Indians flood the Internet with US visa queries

With the US government imposing tough regulations for H1B visas, there has been a spike in search for terms related to H1B visas on the internet.  Popular search terms include words like work visa, H1B visa, H2B visa, immigration visa, employment visa or immigrant visa. The popularity of these search terms saw a 673% jump between September 2017 to September 2018 according to Indeed, a job listings site. Jobsite did a survey of the searches for US jobs to arrive at this number.

The possible reason for this could be the visa policy changes in 2018 which have made the acquisition of visas difficult. Since Donald Trump came to power in 2016, tough measures have been taken on the H1B visa.

The qualifying criteria have become tougher, the fees have increased, and the paperwork is more complicated. The government is taking a tough stance on visa abuses as well.

The rejection of H1B visa applications has increased over the past few years. For instance, the US government rejected more than 22% of H1B applications made by Indians between July and September 2017.

The aspiring visa seekers naturally searched for employers who will sponsor their visas or provide them security.

From where did most of these searches come from? Some of them were from within the US. They were possibly from students or professionals looking for work or wishing to change their job. But most of the search queries were from outside the US. The number of searches from outside the US almost doubled in August this year compared to last year. The number of visa-related searches reached a whopping 88.2% in November 2018.

One out of five searches were from Indians. This was expected considering that Indians get the majority of H1B visas every year. Visa policy changes would affect them the most. In fact, the Trump administration intends to restrict the visa approvals to Indians between 10% to 15% soon.