On April 1, 2019 USCIS received 201,000 H1B petitions for a total of 85,000 seats. By the end of the third quarter, USCIS rejected more than 17% of H1B visa petitions. With H1B denials at an all-time high, it is apparent that the Trump government is pushing his agenda to hire locally within the US as much as possible. The biggest brunt of this is faced by the consultancy companies in India and big names providing the most IT services to the US like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro which are the only ones left standing.

According to data released from the Office of Foreign Labor Certification, US technology companies received the highest number of H1B visas in the first three quarters of 2019. And only the three Indian companies ranked in the top ten to get H1B visas. With 50% of their applications for the H-1B visa rejected, these barely made the cut on the list of H1B recipients. To get perspective, TCS used to have a rejection rate of 6% in FY2015 compared to the 37% in FY2019. Isolating consultancy companies from India and only allowing US tech companies to compete for the H1B visa seems like the ultimate agenda. These H1B rejection numbers below prove it –

Top 10 Tech Companies to Get H1B visas in FY 2019

The companies that did have H1B visas granted to them include:

• Deloitte,
• Apple,
• Cognizant,
• Infosys,
• Qualcomm,
• Kforce,
• Tata Consultancy Services,
• Wipro,
• Cisco and
• Amazon.com

Lower numbers in H1Bs granted correspond with an increase in Request for Evidence (RFEs) this past quarters. Additionally, USCIS denied more than 18% of H1B applications of existing employees seeking extensions in FY2019. This extensive denial of H1B extensions is a fallout of the USCIS ruling that no longer gives deference to prior determinations when adjudicating extension applications. These revocations mean the employee has to vacate the country within 30 days or face severe penalties if he overstays his visa.

With the rising number of H1B denials, and the expensive nature of their filing, USCIS has rolled out a $10 H1B pre-registration process for each qualified petitioner. Only if selected, does the petition go into the computerized lottery selection thus, saving the time to do the extensive paperwork and the steep filing fees from upwards of $4,000 per application.

The selected H1B petitions this year can start work in the US location on October 1, 2019. However, if you are facing a RFE and need help, here are a series of Sample Documents that can be customized to each individual response.