Episode 94: H-1B insights and corporate immigration trends for Fiscal Year 2024

Episode 94: H-1B insights and corporate immigration trends for fiscal year 2024

This episode of the BAL Immigration Report is brought to you by BAL, the corporate immigration law firm that powers human achievement through immigration expertise, people-centered client services and innovative technology. Learn more at BAL.com.

In this week’s episode, BAL’s Steve Plastrik highlights the immigration trends for fiscal year 2024 that impacted employers. Plus, the latest immigration news.

From Dallas, Texas, I’m Rebecca Sanabria.

Fiscal year 2024 saw record numbers in nonimmigrant visas issued worldwide, approaching 5.2 million in its first half alone from October 2023 to March 2024.

Within the same period, the U.S. State Department reported that 205,000 visas had been issued to temporary or seasonal workers in agriculture and other sectors, surpassing previous years. For exchange visitor programs, 134,000 visas were issued to participants and 115,000 international students received visas.

With the start of the new fiscal year, BAL Senior Associate Steve Plastrik takes a look at some of the immigration trends from fiscal year 2024 that most impacted employers and their foreign national employees, including H-1B cap selection rates and visa appointment wait times.

Plastrik: Overall, last year’s trends in immigration were a mixed bag. Visa appointment wait times went down and H-1B cap selection rates went up a little bit, but visa bulletin dates moved slowly. For visa appointment wait times, while these have gone down since early 2023, B visitor visa appointments remain hard to come by and wait times for work visas like H, L and O, as well as student F-1 visas, vary significantly among consulates.

For people who are eligible to waive their visa stamp interview, wait times for an appointment are significantly shorter across the board. The Biden administration has expanded and extended these waivers, so more applicants have been able to take advantage of this.

For visa bulletins, over the last year, the final action date cutoffs for most categories advanced slower than the calendar day, meaning the cutoff advanced fewer than 365 days over the course of the year. This is the final action date, which is the chart that tells USCIS when it can grant the green card, not necessarily when applicants may be eligible to file their green card application with USCIS.

This reflects not just high demand for immigrant visas but also the number of green card applications that are already pending at USCIS waiting for that visa to become available.

The rate of change and cutoff dates each month for India and China has tended to be small and change the most at the start of each new quarter.

For nonimmigrant visa issuance numbers, the State Department issued 5% more nonimmigrant visas through August in fiscal year 2024 than it had at that point in the previous year. That means they’re on track to issue more nonimmigrant visas in fiscal year 2024 than in any previous year since fiscal year 2015.

For H-1B cap registrations and selection rates, thanks to changes in the registration selection process, the selection rate increased by 3.9% for fiscal year 2025, which reversed the downward trend over the previous three years. Still, H-1B hopefuls had only a 28.7% chance of selection in the most recent H-1B cap.

Next week, we’ll start our look forward on what to expect for the fiscal year 2026 H-1B cap season. And if you’re an in-house professional working on immigration, don’t forget to register for the BAL Community benchmarking event on Oct. 16 at community.BAL.com, where you can join BAL Community for free and register for upcoming events and access past events and expert analysis.

For links to visualize data and infographics of the trends I’ve discussed today, check out this episode page on bal.com, because you won’t find them on Spotify or Apple.

Find more expert insights on the issues impacting employers and corporate immigration on bal.com.

And now, the top U.S. and global immigration news.

The American Immigration Council released their New American Fortune 500 report for 2024. The council defines “New American” companies as those founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants.

The new report shows that, in 2024, 46% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. Having published reports since 2011, this percentage is the highest in the report’s history.

The Department of Homeland Security announced that the Biden administration will not extend legal status for migrants who were permitted to fly to the U.S. to live and work under the Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans (CHNV) temporary parole program.

The parole status for certain Venezuelan migrants who came to the U.S. through the program in October 2022 began expiring this month and will not be extended. Parole periods for Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans will permanently expire in early 2025.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has introduced a PDF filing option for certain categories of Form I-765, the application for employment authorization.

In global news, the Canadian government has updated its guidance for intra-company transfers, clarifying that applicants must be currently employed in an executive, managerial or specialized knowledge capacity transferring from a foreign enterprise of an existing multinational corporation to be considered for this immigration option.

The Australian government’s new visa pre-application ballot process for the Work and Holiday program for mainland China, India and Vietnam has commenced for program year 2024-2025. The initiative is specifically designed to address the number of Work and Holiday visa registrations, which significantly exceed the number of places available to the participant countries each year.

Find all of our news at BAL.com/news. Follow us on X at @BAL_Immigration. And sign up to receive daily immigration updates in your inbox at BAL.com/newsletter.

We’ll be back next week with more insights from the world of corporate immigration.

I’m Rebecca Sanabria. Thanks for listening.

Copyright

The BAL Immigration Report is provided by BAL. Copyright 2024 Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP. All rights reserved. Digital redistribution to the public is permitted only with express written permission of Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP. This report does not constitute legal advice or create an attorney-client relationship. Visit bal.com for more information.