly true if relations between the two countries continue to sour at their current pace.