U.S. Tech Companies Are Offering Green Cards To Keep H-1B Workers

When foreign employees especially Indians apply for permanent resident status it can take up to a decade or even longer for this to come through. Now this offer from U.S. companies will support these workers.

FREMONT, CA: Several tech firms from America are sponsoring green cards, or permanent U.S. residency, for their Indian employees and elsewhere in a bid to hold on to their skilled talent pool at a time when H-1B work visa extensions have become unpredictable.

As per the report of Economic Times, eight out of the top 10 companies that applied for green cards for their employees in fiscal 2019 were U.S. firms.

Amazon has received the second-highest number of H-1B work visas in FY19. Still, they filed 3,247 permanent residency applications, followed by Cognizant and Google with 2,927 and 2,425 applications, respectively.

The report said quoting Labor Department data, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which processes these applications, received 113,014 applications for permanent labor certification program during 2018-19 (October-September), which is 8.3 percent more than in FY18.

Of the total, 53.2 percent were for Indian citizens, followed by Chinese residents at 11.2 percent. The majority of the applicants were H-1B and L1 work visa holders – 68.2 percent and 7.2 percent, respectively.

According to a recent study by a nonprofit organization that studies immigration, National Foundation for American Policy, the denial rate for applicants trying to extend their visas grew from four percent in 2016 to 12 percent in 2018, and the rate climbed even higher, to 18 percent, through the first quarter of 2019.

As per the Times report, others in the top ten companies that applied for permanent residency for the employees included Intel, Facebook, Microsoft, Cisco, and Deloitte — besides Indian firms like Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys at number five and seven, respectively – all with more than 1,000 applications each.

India sent more than 200,000 students to the U.S. in 2018-19 academic years, registering over 2.9 percent growth over the previous year. The foreign workers in the U.S. on an H-1B visa get it for three years, which can be extended by another three.

Read More: This NASA-ISRO mission set to crunch key space data in Cloud
India to launch spy satellite, 9 others on Dec 11