Number of H-1B visa filings falls for second year in a row
TIMES OF INDIA 14.04.2018
Mumbai: The number of applications for the H-1B visa, which is heavily relied upon by India’s tech industry for on-site projects in the US, has fallen for the second year in a row.
For the 2018-19 season (FY2019), which would permit successful visa applicants to work in the US from October 1, 2018, the US agency received 1.90 lakh applications as against nearly two lakh applications in the previous season. This fall of 8,902 applications — or 4.5% as compared to 2017-18 — is minuscule, given the protectionist rhetoric of the Trump administration. While large Indian tech companies have over the past few months ramped up hiring of locals in the US, the interest in H-1B visas has not waned.
Each year, since 2013-14, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) had to resort to a lottery mechanism as the number of applications far exceeded annual quotas. The number had hit a peak in 2016-17 with nearly 2.4 lakh applications. If current year’s figures are compared with this peak statistic, it is a decline of nearly 20%. In its latest release, USCIS states that on April 11, it used a computer-generated random selection process (lottery) to select enough H-1B applications to meet the caps. Two lotteries were run. The first selected enough applications to meet the master’s cap of 20,000. All unselected master’s cap petitions then became part of the random selection process for the 65,000 cap, explains USCIS in its statement. Thus, the second lottery chose from roughly 1.70 lakh applications. TNN
TIMES OF INDIA 14.04.2018
Mumbai: The number of applications for the H-1B visa, which is heavily relied upon by India’s tech industry for on-site projects in the US, has fallen for the second year in a row.
For the 2018-19 season (FY2019), which would permit successful visa applicants to work in the US from October 1, 2018, the US agency received 1.90 lakh applications as against nearly two lakh applications in the previous season. This fall of 8,902 applications — or 4.5% as compared to 2017-18 — is minuscule, given the protectionist rhetoric of the Trump administration. While large Indian tech companies have over the past few months ramped up hiring of locals in the US, the interest in H-1B visas has not waned.
Each year, since 2013-14, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) had to resort to a lottery mechanism as the number of applications far exceeded annual quotas. The number had hit a peak in 2016-17 with nearly 2.4 lakh applications. If current year’s figures are compared with this peak statistic, it is a decline of nearly 20%. In its latest release, USCIS states that on April 11, it used a computer-generated random selection process (lottery) to select enough H-1B applications to meet the caps. Two lotteries were run. The first selected enough applications to meet the master’s cap of 20,000. All unselected master’s cap petitions then became part of the random selection process for the 65,000 cap, explains USCIS in its statement. Thus, the second lottery chose from roughly 1.70 lakh applications. TNN
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