Recession: Sharp fall in H-1B visa applicants

Bangalore, Apr 9: The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced of a sharp decline in the demand for H-1B visas this year as a result of downturn in IT and US protectionism. In one week USCIS received only 32,500 applications for H-1B visas or about 50 per cent of the available quota of 65,000.

In 2008 it received about 1,31,800 applications which is almost twice the available quota. US firms use H-1B visas to bring foreign workers into the nation mostly for IT work. 60 per cent of the recipients of these visas have been Indians.

Infosys, Wipro and Satyam together are said to have received 9,154 visas last year. The same for Microsoft was 1,037 and Intel 351.

OneIndia News