H-1B Approvals for Indian IT Companies Plummet 70% Since 2015 as U.S. Tech Giants Dominate Visa Program

The number of H-1B visas approved for India-based companies has plummeted dramatically, declining 70% since 2015, according to a National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) analysis of government data released Sunday.

The study found that in fiscal year 2025, the top seven Indian-based companies had only 4,573 H-1B petitions approved for initial employment—a 37% drop from FY 2024 and a stunning 70% decline from the 15,270 approvals they received in FY 2015, according to Newsweek.

Meanwhile, U.S. technology giants now dominate H-1B usage. For the first time, four American tech companies—Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Google—occupied the top four positions for new H-1B approvals.

The Numbers Tell a Dramatic Story

Amazon led all employers with 4,644 initial employment petitions approved in FY 2025, followed by Meta with 1,555, Microsoft with 1,394, and Google with 1,050, according to the NFAP analysis of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data.

Among Indian firms, only Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) retained a presence near the top, ranking fifth overall for initial H-1B approvals. According to news reports, LTIMindtree ranked 20th and HCL America ranked 21st, barely making it into the top 25 employers.

“Only three Indian companies appeared among the top 25 employers with approved H-1B petitions for initial employment in fiscal year 2025,” Newsweek reported, citing the NFAP study.

Structural Shifts in the Industry

Stuart Anderson, the executive director of NFAP, a nonpartisan research organization, explained the dramatic change to Newsweek: “The numbers show Indian-based companies now deliver IT services to U.S. businesses using relatively few H-1B visas, while the largest U.S. technology companies are hiring many individuals, including recent foreign-born graduate students from U.S. universities, to help build AI in the United States after investing several hundred billion dollars to develop artificial intelligence.”

The NFAP report itself noted that “the drop in H-1B visas for Indian-based companies is due to industry trends toward digital services such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence, which require fewer workers, and a choice by companies to rely less on visas and to build up their domestic workforces in the United States,” according to a 2018 NFAP policy brief.

The Broader H-1B Landscape

The NFAP analysis revealed that H-1B visas remain critical for U.S. employers across all sectors. According to the November 2025 NFAP report, 28,277 different employers in the United States were approved to hire at least one new H-1B visa holder in FY 2025.

“Sixty-one percent of employers were approved for a single H-1B petition, and 95% were approved for ten or fewer new H-1B petitions in FY 2025,” the report stated. “Over half of new H-1B petitions went to employers with 15 or fewer approvals for H-1B petitions for initial employment.”

In FY 2025, approximately 442,000 unique beneficiaries were entered in the H-1B registration process, meaning USCIS rejected more than 300,000 H-1B beneficiaries due to the annual limit.

Anderson told Newsweek: “H-1B visas are important because they are typically the only way to hire a high-skilled foreign national long term in the United States, and approximately 70 percent of full-time graduate students in key science and technology fields at U.S. schools are international students.”

The Annual Lottery System

The 85,000 annual H-1B limit—comprising 65,000 regular visas plus 20,000 for individuals with master’s degrees or higher from U.S. universities—has been exhausted every year since FY 2004, according to the NFAP report.

In FY 2025, approximately 442,000 unique beneficiaries were entered in the H-1B registration process, meaning USCIS rejected more than 300,000 H-1B beneficiaries due to the annual limit, the report stated.

“The primary drawback of the H-1B visa category is not the distribution among companies, as some argue, but the low annual limit of 85,000, which equals 0.05% of the U.S. labor force,” the NFAP analysis concluded.

Trump Administration Policies Add Uncertainty

The findings come as the Trump administration has imposed new restrictions on H-1B visas. Newsweek reported that “the Trump administration has proposed a $100,000 fee for new H-1B petitions, raising concern among employers.”

The report notes that the figures reflect the period before the Trump administration’s new immigration restrictions came into force—including a $100,000 fee for each new H-1B entrant, a rule that is expected to further reshape employer behavior.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other groups have filed legal challenges arguing the fee is unlawful and could undermine U.S. competitiveness, according to Newsweek.

The NFAP report warned that “restrictive policies toward high-skilled immigration in Donald Trump’s first term have influenced second-term policies and could lead to higher denial rates and other problems for employers.”

During Trump’s first term, denial rates for H-1B petitions spiked. The NFAP December 2024 report noted that denial rates increased because officials “changed the approval standards via memos (later found unlawful),” forcing many companies to dismiss long-term employees whose H-1B status ended after USCIS denied renewal applications.

Political Divide Over H-1B Program

The H-1B program has become increasingly politicized. Newsweek reported that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, has introduced a bill to phase out the H-1B visa program, calling it a step to “END the mass replacement of American workers.”

The move, Newsweek noted, “highlights a growing split within the Republican Party over immigration and U.S.” policy toward skilled workers.

However, President Donald Trump recently expressed support for allowing foreign workers to help companies establish operations in the United States. At the U.S.-Saudi Arabia Investment Forum in Washington, D.C. on November 19, Trump said: “People have to be taught this is something they’ve never done. But we’re not going to be successful if we don’t allow people that invest billions of dollars in plants and equipment to bring a lot of their people from their country to get that plant open, operating and working,” according to Newsweek.

Impact on Global Talent Competition

The NFAP report emphasized that without H-1B status, foreign nationals would likely need to leave the United States and work in China, India, Canada, or elsewhere.

A study by Britta Glennon, an assistant professor at the Wharton School of Business, found that “[a]ny policies that are motivated by concerns about the loss of native jobs should consider that policies aimed at reducing immigration have the unintended consequence of encouraging firms to offshore jobs abroad,” according to the December 2024 NFAP report.

“When U.S. firms are denied H-1Bs, they go abroad, setting up new foreign affiliates and hiring talent there instead of in the U.S.,” Glennon concluded. “For the most global multinational companies, this is at almost a 1:1 rate.”

The AI Factor

The shift toward U.S. tech giants dominating H-1B approvals coincides with massive investments in artificial intelligence development. Anderson told Newsweek that American technology companies “are hiring many individuals, including recent foreign-born graduate students from U.S. universities, to help build AI in the United States after investing several hundred billion dollars to develop artificial intelligence.”

The concentration of H-1B approvals among major tech companies reflects the industry’s focus on cutting-edge AI research and development—work that requires specialized talent often unavailable domestically in sufficient numbers.

As the debate over H-1B visas continues, the NFAP data makes clear that the landscape has fundamentally shifted over the past decade. Indian IT services companies that once dominated H-1B usage now represent a small fraction of the program, while American tech giants building the next generation of AI systems have become the primary sponsors of high-skilled foreign workers entering the United States.

This story was aggregated by AI from several news reports and edited by American Kahani’s News Desk. Top image, Amazon HQ in Arlington, Virginia.