Indians get highest HIB visas
by Mary Jones - July 9, 2010
United States, 9th July: Indian professionals were granted maximum number of US H1B visas in the year 2009.
According to the official figures made available, Indians professionals got one-third of the total US H1B visas last year. This is despite the fact that almost all other US work visas showed a downtrend in the last two years.
123,002 US H1B visas were grabbed by Indian professionals in 2009 out of the total 339,243 US
1B visas. Also, Indians became the second biggest group of immigrants living in the US temporarily.
Indians getting US H1B visas in the year 2009 accounted for 36.3 percent of total US H1B visas granted during the year.
Reports state that Wipro, a major IT company in India, was leading with a total of 1,964 US H1B visas issued to Indians from 1st October 2008 to 30th September 2009. Others following the route included Mircrosoft, Intel and IBM with a total of 1,318, 723 and 695 US H1B visas issued in 2009. Some other major companies in India comprising a big share of US H1B visas issued during the period were Infosys (440), Satyam (219) and Google (211).
Meanwhile, US H1B visas seem to be inviting less response as compared to the previous years as till 2nd July, just 24,200 applications were received for the US H1B visas which were once considered to be highly coveted US visas.
The trend exhibiting poor key response towards US H1B visas is continuing for the second consecutive year, the official data by the US Department of Homeland Security reveals. The reason for the drop in the number of Indians getting US H1B visas during the last two years is largely due to global economic slowdown.
There has been one-fifth decline in the number of total US H1B visas issued to Indian professionals as compared to the figures of 2007. The data shows the number of US H1B visas issued to Indians decreased by 34,000 in 2009 as compared to 2009.
Nonetheless, India, with a share of 11 percent, happens to be second to Mexico in being the leading nation for US citizenship for the total non-immigrant arrivals in the US in the year 2009.
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