2.1M Indian techies sought H-1B visa in 11 years

washington — Over 2.1 million Indian technology professionals have applied for H-1B work visas in the last 11 years, an official report has said.

The report of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has also refuted the impression that those who applied for the visa were not highly qualified. On an average, their salary over the last 11 years has been $92,317 and an overwhelming majority of them are masters or bachelor’s degree holders.

According to the report since 2007 till June this year, the USCIS received 3.4 million H-1B visas applications, of which people from India accounted for 2.1 million. During the same period, the US issued H-1B visas to 2.6 million people, the USCIS said in its report, which however does not give countrywide breakdown.

In terms of number of H-1B applications between 2007 and 2017, India is followed by a distant China with 296,313 H-1B applications, Philippines (85,918), South Korea (77,359), and Canada (68,228).

The report said majority (2.3 million) of the beneficiary were in the age group of 25-34, and 2 million came from the computer related occupation category. Computer was followed by architecture, engineering, and surveying (318,670), education (244,000), administrative specialisations (245,000), and medicine and health (185,000).

Sometimes people post their retirement age have been given H-1B visas. In all these 11 years, more than 2,000 foreign nationals of more than 65 years of age received H-1B visas. This year alone so far 122 H-1B visas have been allocated to those above 65 years.

The report said custom computer programming services industry received the maximum number of 999,901 H-1B visas in these years. It was followed by computer systems design services (287,000) and college universities and professional schools (229,000). — PTI