Main image of article H-1B Employer Data Hub Shows Which Firms Seek Visas
Curious about how many employers are submitting H-1B visa petitions? U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) now has a website that could answer some of those questions. This website, the H-1B Employer Data Hub, allows you to input a company name, state/city, ZIP, fiscal year, and a NAICS code, and receive a list of H-1B petitions and approvals. (NAICS codes are aligned with employment categories, including Manufacturing, Information, and (many) more.) You can also download data in .csv format. For those new to the Data Hub, it isn’t the easiest website to use. You can probably achieve best results by leaving the NAICS Code box unselected (i.e., “Select a NAICS Code”), as that will cast out the widest “net” for each company you select. Also, entering the name of the company won’t necessarily generate the results you need, as David North noted in a blog posting for the Center for Immigration Studies. “You see the full name of the employer, does not necessarily produce data on that employer in all cases,” he wrote. “It does, for most years, with Harvard University (one of the examples I used in my posting), but it does not for Princeton University (and other Ivies, such as Dartmouth, and the University of Pennsylvania).” He advised: “You need to try a shorter version of the name and see what you get.” USCIS recently resumed premium processing for all H-1B petitions after suspending it in early 2017 (in this context, “premium” means a guaranteed 15-day processing time or the petitioner’s premium processing fee will be refunded). The suspension made it more difficult for petitioners to obtain H-1B visas; it also made it harder for H-1B visa holders to jump jobs or even move to new company offices. According to data from USCIS, approvals of completed H-1B applications hit with an RFE (Request for Evidence) declined noticeably year-over-year in the first quarter of 2019. In other words, premium processing might have re-opened, but some companies are facing a heightened degree of additional scrutiny. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has tightened many aspects of its immigration policy, and tech pros say they’re experiencing the effects. In the most recent HackerRank DevSkills report, for instance, some 25 percent of tech pros said the administration’s immigration policies had discouraged them or someone they know from applying to jobs in the U.S. Nearly one-fifth (17.20 percent) were unable to get a visa to work in the United States.