Denial Rates and Requests for Evidence Plummet for L-1B Petitions

Denial rates and Requests for Evidence have plummeted over the past three years for companies transferring high-skilled employees into the United States, facilitating the completion of projects and foreign investment. Attorneys say denial rates and Requests for Evidence declined on L-1B petitions because U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services started to apply the proper legal standard and implemented more consistent policies. Companies will wait to see if the incoming Trump administration reverses those actions and adopts more restrictive policies.

The Immigration Service’s Denial Rates Declined for L-1B Petitions

According to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis, denial rates for L-1B petitions dropped from 25.3% in FY 2021 to 10.2% in FY 2024. In earlier years, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denied many L-1B petitions across different administrations. When Barack Obama was president, in FY 2016, USCIS denied 22.8% of L-1B petitions, preventing many companies from transferring employees with specialized knowledge into the United States.

Denial rates for L-1B petitions reached their height during the Trump administration: 33.7% in FY 2019 and 31.9% in FY 2020. The L-1B denial rate fell to 25.3% in FY 2021, 19% in FY 2022, 15.5% in FY 2023, and 10.2% in FY 2024.

What is an L-1B Visa?

An L-1B visa allows an employer “to transfer a professional employee with specialized knowledge relating to the organization’s interests from one of its affiliated foreign offices to one of its offices in the United States,” according to USCIS.

What is Specialized Knowledge?

Under the regulations, “Specialized knowledge” means either special knowledge possessed by an individual of the petitioning organization’s product, service, research, equipment, techniques, management, or other interests and its application in international markets, or an advanced level of knowledge or expertise in the organization’s processes and procedures.

Why the Immigration Service’s Denial Rates Changed

Attorneys agree that several factors combined to drive down L-1B denial rates. “First, USCIS finally started applying the actual legal standard instead of imposing novel evidentiary requirements,” said Dagmar Butte of Parker Butte. She believes attorneys and companies filed better-documented cases to match the regulatory standard, which helped “wash out” marginal filings.

Vic Goel, managing partner at Goel & Anderson, attributes the problems with L-1B denial rates to the Matter of GST, a 2008 decision by the Administrative Appeals Office within USCIS. “Once that decision was issued, the landscape changed significantly, and high denial rates became the norm,” said Goel. “Over time, this discouraged many petitioners, particularly those in information technology consulting, from filing L-1B cases.” He thinks this “self-selecting” behavior led to a pool of better-documented petitions submitted to USCIS.

Conclusion

The recent decline in L-1B denial rates is encouraging, but it is worth noting that the L-1B approval process remains more challenging than many other employment-based visa categories. The significant disparity in denial rates between L-1B and H-1B petitions underscores the ongoing challenges surrounding the interpretation of “specialized knowledge.”

FAQs

Q: What is an L-1B visa?
A: An L-1B visa allows an employer to transfer a professional employee with specialized knowledge relating to the organization’s interests from one of its affiliated foreign offices to one of its offices in the United States.

Q: What is specialized knowledge?
A: Specialized knowledge means either special knowledge possessed by an individual of the petitioning organization’s product, service, research, equipment, techniques, management, or other interests and its application in international markets, or an advanced level of knowledge or expertise in the organization’s processes and procedures.

Q: Why did L-1B denial rates decline?
A: L-1B denial rates declined because USCIS started to apply the proper legal standard and implemented more consistent policies, leading to better-documented cases and a decline in marginal filings.

Q: What is the current denial rate for L-1B petitions?
A: The current denial rate for L-1B petitions is 10.2%.