USCIS conducts H-1B visa lottery for over 1.90 lakh applications

BENGALURU: H-1B visa applications declined for the second year in a row as the IT services industry look to reduce dependency. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) received 190098 H-1B petitions during the filing period in the first week of April.

The IT services industry is largest user of this visa as they send employees on projects on-shore.

For the last two years the number of applications for H-1B stood at 199000 and 236000, respectively.

“On April 11, USCIS used a computer-generated random selection process to select enough H-1B petitions to meet the congressionally-mandated cap and the US advanced degree exemption, known as the master’s cap, for fiscal year (FY) 2019. USCIS received 190098 H-1B petitions during the filing period, which began April 2, including petitions filed for the advanced degree exemption,” wrote the US government body in it news release.

While the statutory cap for petitions is 65000 H-1B visas; the master’s cap is 20000 visas.

USCIS saw a decline of nearly 9000 petitions this year. This seems to partially reflect the decision of many IT services firms, including Indian IT firms, to reduce H-1B applications as they increased protectionism and demand for local hiring in the US.

This year (applications for FY19), number of applications dropped by close to 20 per cent when compared with the petitions filed two years ago for FY17.