India largest H1B beneficiary in 2017, fresh hiring dropped: Report

WASHINGTON: India continued to corner the largest chunk of H-1B visa granted by the US to foreigners hired by its companies for high-speciality jobs, with 75.6% approved petitions going to Indians in 2017, the first year of President Donald Trump’s tenure, as per new official data.

But there was a drop by 4.1% in the number of beneficiaries from India approved for “initial employment” — fresh hires — in 2017 over the previous year. The number for “continuing employment” — who applied for renewal or for switch to another employer or for adding a concurrent employer — rose by 12.5%. While the number of H-1B petitions filed and approved continued to climb, those for initial employment dropped — by 7% for filed petitions, and by 5.6% for approved petitions, according to a report by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services .The report does not give a break-up of numbers for country-wise filings to ascertain the number of denials. It also does not cite numbers for beneficiary companies. Indian IT firms such as TCS, Infosys and Wipro have been among top recipients, but have faced increasing attention. The Trump administration launched a series of measures to ensure the H-1B programme is not used to displace American workers, as laid out in the president’s “Buy American, Hire American” executive order signed in February 2017, through enhanced scrutiny, stricter enforcement and new rules.