Denial rates for H-1B visas were at 30% in the October-December 2019 quarter, compared with 6% in 2015 and 13% in FY17, when Donald Trump took charge as US president.
IT service companies and consultancies, which normally place people at third-party locations, reported higher visa denial rates than US technology firms, as has been the case over the past few quarters. Cognizant (60%), Infosys (59%) and Deloitte (40%) had the highest number of denials among the top 25 companies that received the most visas in the quarter.
According to analysis of US Citizenship and Immigration Services data by the National Foundation for American Policy, all the recent top 25 employers of new H-1B visa holders had higher denial rates for initial employment during this period than in FY15. They included Apple, Google and Facebook.
This data is for H-1B petitions for initial employment, or cases that count towards the annual limit. The denial rate for continuing employment petitions for the quarter was 10%, still higher than the 3% recorded in FY15.
“The Trump administration may try to achieve its goal of further restricting the ability of employers to hire high-skilled foreign nationals, even though the president has stated he supports ‘merit-based’ immigration and H-1B visa holders are the most highly educated foreignborn individuals admitted to the US,” said NFAP executive director Stuart Anderson, who served as executive associate commissioner for policy and planning and counsellor to the Commissioner of the INS in the George W Bush administration.