Prominent U.S. tech companies obtained more H-1B visas in 2017 than in 2016, according to a new study by the National Foundation for American Policy using fresh data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. At the same time, several of the largest India-based companies saw a decrease in approved petitions for the second year in a row.
The big picture: Total petitions for H-1B visas for the 2019 fiscal year fell by about 9,000, mostly due to a decreasing numbers of H-1B petitions from India-based firms. However, the study shows there is still a strong demand for H-1Bs in the U.S.
- Foreign students: International students account for 81% of the full-time graduate students at U.S. universities in electrical engineering and 79% in computer science, per the report. That could be a contributing factor to the high number of H-1Bs used by U.S. tech companies, hoping to retain high-skilled workers trained in the U.S.
- The other side: Shivendra Singh, Vice President of NASSCOM, which represents India's IT industry, told Axios that India-based companies are using fewer H-1Bs due to changes in needed skills, more local hiring by U.S. companies, and the use of new technologies that require "more non-STEM, managerial-type talent that is more readily available in the U.S."
- Yes, but: Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates for lower legal immigration levels, tells Axios that "these trends reflect an effort to eliminate large-scale abuses of the program... Not surprisingly, higher approval standards would produce an approval bias in favor of U.S.-based corporations."
- What to watch: NFAP's study highlights that Tesla, Uber and General Motors were all approved more than 100 H-1B petitions last year. Visa demand by these companies is likely to increase with the rise of new autonomous vehicle technologies.
Here are the number of initially approved visas:
- Cognizant 3,194
- Amazon 2,515
- TCS 2,312
- Tech Mahindra 2,233
- Microsoft 1, 479
- IBM 1,231
- Intel 1,230
- Infosys 1,218
- Google 1,213
- Wipro 1,210
- Deloitte 961
- Accenture 954
- HCL America 866
- Facebook 720
- Apple 673
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