USCIS sees 4% decline in 2018-19 H1B applications

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) confirmed it has received 190,098 H1B petitions during the filing period for 2018-19, a 4 per cent drop from what it had received last year, signalling that companies, especially technology services firms, are steadily reducing the dependency on non-immigrant visas.

The number of petitions had reached a record high of 236,000 in 2016, but have since dropped following US President Donald Trump’s call for a ‘buy American, hire American’ strategy. For 2017-18, the USCIS had received 199,000 applications. An H1B visa allows US companies to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require skilled expertise. On April 11, the USCIS used a computer-generated random selection process to select enough H1B petitions to meet the Congressionally-mandated cap and the US advanced degree exemption, known as the master’s cap, for FY19

The USCIS on April 6 announced that it had received enough H1B petitions to reach the statutory cap of 65,000 and the master’s cap of 20,000. The USCIS will reject and return all unselected petitions with their filing fees unless the petition is a prohibited multiple filing.

“The USCIS is expected to begin working on cap cases soon after they are receipted, but high filing volume and suspension of premium processing through September 2018, and a backlog of non-cap cases, could mean lengthy H1B cap processing times,” said USbased global immigration service, Fragomen. The USCIS received 95,885 advanced-degree H1B cap submissions and 94,213 standard H1B cap submissions during the FY19 filing period.

The department conducted the selection process for the master’s cap first. All unselected master’s cap petitions then became part of the random selection process for the 65,000 cap. It could still take a few weeks for employers to finally know how many of their applications have cleared the lottery as the USCIS is still receiving other applications.

Fragomen also pointed out that based on the statistics provided, advanceddegree filings had a 21 per cent chance of selection in the advanced-degree lottery. The remaining cases had a 38 per cent chance of being selected in the standard lottery. Odds for advanced-degree cases are somewhat higher because these have a second chance for selection if they are not chosen in the initial lottery.

Following Trump’s clampdown on foreign professionals in the country, experts estimate top IT giants will reduce the number of applications this year but the overall numbers will not be affected, largely due to smaller companies applying for visas. “We have applied for H1B visa petitions based on business demands,” Infosys Chief Operating Officer U B Pravin Rao told reporters during the company’s earnings call on Friday. But the company, much like other Indian IT services firms, has stepped up hiring in the US, including recruiting candidates through campus interviews.

“The fact that larger IT companies have reduced their applications is beneficial for smaller start-ups, as this gives them a higher chance of acceptance than in the past. If a company with 2,000 applicationsgetsonly50percentofthese approved, they do not lose much in terms of skill availability but start-ups are selective about the resources they choose and these numbers may prove beneficial for them,” said Subbaraju Pericherla, founder of a strategic business solutions provider CrossBorders.

The USCIS will continue processing petitions that are otherwise exempted from the cap. Petitions filed for current H1B workers, who have been previously counted against the cap and still retain their cap number, will also not be counted towards the FY19 H1B cap.