Tag Archives: h1b

Top 10 H1B Visa Companies & H1B Visa Cities 2011-12

We always try and give our readers as much insight and information to help you in your H1B visa search to live and work in the US. This information comes to us from Rediff and looks at monthly spending of the top 10 companies and top 10 cities in relation to the H1B visa (it should be noted this is equally applicable to a great degree to the E3 visa just at a smaller scale)

In the past we have looked at the Top 100 companies that sponsored US work visas and E3 Visa specific employer sponsors among other tips around creating US resumes, US interview tips and our Top 10 steps to working in the US. So there is many a good grounding of resources across the site along with the many reader experiences as to how they traveled to the US and found a job.

Given the nature of this information we think it gives a foreigners a good idea of the pulse of the US hiring market and where the majority of opportunities currently lie from a corporate and sector perspective as well as the cities and regions of the country that you may have most success.

The data below while not specific in the source of the numbers from Rediff, is certainly great from a directional perspective and shows everybody a great perspective on the US economy and job market at large. Firstly we look at the Top 10 companies in terms of spending on the H1B visa

Top 10 H1B Visa Companies

Company Monthly Spend
Microsoft $226,901
Patni Americas $67,744
Oracle $61,592
Satyam $60,032
Fujitsu $51,682
Cognizant $38,857
Polaris $38,354
Marlabs $32,233
Larsen & Toubro Infotech $31,550
Tata $30,930

This list of company is not that different from some of the past years and other top employer lists we released. You can see it is dominated by high tech and bio tech companies obviously seeking the highly skilled foreign engineers, computer scientists and graduate/phd level foreigners. A good proportion of which would have graduated as students on the F1 visa from US colleges and universities and may have worked during their F1 OPT period at these companies prior to their full employment and H1B visa sponsorship. US students are a minority as colleges and universities for studies in the sciences, engineering, math and technology particularly at the graduate level. Hence the push from a lot of these companies to push for even greater quota for the H1B visa to help fill large vacancies.

Top 10 H1B Visa Cities

City Monthly Spend
New York $112,335
Mountain View $90,529
Cupertino $88,143
Palo Alto $87,832
Redmond $87,086
Santa Clara $85,032
Sunnyvale $81,028
Chicago $78,312
San Jose $77,273
San Francisco $72,442

The Top 10 H1B visa cities presents information that in many ways matches the list above. 7 of the 10 cities in this list come from the Bay Area and Silicon Valley in Northern California home to the tech industry of the world and some of the most innovative companies of recent history such as;

– Apple (Cupertino)
– Facebook (Palo Alto)
– Twitter (San Francisco)
– Yahoo (Sunnyvale)
– Google (Mountain View)

Then when you consider that Redmond in Washington is home to Microsoft and that Oracle is also located in this Northern California area and that New York and Chicago are two of the world’s largest cities for not just technology but finance, health and many other industries you can start to see a common trend.

One thing to note is that where there is opportunity there is also competition. So if you look at other major centers like Houston TX, Charlotte NC, Austin TX, Boston MA among other areas of the country that there are also many other great regions in the country to live and work

H1B Visa Quota FY2012 April Update

The FY2012 H1B visa season which began on April 1, 2011 has received its first quota update via the USCIS yesterday. The USCIS tends to release the updates sporadically and ultimately it is driven by the demand for the H1B visas and how quickly the quota fills up.

So currently 5,900 H1B visa petitions have been received thus far for the main cap and 4,500 have been taken in for foreign workers who hold a US Master’s degree bringing a total of 10,400. One the Master’s cap is filled, new petitions received go towards the main cap. None of these applications have been processed and accepted yet so when future total updates are released by the USCIS, numbers may be revised.

Cap Type Total H1B Visas Current H1B Total

H-1B Regular Cap

65,000

5,900

H-1B Masters Exemption

20,000

4,500

This means that if you have a prospect employer for the H1B visa you should still ensure you file your H1B petition in a timely manner and organize all your Application supporting documents. As while this is still not a landrush the whole Visa landscape has been largely unpredictable in recent years so there is no danger in ensuring your petition is in the front of the queue. Also note that the Premium Processing fee has gone up to $1,255 from $1,000 in recent years.

It should be noted that H1B visa petitions filed on behalf of current H-1B workers who have been counted previously against the cap will not be counted towards the congressionally mandated FY 2012 H-1B cap. Therefore, USCIS will continue to process petitions filed for the following reasons without regard for the above H1B visa quotas:

  • Extend the amount of time a current H-1B worker may remain in the United States.
  • Change the terms of employment for current H-1B workers.
  • Allow current H-1B workers to change employers.
  • Allow current H-1B workers to work concurrently in a second H-1B position.

Good luck to all application in their search for US employment and we hope we find all the articles and training items here of some use to you in your journey.

CJ