Which U.S. companies use the H-1B Visa program to bring in foreign workers the most?
Immigration is one of the top political issues in the United States and recent weeks have seen Donald Trump’s closest allies publicly go to war over a little-known program known as the H-1B Visa Program. But what does this visa do?
According to the United States Department of Labor, the H-1B Visa Program allows the country’s employees to hire nonimmigrant aliens as workers in “specialty occupations or as fashion models of distinguished merit and ability.”
A specialty occupation requires a nonimmigrant worker to have very highly specialized knowledge in their field, and they must have obtained a bachelor's degree or some type of equivalent to be considered for the H-1B Visa Program.
The purpose of the H-1B Visa is to help employers provision workers that they might not be able to obtain for their workforce by temporarily allowing them to hire a qualified individual who may not be otherwise authorized to work in the United States.
On one side of the argument among Trump’s allies has been Elon Musk, who has been an advocate of the program. However, it’s important to note that Tesla, a company that Musk has an ownership stake in, has employed a lot of H-1B Visa workers.
According to BBC News, Musk’s Tesla is ranking 22nd on the list of US companies that employ H-1B Visa workers. Tesla has hired more than 1,700 foreign workers through the program, but it isn’t the only major company utilizing H-1B Visas.
Based on data from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the United States selected 110,791 H-1B Visa applicants to work in the country in 2024, which it noted was down from previous years. Let’s look at the top ten companies that used the program in 2024.
2024 H-1B Visa Approvals: 2,906
2024 H-1B Visa Approvals: 2,953
2024 H-1B Visa Approvals: 3,873
2024 H-1B Visa Approvals: 4,725
2024 H-1B Visa Approvals: 4,844
2024 H-1B Visa Approvals: 5,274
2024 H-1B Visa Approvals: 5,364
2024 H-1B Visa Approvals: 6,321
Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Cognizant Technology Solution, CC BY 2.0
2024 H-1B Visa Approvals: 8,140
2024 H-1B Visa Approvals: 9,265