US agency conducts H-1B visa lottery for 1.90 lakh applications

Visa

MUMBAI: The number of applications for the H-1B visa, heavily relied upon by India’s tech industry, has fallen for the second year in a row. For the 2018-19 season (FY 2019), which would permit successful visa applicants to work in the United States (US) from October 1, the US agency received 1.90 lakh applications as against nearly 2 lakh applications last season. A fall by 8,902 applications or 4.5 per cent as compared to 2017-18 is miniscule and shows the continued interest in this category of work visas.

From 2013-14, year on year, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has had to resort to a lottery mechanism, as the number of applications far exceeded the annual quotas. The number of applications had hit a peak in 2016-17 with 2.36 lakh applications. If current year’s figures are compared with this peak statistic it is a decline of 19.5 per cent in the number of H-1B applications.

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Credit: timesofindia.com