Indians account for 38% H-1B visas issued by US in 2008

[saiiii]

WASHINGTON: As the US is having a tough time in filling up its annual quota of 65,000 H-1B work visas for highly skilled categories, an official report here has said that the Indian nationals accounted for the 38% of the total H-1B visas issued by the United States last year.

India also accounts for maximum number of people entering the US on L-1 visa, which is primarily used for intra-company transferees, said the Annual Flow Report released by the Office of Immigration Statistics.

The report is based on the information gathered from the I-94 on the number and characteristics of non-immigrant admissions to the US in 2008.

The report said Indian nationals accounted for 157,726 (37.8%) of the 409,619 H-1B admissions in the US in 2008. In actual figures, this is a drop of about 3,000 as compared to 2007. In 2006 the figure was 125,717.

The annual report reveals that Canada is a distant second in terms of H-1B visa admissions. In 2008 as many as 23,312 Canadian nationals were admitted to the US on this visa category, followed by Britain (19,209), Mexico (16,382) and China (13,828).