India-born bagged 3.01 lakh H-1B visas during fiscal 2021 – 74% of the total

MUMBAI: A recent report released by the US Department of Homeland Security shows that India-born individuals continued to bag a significant portion of H-1B visas allotted during fiscal 2021.
During fiscal 2021, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) approved 4.07 lakh H-1B applications, a figure slightly lower than that of the earlier year, which stood at 4.26 lakh. In both years, India-born individuals bagged more than 74% of the approved visas.
Of the H-1B applications approved in 2021, 74.1% were from India (as opposed to 74.9% in the earlier year). In numerical terms, these translate to 3.01 lakh and 3.19 lakh successful beneficiaries. China, the second most common country of birth, lagged behind significantly with only 50,328 China-born individuals obtaining an H-1B visa – this was 12.4% of the total approved during 2021. Similarly in the previous year, 51,597 China-born individuals (or 12.1% of the total) were successful in obtaining an H-1B visa.

As always, the highest number of H-1B applications that were approved during fiscal 2021 were of workers in computer related occupations. 2.80 lakh individuals were from this sector, which is 68.8% of the total approved applications.
The highest educational attainment of 56.6 % of beneficiaries with an approved H-1B petition in FY 2021 was a master’s degree. In addition, 33.7 % of approved petitions were for workers with a bachelor’s degree, 6.8 % had a doctorate, and 2.9 % had a professional degree. With an overall median age of 33 years, of those who obtained an H-1B visa, the median salary worked out to $ 108,000 a slight rise of 6.9% over fiscal 2020.