There has been a dramatic reduction in the number of H-1B US visa applications filed by IT companies in India. Many foreign nationals are also increasingly reluctant to start working for companies in the US, due to the tough anti-immigration stance taken by the Trump administration, according to a leading Silicon Valley newspaper.
The editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle says that H-1B US visa program applicants are expecting the most difficult process for many years, with a dramatic reduction in filings from Indian consulting firms, often alleged to be flooding the system with their volume of applications. The process for filing H-1B US visa applications for the 2019 fiscal year, starting on 1 October, has just started in the US.
Technology firms in the US are heavily dependent on the H-1B US visa, which allows them to employ overseas workers in specialty occupations requiring technical or theoretical expertise, with tens of thousands of foreign workers hired every year from nations such as China and India. According to immigration services provider, Envoy Global, which is technology oriented, 26 percent of surveyed employers have been forced to delay projects, with 22 percent relocating work abroad because of the uncertainties surrounding the current US immigration system.
The Wall Street Journal has also reported a wane in the demand for H-1B US visas, saying that corporations are continuing to have difficulty with a labor market where there are still 548,000 open tech jobs yet unemployment in the tech sector is almost non-existent.