H1B visa growth signals recovery [View All]

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Source: The Economic Times of India

27 Jun 2010, 0455 hrs IST,Ishani Duttagupta,ET Bureau

There’s good news on the US work front. The number of work permit visa issuances in India has gone up and US authorities say they expect the numbers to continue rising during the fiscal year, with a 10% year-on-year growth in all categories of work permits.

The number of H1 visas issued in the year to June 25, 2010 stood at to 55,477, as compared to 55,050 in the same period for the previous year. Likewise, there has been an increase in L visas too, from 31,314 to 35,504 in the same period.

“We expect the rise to continue in the remaining months of this financial year. There was a bottoming out last year because of the economic downturn. But now there’s an upswing,” James W Herman, minister, counsellor for consular affairs at the US Embassy, told ET. In China too, there has been a sharp 30% increase in work permit visas. “The higher growth in China than India is probably because we issue shorter duration visas in China,” he added.

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services now expects the quota for H1B visas for 2011 to get used up by August 2010 and the PhD and graduate students H1B quota to get filled up by the end of July 2010. For 2010, the H1B cap quota was filled up only in late December 2009.

For the first time in the financial year 2011, the H1B cap quota lasted for about eight months, signalling the economic downturn. In past years, they’ve always been filled up within days after applications started being accepted on April 1. Another interesting trend was that many Indian companies, which have traditionally been among the top users of US work permits, dropped out from that list. Big names include TCS, Infosys and Satyam.



Read more: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/features/the-sunday-et/business/H1B-visa-growth-signals-recovery/articleshow/6096661.cms