U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) recently released data showing a downward trend in H-1B visa approvals filed from October 1, 2016 until June 30, 2017. In that time period, U.S. employers filed 336,107 new H-1B visa petitions and, as of June 30, 2017, had only approved 197,129 of those filed.

The pool of 138,978 H-1B visa petitions that are unapproved as of June 30, 2017, includes an unknown number of cases that are actually denied as well as many that simply remain pending due to Requests for Evidence from the 2018 H-1B cap season. Immigration attorneys throughout the U.S. are reporting a spike in Requests for Evidence on new H-1B visa petitions related to compliance with the Wage Level requirements of the Labor Condition Application – a new and evolving line of inquiry from USCIS. The current data from 2016-2017 shows a decrease in approvals of H-1B visa petitions compared to USCIS data from 2015-2016, which shows 399,349 new visa petitions filed and 348,162 approvals (an approval rate of approximately 87%). I.A. Donoso & Associates will provide more news on this developing issue.

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