Indians continue their stranglehold on the highly sought after professional ticket to work, live and, finally, settle down in America as they secure nearly 75% of H-1B visas issued by the US to speciality foreign workers in 2021.
Indians Account For 74.9% of Total Approved Petitions
US approved 407,071 H-1B petitions in 2021 and 301,616 of them, which amounts to 74.1 per cent of the total, were issued to Indian workers as per the latest report released by the Department of Homeland Security.
The report by the US government’s agency that oversees immigration said that Indians accounted for 74.9 per cent of the approved petitions in 2020.
H-1B Visa : What Is It?
For the positions that the American employers are are unable to fill with local Americans, the US government allows the employers to to hire specialty foreign workers on H-1B for positions.
Top American companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Facebook are among leading users of this visa programme as are US subsidiaries of Indian IT companies such as Infosys, TCS and Wipro.
These foreign workers are hired either from their countries of birth or residence or from US colleges and universities, Sundar Pichai, the Google CEO, was hired on H-1B when he was studying in the US. They can live and work here for three years and, if approved, another three years. A large number of them go on to Green Cards, permanent residency, sponsored by their employers.
At the three-fourths mark, for many years Indians have a firm grip on the H-1B visa programme. With 12.1 %, Chinese are distant second followed by Canada & South Korea at 0.9 % and Philippines with 0.7 per cent. The line-up was the same in 2020, with almost the same numbers.