Hartford Business Journal

16 Hartford Business Journal • June 10, 2019 • www.HartfordBusiness.com By Matt Pilon mpilon@hartfordbusiness.com T en years ago, a Connecti- cut employer petition- ing federal immigration authorities for permission to hire a skilled foreign worker was successful more than 97 percent of the time, on average. Not so today. Since 2010, denial rates in Connecticut for new H-1B visa hires — which increasingly target foreign graduates of U.S. colleges, including those with master's and doctoral degrees — have skyrocketed approximately 10-fold to 25 percent as of the final quarter of calendar 2018, federal immigration data show. That means some employers in this state are having a harder and costlier time tapping into a foreign labor pool with skills they say can't easily be found in the U.S. Connecticut's experience tracks a national spike in visa denials since 2017, which some have tied to the Trump administration's protectionist stance on immigration. The H-1B is one of the most common types of nonimmigrant worker visas in the U.S. Nearly three in four applica- tions come from Indian nationals, with China being the next biggest source. Matt McCooe, CEO of the state's quasi-public venture capital arm, Connecticut Innovations (CI), said the latest denial rates are worrisome on a number of fronts. He has a dog in the fight, since CI's mission is to invest in promising startups and boost the state's overall employment and economy. Immigrants, he said, can help on all those fronts. For example, a 2017 study by The Center for American Entrepreneurship, found that 43 percent of companies in the Fortune 500 that year were found- ed or co-founded by an immigrant or the child of an immigrant. Among the top 35 companies, the rate was even higher at 57 percent. Overall, immigrants have higher business ownership rates in the U.S. than people born here. McCooe says discouraging immi- gration will exacerbate Connecticut's population stagnation, and that erect- ing unnecessary barriers, for skilled immigrants in particular, will hurt the state's economy. "I think we just need to get more immigrants into the country," McCooe said. "They're great for the economy and startups." While U.S. Census data show that about one in six Connecticut work- ers were born in a foreign country, publicly available data do not reveal exactly how many H-1B workers are in the state in any given year. However, data from U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services, which over- sees the nation's immigration system, show the agency approved 1,162 new H-1B visas for Connecticut companies in 2018, as well as 2,264 "continuing" H-1Bs, which include visa renewals. Last year, Yale University, Quest Global Services, Cyient Inc., Aetna Re- sources, UConn, and FactSet Research Systems were awarded the most new H-1B visas, which are capped nation- wide at 85,000 per year. (Colleges and hospitals are exempt from that cap.) The number of Connecticut-based H-1Bs approved in 2018 was actually the highest it's been in years, following a dip in 2017. That's because, despite rising denial rates, application volume has also grown, though it's not clear exactly why. An attorney's viewpoint Dana R. Bucin, a Hartford-based immi- gration attorney and partner at Murtha Cullina, said her experience over the past few years tracks closely with the spiking denial rates seen in USCIS data. Bucin, who is also the honorary consul of Romania to Connecticut, mostly represents small and mid-sized employ- ers seeking to hire engineers or others skilled in STEM disciplines. She's prac- ticed immigration law for 14 years, and handles hundreds of visa applications an- nually. She said her batting average with visa petitions used to be nearly perfect. It may sound like bragging, but it's not really: The denial rate for Connecti- cut companies applying for H-1B visas for new hires used to be just 2.5 percent a decade ago, according to USCIS data, so everyone did pretty well on average. Now, many of Bucin's clients peti- tioning for H-1B visas are receiving a so-called "request for evidence" notice from USCIS, which come late in the application process — only after the applicant has managed to win a coveted spot in the H-1B lottery — and Countering U.S. trend, international students still flocking to CT schools Colleges and universities are big employers, and many, including UConn and Yale, use H-1B visas to hire foreign faculty members. Foreign students often attend U.S. schools on another type of visa, called an F-1, but some try to get an H-1B visa after graduation so they can work here. Educators are keeping an eye on foreign enrollment trends as a potential indicator of how students from other countries view their prospects in the U.S. There are some signs that opin- ions have soured. For example, over the past two years, U.S. universities have seen consecu- tive dips in new enrollment by foreign students, according to the Institute of International Education (IIE). However, the trend in Connecticut doesn't match that. The total number of new interna- tional students enrolled at four-year universities here has steadily in- creased since 2012, and totaled 1,066 in 2018, according to data compiled for HBJ by the Connecticut Confer- ence of Independent Colleges. The total number of international students studying in the state has also been increasing, totaling 15,278 last year, according to IIE. Foreign Labor Denial rates for skilled-worker visas skyrocket in CT Top H-1B sponsors in CT The following employers filed the most initial H-1B applications in fiscal year 2018. Initial H-1B Employer applications Yale University 107 Quest Global Services NA 94 Cyient Inc. 81 Aetna Resources LLC 47 FactSet Research Systems Inc. 45 UConn 31 Astograph Inc. 26 Niktor Inc. 23 9to9 Software Solutions LLC 22 AQR Capital Management LLC 21 Note: Colleges and hospitals are exempt from the 85,000-visa H-1B annual cap Source: USCIS PHOTO | HBJ FILE Dana R. Bucin, a Hartford-based immigration attorney with Murtha Cullina, says the process of winning federal approval to hire a skilled foreign worker is getting costlier and more time consuming.

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