As per statistics released by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the immigration agency has received the maximum number of H-1B petitions from beneficiaries from India as a country of birth. Since 2007, the number of these applications from India have increased consistently every year till 2016, with an exception of a small dip in 2008. Here are the figures:
As shown in the table, the applications plummeted in 2017 when the number decreased by more than 17 percent, i.e. from 300,902 to 247,927.
The agency compiled data showing the top twenty countries from FY 2007 through 2017. Their names along with the total number of petitions filed since 2007 are: India (2,183,112), China (296,313), Philippines (85,918), South Korea (77,359), Canada (68,228), Taiwan (40,627), Mexico (34,609), United Kingdom (32,964), Pakistan (31,882), France (28,053), Brazil (26,164), Nepal (22,390), Japan 21,497), Turkey (20,413), Germany (18,966), Iran (18,148), Italy (17,257), Russia (16,271), Venezuela (13,997), and Spain (11,873).
It may be noted that H-1B petitions filed by beneficiaries with their birth country as India is more than double than those by all other nineteen countries combined. To be precise, Indian beneficiary filed 147 percent more petitions than the rest.
Age
Regarding the age of the beneficiaries, the data reveals that the maximum number of beneficiaries are between 25 years and 34 years of age and the least petitions were filed by those above 65 years of age. In the last ten years, the trend for the beneficiaries with regard to age have been: under 25 – 200,348; 25 to 34 – 2,346,525; 35 to 44 – 737,151; 45 to 54 – 97,832; 55 to 64 – 17,176; and over 65 – 2,085.
Occupation
It may not be surprising that the top occupation category for H-1b petitions is related to computer technology. Computer Related category received more than two million petitions in the last one decade. Interestingly, this occupation category was almost 50 percent more than all other work-categories combined.
Education
On the education of the beneficiaries, most of the H-1B petitions were received for workers with a bachelor’s degree (1,512,193), followed by those with a master’s degree (1,441,164).