As per the ET reports, Indian IT firms continue to face higher denial rates for H-1B nonimmigrant visas in the third quarter of fiscal 2020.
Higher Denial Rates For IT Companies
The report is based on a study of US Citizenship and Immigration (USCIS) data by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP).
For USCIS, they follow October to September financial year.
Another observation reveals that most of the Indian IT companies except for TCS faced high visa denial rates which is higher than the average denial rate of 21% for the first three-quarters of the fiscal.
If we talk about the numbers, IT majors including Tech Mahindra, L&T, Infosys, Cognizant reported denial rates of 30%, 26%, 58% and 48% respectively.
Interestingly, TCS witnessed a much lower rate with a 15% denial rate.
Lower Denial Rates For US Tech Companies
Contrary to that, the US tech companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook reported much lower visa denials at 7%, 1%, 3% and 1% respectively.
It is noteworthy here that the visa denial rates for Indian companies for the third quarter of FY2020 are in-line with the times when the Donald Trump administration had stricter visa rules for the companies placing employees at client locations.
“The denial rate for new H-1B petitions for initial employment rose from 6% in FY2015 to 21% through the third quarter of FY 2020,” said Stuart Anderson of the NFAP.
“This is in line with the 21% denial rate for H-1B petitions for initial employment in FY2019 and the 24% denial rate in FY2018,” he added.
Prior to this, the USCIS withdrew two earlier memos on contract and itinerary requirements and employer-employee relationship during June.
Basically, they were used to deny a large number of visa applications by services companies.
Recession Impact
Further, the data for the subsequent quarters will show whether the rescission of the memos has an impact on H-1B denials, Anderson added.
So far, the demand for H-1B visas continues to remain high since the agency received more than 275,000 applications for the 85,000 new visas that are issued annually.