H-1B applications plunge 40% as US cracks down on fraud entries

The number of visa applications for the US by skilled workers have seen a significant decline this year after the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) employed strict measures to check fraudulent entries, a report by the Associated Press said.

The lottery bids for the H-1B visa plunged to 470,342, down 38 percent from 758,994 last year, USCIS said in the report. The lottery was held in the last week of March.

Major tech firms, who send many of their employees each year to the US, had complained that the hike in number of applications has left them with low chances of winning the lottery. Soon after, the USCIS said it will make changes to the system and allow only one application per person, irrespective of the number of jobs on offer. According to the report, the number of entries tripled between 2021 and 2023 after the US government removed the requirement of mailing all the required documents. The introduction of the new rules led to an applicant filing entries for 83 job offers, the report said.

In its initial list, USCIS said it has selected 114,017 beneficiaries, resulting in 120,603 selected registrations for FY25 H-1B cap.

“This year, USCIS took measures to secure the H-1B registration process. Our initial data suggests that there were far fewer attempts than last year to gain an unfair advantage owing in large measure to the implementation of the beneficiary-centric selection process.