U.S. employers now prefer to hire remotely to bypass employment visa financial requirements- Report

According to reports from Envoy Global in the United States (U.S)  an increasing number of employers plan to hire skilled foreign workers in a remote capacity in 2025 to avoid the financial and bureaucratic obstacles of the H-1B visa (employment visa for hiring skilled foreign workers) process.

This trend comes as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) prepares to launch its H-1B modernization final rule on January 17, which is designed to meet workforce needs, increase efficiency and simplify the visa application process for businesses. However, these employers believe the remote work mode is a better alternative.

“Employers are pursuing alternate paths to visas in large part due to the administrative burdens and risk of dealing with existing programs. I only go into H-1B when I have no choice, because it’s costly…, and it is the most highly regulated option that I have to present to an employer to choose from”,  Kathleen Campbell Walker, partner at law firm, Dickinson Wright said.

What the survey indicates

According to a 2024 survey by Envoy Global, 83 percent of employers hire one or more employees for roles that were initially intended to be based outside of the U.S.

Now, a recent survey conducted with more than 500 HR professionals specializing in global mobility and corporate migration, has noted the following:

“Employers recognize the value of maintaining and recruiting foreign national employees. However, rising immigration fees and potential policy changes are top of mind.

Due to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services  (USCIS) fee increases, some employers are scaling back specific sponsorship benefits. But employee retention and immigration perks remain fundamental to immigration and global mobility programs.

U.S. immigration barriers and employment-based visa delays present challenges to employers. Because of this, companies continue to explore and deploy new ways to access talent globally.

Increasingly, companies require more support to handle the growing importance of corporate immigration and global mobility”.

About the H-1B programme

Most of the top H-1B visa holders are concentrated in the technology, finance and consulting industries.

Some well-known companies that saw a decrease in H-1B visa approvals in fiscal year 2024 include IBM, Microsoft, HCL America, Google, Capgemini, and Meta platforms.

The H-1B program caps at a maximum of 85,000 visas per year, but exceptions make the number of approvals much higher. For example, in 2018-2019 the program had approximately 585,000 recipients, although that number has decreased during the pandemic before increasing again to 410,000 in 2022 and to more than 750,000 in 2023, according to the American Immigration Council.

However, this still does not meet the demand for highly talented foreigners, and the approval process uses an unclear lottery system.