H-1B VISA CHANCES BRIGHTEN FOR INDIAN STUDENTS BASED IN US

The number of Indians hired on H-1B visas could fall in 2021 and more Indians could be hired from among foreign students enrolled in US institutions, according to numbers released on Wednesday. Of the 275,000 unique registrations filed by employers this year under the new system, 46% were for beneficiaries that are foreign students enrolled in institutions of higher learning.

The number of Indians hired on H-1B visas from India could fall in 2021 and more Indians could be hired from among foreign students enrolled in US institutions of higher learning, according to numbers released on Wednesday by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

Of the 275,000 unique registrations filed by employers this year under the new system, 46% were for beneficiaries that are foreign students enrolled in US institutions of higher learning.

Under the new system, the USCIS will pick the congressionally capped 85,000 beneficiaries for 2021 from only among registered beneficiaries. TheUSCIS released the numbers in an announcement inviting registered employers to begin filing their applications. H-1B visa application are filed by employers, not beneficiaries.

The chances are higher, therefore, of more foreign students being picked than the other open category. The chances of more Indians being selected among them were higher as 67% of the potential beneficiaries were from India. The Chinese were a distant second with 13.2%.

The registered beneficiaries have still to go though the approval process, subject to the selection criterion, as every year. The difference, under the new system introduced for 2020, is that the USCIS will select only from among those who were electronically registered by their potential employers.

Indians have tended to be the single largest beneficiary of the H-1B visa programme for US employers to hire highly-skilled foreign students to make up the shortage of local availability.

They have accounted for upwards of 70% of the visas, which, for many Indians, is the gateway to permanent residency and citizenship.

Of the total of 85,000 such visas given out every year, 65,000 were set aside earlier for foreign workers hired from abroad and 20,000 from among foreign students in US colleges and universities.