India Remains No. 1 in H-1B Visas
About 25 years ago, it was rare to spot an Indian-American on a national TV show. Nowadays, it’s barely noteworthy to find an Indian-American journalist interviewing an Indian-American expert on national TV.
Brown people are everywhere, thanks largely to immigration and the wealth of opportunities available to immigrants and their offspring.
One of the primary pipelines to America continues to carry hundreds of thousands of Indians. The H-1B is considered a nonimmigrant visa, but it’s also recognized in immigration law as dual intent, allowing its holders to apply for permanent residence, if they choose to do so.
According to an IANS report, the US approved 407,071 H-1B petitions in 2021 and 301,616 of them (74.1 percent) went to Indian workers.
The H-1B program enables employers to hire specialty foreign workers for positions they are unable to find Americans to fill. Many of these foreign workers come from abroad, but others are already in the U.S., having earned degrees at American colleges and universities. Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella are both former H-1B visa holders.
About 74.9 per cent of approved petitions since 2020 have gone to Indians, with Chinese applicants a distant second at about 12 percent. Far behind the two front-runners are Canadians and South Koreas with just under 1 percent each.
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Compiled and partly written by Indian humorist MELVIN DURAI, author of the novel Bala Takes the Plunge.
[Comments? Contributions? We would love to hear from you about Chai Time. If you have contributions, please email us at melvin@melvindurai.com. We welcome jokes, quotes, online clips, and more.]
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