H-1B visa rejections increased!

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services have released new information that can upset some people, especially those who are dreaming of working in the US. The H-1B rejection rates are increasing every passing day and though the rejections are pretty common today, denials reached a whole new level.

In September, Indians heard a piece of good news from the US declaration that they shall be working on simplifying the visa process so that it can help reduce turnaround times for visa renewals. However, the latest information from the data tells otherwise. The denial rates for H-1B petitions have increased significantly from 6% in FY2015 to 24% in the first three-quarters of FY2019 for new H-1B petitions. This was for the initial employment or first-time applicants.

For 'continuing employment', there was a 12% rise in declination of H-1B petitions, which was 4 times more as compared to FY2015, when the denial rate was only 3%. Continuing employment is usually extensions for exiting employees. As we know earlier, the news came in that, IT firms like Cognizant, Infosys, Wipro and Capgemini has faced many rejections but companies like Amazon, Walmart, Google, Apple did not face obstacles in hiring Indian employees. Infosys saw 45% rejection, Wipro with 53% and cognisant wit 60% rejections. But Google got only 3% rejection rate and Amazon with 6%.

Even the Request for Evidence RFE approval rates have fallen significantly from 83% to 65% in a span of 2015 to 2019. Now that H1B transfers are extremely difficult with 60% RFE, one should fathom that there are low time scale and high rejection rates. The skilled H1B workforce is certainly illiquid in the US as a result of the reaction.