[jedmeyers]

My guess is that so called 'Indian consultancies' are filing 2-3 times more H1B applications than they would reasonably need in order to receive as much actual visas as they can.

[fernandotakai]

is there any cap on how many visas one single company can apply to?

[jedmeyers]

No. And here, as an example, is the breakdown of visas issued per company for 2013:

  Rank  H1B Visa Sponsor           Number of LCA     Average Salary
  1     Infosys                    16,397            $75,154
  2     Wipro                      7,178             $76,920
  3     Tata Consultancy Services  6,732             $64,350
  4     IBM                        6,502             $83,883
  5     Deloitte Consulting        4,727             $98,264
  6     Microsoft                  4,075             $109,546
  7     Larsen & Toubro Infotech   3,793             $59,408
  8     Accenture                  2,653             $72,704
  9     Ernst & Young              2,353             $86,380
  10    Satyam Computer Services   2,310             $70,495

http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2013-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx

*updated table formatting

[x0x0]

   Rank  H1B Visa Sponsor           Number of LCA *   Average Salary
   1     Infosys                    16,397            $75,154
   2     Wipro                      7,178             $76,920
   3     Tata Consultancy Services  6,732             $64,350
   4     IBM                        6,502             $83,883
   5     Deloitte Consulting        4,727             $98,264
   6     Microsoft                  4,075             $109,546
   7     Larsen & Toubro Infotech   3,793             $59,408
   8     Accenture                  2,653             $72,704
   9     Ernst & Young              2,353             $86,380
   10    Satyam Computer Services   2,310             $70,495

[trhway]

it seems that 9 out of 10 are obvious "body shops" (i.e. except the MS).

And speaking about "lazy government" - how one gets an LCA certified under 60K or even 70K in hi-tech?

When we talk about positive case for H1B we talk about MS-like situation while it actually happens to be less than 10% of the total, with the rest of 90% looking like a "cheap labor" situation that H1B opponents talk about.

[fernandotakai]

that's just... dumb? i mean, if a small startup asked for a visa, it should have bigger priority than Infosys asking for a ton of them. also, why aren't visas prioritised by salary?

h1b needs a reform asap :(