Indian IT services firms hit by high rate of H-1B denials

WASHINGTON : The rejection rate for H-1B visas has remained high under the Trump administration compared to previous peak levels but a new analysis of official data reveals US branches of Indian IT companies are bearing the brunt of it, compared to American users of these temporary work visas for high skilled foreigners.

The discrimination has nothing to do with the country of origin of these companies but the nature of their business, says the author of the report. Providers of professional IT services are worst-hit than product makers.

From 2% of its petitions being rejected in 2015, Infosys saw it go up by 43 percentage points to 45% up to the third quarter of 2019, according to an analysis by the National Foundation for American Policy, a non-partisan thinktank, based on data from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which runs the H-1B programme.

Rejections for Wipro, Tech Mahindra, TCS and HCL America went up by 46, 37, 28 and 33 percentage points over the same period.

The most astounding jump, however, was accounted by Syntel, a US company founded by an Indian American — from 1% to 63%.

US tech companies, which are leading users of H-1B visas that often go to Indians, also saw their rejections go up, but not as significantly. Rejection rates for Amazon, Microsoft, Intel and Google went up by mere 5,7, 6 and 2 percentage points. Facebook’s went up by even less at 2 percentage points, and there was no change whatsoever for Apple.

These numbers are for “initial employment”, and not “continuing employment”, which are in the nature of extensions. H-1B visas are given a period of three years, which can be extended for a maximum of up to three years.

There doesn’t appear to be pattern indicating targeting of companies as per their countries of origin. Capgemeni, a French company, saw its rejection rate go up by 50 percentage points from 5% in 2015 to 55% in 2019. The rates for Ireland’s Accenture and UK’S Pricewaterhousecoopers jumped as well, by 48 and 29 points respectively.

The targeting, if any, is that of companies that provide professional and information technology services — outsourcing services — as against that make products.

“The data show that as a result of changes in policies at USCIS both US and Indian companies that provide professional and information technology (IT) services to customers in the United States have higher H-1B denial rates than other companies, particularly US product companies like Apple,” said Stuart Andersen, author of the NFAP report released recently.

The high rates of rejection are primarily due to the USCIS changing the legal standard “for how it adjudicates H-1B cases, particularly in situations where an H-1B visa holder works on a contract that requires him or her to go to a customer’s location (as opposed to offsite work),” he added.