In a press release issued on October 16, 2019, Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), announced USCIS’ preliminary Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 statistics, accomplishments and efforts to implement President Trump’s immigration agenda.

In the announcement, Mr. Cuccinelli confirms that USCIS’ FY 2019 has been “a historic year” and that it has “achieved many of President Trump’s goals to make our immigration system work better for America.”

In his announcement, Mr. Cuccinelli discusses what USCIS has accomplished in the areas of Crisis Response and Asylum Reform, Protecting American Workers and Taxpayers, Homeland Security, USCIS Workload and System Modernization.

In practice, USCIS policy changes have had a significant impact on employers of H-1B visa holders as the denial rate for new H-1B petitions have increased from 6% in FY 2015 to 33% in the second quarter of FY 2019, according to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis of USCIS data.

Employers are also experiencing increasing denial rates in obtaining continued H-1B approval for their existing H-1B visa holder employees. USCIS will publish its final FY 2019 statistics later this month.