Indians comprise 74% of US H1-B visa applicants for 2016-17

Indian professionals lodged the highest number of H-1B Visa Applications in the first nine months of the current financial year of the US, as they numbered about 247,000.

Around 74 percent of the total applications from 1 October 2016 to 30 June 2017 were received from India. The American financial year begins on 1 October and ends on 30 September. Even during the 2015 -2016 financial year, Indians had filed for 300,000 applications for the same Work Visa.

Second highest number of aspirants for H-1B Visa belonged to China, as 36,362 people applied from that country. It is supposed the highest ever number from China in the last one decade. Canadians were ranked third, as 3,551 professionals from that country applied till 30 June 2017.

The Times of India quotes the USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) as saying that it had received 336,000 H-1B Visa Applications till 30 June. Of the total, 197,000 applications are said to have been approved and a decision was not yet taken on many applications until then.

The report of the USCIS for 2015-16 showed that of the 345,000 applications approved, 74 percent, or 256,000, were from India. China, which stood at the second place, received 9 percent, or 31,995 approvals.

If the applications filed in the last one decade are taken into consideration, i.e., between 1 October 2006 and 30 June 2017, applications numbering 2,183,000 were received from India, followed by 296,000 from China and 85,918 from the Philippines.

Application numbers from the Philippines are said to have fallen by 70 percent. About 68,228 applications were filed by Canadians who ranked fifth in the number of petitions filed.  The number of Indian H-1B Visa Applications grew by 80.6 percent during 2006-07 to 300,000 in 2015-16.

Unsurprisingly, the most number of visa applications for H-1B was lodged by the technology sector. The top five beneficiaries till June ending were Cognizant (US Corp), TCS, Wipro, Infosys and Accenture. The average salaries that these firms had paid these Work Visa holders were said to be less than $130,000, the salary that a reform bill had proposed earlier this year.

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