Last year there were 233,000 petitions. Only 85k petitions are actually accepted each year. Compare that to 172,500 petitions received in 2014 and 125,000 in 2013.<p>This means the rate of companies that use h-1b has actually slowed down by a lot. I know as a fact that most of the US tech companies that have offices in Europe, are actually transitioning to using L-1 visas and don't apply for H-1b anymore.<p>If you're a small startup and you want to hire someone who is not a US citizen your options are pretty limited right now.