Big win for IT firms: US court rules in favour of grant of H-1B visas to computer programmers This story is from December 19, 2020 Big win for IT firms: US court rules in favour of grant of H-1B visas to computer programmers Lubna Kably | TNN | Dec 19, 2020, 13:35 IST MUMBAI: A recent decision by the US appellate court (referred to as Ninth Circuit) is a resounding victory for information technology (IT) companies that seek to sponsor computer programmers for H-1B visas. The Ninth Circuit has deemed as arbitrary and capricious a decision of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which had held that computer programmers are not entitled to H-1B ‘speciality occupation’ visas. In fact, USCIS had in 2017 rescinded an earlier policy memo that recognised the position of computer programmers as a speciality occupation.