Most people feel that the entire business of immigration is easy. The reality is that it is furthest from the truth. The adjudicators at USCIS, or the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services are determined to explode this myth, and that too at a record-setting pace.

The denial rate for L-1B petitions to transfer high-skilled employees into the United States went up, to a historic high of 35 percent in the FY 2014, according to data obtained from USCIS. It was just in 2006 that the denial rate for L1-B petitions was only 6 percent.

In order to transfer an employee with “specialized knowledge” and who possesses L1-B status into the United States an employer must first obtain an individual petition approval from the USCIS. Only after this is done that he can use the approved petition to obtain a visa from the US post abroad for the employee to gain entry to America. The increasingly high rate for L1-B petitions to transfer employees of Indian origin was at a remarkable rate of 56 per cent for FY 2012 to 2014,compared to an average denial rate of 13 per cent to transfer employees from all other countries during the same period.