Nearly half of H-1B visa holders from India

Nearly half of H-1B work visa holders in the US were from India, who were mostly hired for technology-related positions, according to an official report. The government accountability office said between 2000 and 2009, 46.9 per cent of the total approved H-1B visa holders had India as their country of birth.

“Between financial year 2000 and 2009, the majority of approved H-1B workers (initial and extensions for both employers subject to the cap and cap-exempt employers) were born in Asia,” said the report titled ‘H-1B Visa Programme: Reforms are needed to minimise the risks and costs of current programme’.

“Over the last decade, the top four countries of birth for approved H-1B workers were India, China, Canada and the Philippines. Across 10 years, about 64 per cent of approved H-1B workers were born in these four countries, with the largest group from India,” it added.

Although information on the total H-1B workforce is lacking, data on approved petitions show that since 2000, most people that were approved to be H-1B workers were born in China or India. They were hired for technology positions and increasingly held advanced degrees, it added. “Using publicly available data on H-1B-hiring employers, we learnt that at least 10 of the top 85 H-1B-hiring employers in financial year 2009 participate in staffing arrangements, of which at least six have headquarters or operations located in India,” the report said.

“In financial year 2009, these 10 employers garnered nearly 11,456 approvals, or about six per cent of all H-1B approvals. Further, three of these employers were among the top five H-1B-hiring companies, receiving 8,431 approvals among them,” it said.

The H-1B cap for 2011 quota is 65,000 for general category. To ensure that the H-1B programme continues to meet the needs of businesses in a global economy while maintaining a balance of protections for US workers, the report recommends that the Congress might wish to consider reviewing merits and shortcomings of key programme provisions and making appropriate changes as needed.