Nearly 1 in 4 Foreign Workers Who Sought H-1B Visas Got Denied — Highest in a Decade

President Donald Trump's promised crackdown on the H-1B visa had a dramatic impact last year, according to recently released federal data that shows immigration officials denied nearly one out of every four requests for new visas for skilled foreign workers.That's the highest denial rate for new H-1B visa applications in nearly 10 years and almost double the 13 percent rate in the prior fiscal year.The data, which tracks H-1B visa approvals and denials since 2009, was released by the Trump administration last month as it seeks to carry out a pledge to reform the visa to better protect American workers under the president's "Buy American and Hire American" executive order."It appears that the administration's efforts are working," said Sarah Pierce, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.However, after comparing the 2018 denial rate for new visas with 2016, the last fiscal year under the administration of former President Barack Obama, Pierce said the increase is not being "felt evenly" across firms that seek new visas.Looking at the nation's top 30 H-1B employers, Pierce's analysis found that among so-called H-1B dependent companies, where at least 15 percent of the workforce has the visa, denials of new visas increased from about 4 percent in 2016 to 42 percent in 2018. The majority of those H-1B dependent companies were outsourcing, staffing and consulting companies, which traditionally receive huge numbers of new H-1B visas every year.  Continue reading...