Does Deloitte Sponsor H-1B? It Depends Which Deloitte — How to Find the Entity That Files

"Deloitte" is not an employer. Several separate US firms share the name, each its own legal entity, and only one of them would be the petitioner on your I-129. Here is how to find out which.

You typed a brand name and "h1b" into Google, and a database gave you a number. Something like Deloitte Consulting LLP, 4,812 labor condition applications certified. Impressive, precise, and not an answer to the question you actually have, which is whether the company on your offer letter will file for you and whether it is even the same company as the one in that table.

Look at the results page again. If the brand appears three or four times with different suffixes, that is not a data glitch. Those are different employers.

There is no company called Deloitte that employs anyone in the United States

Deloitte's own published description of itself, on deloitte.com, reads:

"Services to clients are provided by the subsidiaries of Deloitte LLP, including: Deloitte & Touche LLP, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP, Deloitte Tax LLP, Deloitte Transactions and Business Analytics LLP. Deloitte USA LLP, Deloitte LLP, and the subsidiaries of Deloitte LLP are each separate and distinct legal entities. Each of the subsidiaries listed above is organized under Delaware law, is separately capitalized, has its own Chairman, CEO, and Board of Directors."

Note the word including. That list is not exhaustive.

Above all of them sits Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, which the company describes as "a private company limited by guarantee, incorporated in England & Wales," and which "does not provide services to clients, nor does it direct or control the decisions Deloitte firms make." The member firms, Deloitte says, "are not subsidiaries or branch offices of a global parent, but instead are separate and distinct legal entities."

So "does Deloitte sponsor H-1B" is a category error, and the same error applies to Accenture, EY, PwC, KPMG, Amazon, and most large health systems. Whether an entity files a petition for you is not knowable from the brand. This page is not about Deloitte. Deloitte is the clearest available example of a structure that shows up everywhere, and the procedure below generalizes to any employer.

The single fastest thing you can do right now: open the application portal you applied through and look for a field labeled "legal employer," "employing entity," or "company," usually on the background-check or offer step. Or open your offer letter and read the entity named in the first paragraph and in the signature block. That string, not the brand, is your employer.

Four reasons the entity is the only thing that matters

The petitioner on Form I-129 is one legal entity with one tax ID

An H-1B petition is filed by a named United States employer with a named tax identification number. That entity prints on your I-797 approval notice. It is what a consular officer reads at a visa interview and what a CBP officer sees at the port of entry. There is no field on the form for a brand.

The labor condition application is filed by that entity

Form ETA-9035 carries the employer's name, its identification number, the worksite and the wage rate. It is entity-level. Two firms under one brand file separate LCAs, at separate wage levels, for separate worksites.

Cap exemption is an attribute of the entity, not the campus or the brand

This is the failure that costs people the most time. A nonprofit affiliated with a university may be cap-exempt while a for-profit subsidiary operating from the same street address is not. Two offers from what looks like "the same place" can have completely different H-1B timelines — one filed any month of the year, the other waiting on a March lottery.

Moving between related entities is usually an employer change

An internal transfer from one group company to another is generally not a payroll update. It typically requires a new or amended petition, because the petitioner is changing. Whether a corporate reorganization creates a successor-in-interest relationship that preserves the existing petition is a legal determination made on specific facts — never a description you can apply to your own situation from the outside. Our coverage of what happens to your H-1B in an acquisition or restructure sets out the questions; the answers belong to the employer's immigration counsel.

Why the lookup tools structurally cannot answer this

The tools are not wrong. They are answering a different question, and it is worth being precise about why.

They are built on two public data sets. The first is the Department of Labor's Office of Foreign Labor Certification disclosure data, which publishes LCA records filed through the FLAG system. The second is the USCIS H-1B Employer Data Hub, built from Form I-129 fields and adjudicative decisions.

Now read what USCIS says about how its own hub is organized, in Understanding Our H-1B Employer Data Hub:

"The counts of initial approval, initial denial, continuing approval, and continuing denial are aggregated by distinct completion fiscal year, two digit NAICS code, tax ID, state, city, and ZIP code. For example, one employer with multiple addresses in a given fiscal year will have multiple rows in the data. The most common spelling of employer name per unique tax ID is used."

Three consequences fall straight out of that sentence, plus a fourth from the glossary on the same page:

1. The name you see is a normalization, not a legal name. It is the most common spelling attached to a tax ID.
2. One entity produces multiple rows if it filed from multiple addresses in a year.
3. The counts are first decisions only. USCIS excludes subsequent decisions on appeal or revocation, and excludes petitions still pending when the data is generated.
4. The Tax ID field is only the last four digits of the petitioner's tax identification number, taken from Form I-129, Page 1, Part 1, Question 5. You cannot match an entity by EIN using the hub, because the hub does not publish the EIN.

USCIS also notes that data is transferred from paper forms manually and that petitioner and data-entry errors occur, including mixed-up digits in a tax identification number.

Two more distinctions the third-party tools routinely blur:

• An LCA is not a petition. It is a prerequisite filed with DOL. A company can certify LCAs it never uses. A big LCA count is evidence of intent and hiring plans, not of approved petitions.
• The Data Hub is not a list of sponsors. It is a record of approvals and denials by fiscal year. It says nothing about whether the employer will sponsor a new hire this year, and it lags — USCIS updates it quarterly, with first-quarter data appearing months later.

Where the tools become genuinely valuable is after you know the entity name. Then you are querying the right string. Our five-method checklist for confirming a company sponsors H-1B covers the complementary approaches, and it works far better once the entity is resolved.

The five-step entity resolution procedure

Ordered by how early in the hiring process you can run each step.

1. The application system's legal employer field. Most enterprise applicant-tracking systems capture a legal entity distinct from the brand — usually at the application, background-check, or offer-acceptance step, under a label like "legal employer" or "employing entity." If you are still searching rather than interviewing, our guide to searching LinkedIn for sponsoring employers covers how to spot the entity structure from the outside before you ever apply.

2. The offer letter. Read three places: the letterhead, the entity named in the first paragraph, and the signature block. These can disagree with each other. If they do, that is not a typo to ignore — ask which entity is the employer of record, in writing.

3. The Form I-9 and the background check authorization. Both name the employer of record. The I-9 in particular is completed by the entity that is legally your employer, which makes it a clean read.

4. Your W-2, if you are already employed. Per the IRS instructions for Forms W-2 and W-3, box b carries the employer identification number — nine digits, in the format 00-0000000 — and box c carries the employer's name, address and ZIP code, which must match what the employer uses on its federal employment tax returns. This is the single most reliable artifact a current employee has, because it is the entity that actually paid you.

5. The certified labor condition application and the public access file. Two separate rights, and both are real:

• Under 20 CFR 655.734(a)(3), the employer "shall, no later than the date the H-1B nonimmigrant reports to work at the place of employment, provide the H-1B nonimmigrant with a copy of the LCA (Form ETA 9035, or Form ETA 9035E) certified by ETA and signed by the employer." On request, it must also provide the cover pages, Form ETA 9035CP.
• Under 20 CFR 655.760(a), the employer must make the filed LCA and its necessary supporting documentation "available for public examination at the employer's principal place of business in the U.S. or at the place of employment within one working day after the date on which the labor condition application is filed with DOL."

The public access file contains the certified LCA and cover pages, documentation of the wage rate to be paid, an explanation of the actual-wage system, the prevailing-wage documentation, and the notice documents — and, where the employer has undergone a change in corporate structure, a sworn statement from the new employing entity that includes its FEIN. That last item is the cleanest possible answer to "which entity am I actually working for now."

Be accurate about the limits, though. The public access file is not the personnel file. DOL expressly excludes the underlying individual wage data used to set the prevailing wage from public examination, and payroll records are not required to be in the file. Asking for the public access file is routine; asking for everything is not.

Then close the loop. Take the entity name — and the tax ID if you have it from your own W-2 — and check it against the USCIS Data Hub and the DOL disclosure files. Now the lookup tools work, because you are searching the string that will actually appear on your I-129.

Five corporate patterns and how each one behaves

Professional services firms split by service line

Separate limited liability partnerships for audit, consulting, tax and advisory, as in the Deloitte structure above. Each one is a distinct employer with its own filing history and its own hiring cycle. The specific risk: interviewing across two service lines of the same firm and generating a duplicate registration problem, discussed below. Our guides to how consulting firms structure sponsorship and the Big Four accounting sponsorship picture go deeper on both sides of this split.

Global groups with a US subsidiary

A foreign parent and its US operating company are different employers, and only a United States employer can be the petitioner. The risk: assuming the parent's global headcount, revenue, or filing history belongs to the subsidiary that would actually employ you. A 40,000-person group can have a 30-person US entity.

Staffing and consulting vendors placing you at a client

The vendor is the petitioner; the client is the worksite. Your offer letter names the vendor and your badge names the client. The risk: thinking the client's brand protects you, and being unprepared for an RFE on the employer-employee relationship — who supervises, who evaluates, who can fire. Our comparison of in-house employer versus staffing agency sponsorship explains what evidence that question demands.

Health systems and academic medical centers

On one campus you can find a hospital corporation, a faculty practice plan, a university, and an affiliated nonprofit research institute. Four employers. Four different cap-exemption answers. The risk: two offers at the same address with entirely different immigration timelines, and nobody in HR flagging it because internally they all say "we."

Acquisitions and reorganizations

An acquired company may keep filing under its own entity for a period after the deal closes, and the entity printed on your approval notice can stop existing. The risk: a mismatch between the entity on your approval notice and the entity paying you. That mismatch is exactly the situation that needs counsel, not a checklist.

The duplicate registration trap

Get the mechanics right, because the folklore here runs in both directions.

More registrations do not give you more lottery entries. Under 8 CFR 214.2(h)(8)(iii)(A)(4), "Registrations will be counted based on the number of unique beneficiaries who are registered," and "each unique beneficiary will only be counted once toward the numerical allocation projections, regardless of how many registrations were submitted for that beneficiary." Two genuine, unrelated employers registering you is permitted and does not improve your odds.

A single petitioner may only register you once per fiscal year. Under (h)(8)(iii)(A)(2), if a petitioner submits more than one registration per beneficiary in the same fiscal year, "all registrations filed by that petitioner relating to that beneficiary for that fiscal year may be considered invalid," and USCIS may deny or revoke any petition based on them. The same paragraph reaches registrations submitted for the same beneficiary using different identifying information, which USCIS may find invalid on the same basis. Petitioners get notice and an opportunity to respond first.

And related entities carry a specific burden. 8 CFR 214.2(h)(2)(i)(G) provides that where USCIS believes related entities — "such as a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate" — may not have a legitimate business need to file more than one petition for the same beneficiary, it may issue a request for evidence, a notice of intent to deny, or a notice of intent to revoke on each petition. If any of the related entities fails to demonstrate a legitimate business need, "all petitions filed on that alien's behalf by the related entities will be denied or revoked."

So the practical instruction is not "don't do it." It is: if you are in process with two arms of one corporate group, tell both recruiters in writing before the registration window opens. Let their immigration counsel decide whether a legitimate business need exists and which entity files. That is a determination for lawyers with the facts, and getting it wrong can cost you both petitions rather than one.

The four questions to ask before you accept

Send these. They are normal questions and a competent recruiter will have answers or will find them.

1. Which legal entity will appear as my employer on the offer letter and the Form I-9?
2. If the company files an H-1B for me, which entity would be the petitioner?
3. Is any related entity in the group also considering me for a role? (Frame it as helping them avoid a duplicate registration problem, which is exactly what it is.)
4. Has that entity filed H-1B petitions in prior fiscal years?

Then verify the fourth answer yourself instead of trusting it. Take the entity name from answer one, run it through the USCIS Data Hub and the DOL disclosure files, and see whether the filing history is where the recruiter says it is. Our guide to how to reverse-interview an employer about immigration support covers how to ask all four without sounding like you are auditing them.

This page teaches document literacy, not immigration strategy. Whether a particular entity is cap-exempt, whether an internal move between related entities needs a new petition or an amendment or nothing, whether a reorganization creates a successor-in-interest relationship, and whether two registrations by related entities were permissible are all legal determinations on specific facts. F1Jobs does not provide legal advice, and nothing here should be used to accept or decline an offer without professional review.

Frequently asked questions

Does Deloitte sponsor H-1B visas?

The question has no single answer because Deloitte is a brand shared by several distinct US legal entities. Deloitte's own US site states that services to clients are provided by the subsidiaries of Deloitte LLP, including Deloitte & Touche LLP, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP, Deloitte Tax LLP and Deloitte Transactions and Business Analytics LLP, and that Deloitte USA LLP, Deloitte LLP and those subsidiaries are each separate and distinct legal entities organized under Delaware law, separately capitalized, each with its own chairman, CEO and board. Whether any one of them files for your role depends on which one is hiring you, and the honest way to find out is to identify the entity on your offer paperwork rather than to look up the brand.

How do I find out which legal entity is actually hiring me?

In roughly this order — the "legal employer" field on the application system, the letterhead and signature block on the offer letter, the employer name on the background-check authorization and the Form I-9, and finally box b and box c of your W-2, which carry the employer identification number and the registered employer name and address. If you are already employed, the certified labor condition application your employer is required to give you names the entity outright.

Why does the specific entity matter if they are all the same company?

Because immigration law does not recognize brands. The petitioner on Form I-129 is one legal entity with one tax identification number, and that entity is what appears on your approval notice, what your labor condition application is filed under, what determines whether cap exemption applies, and what you would be transferring away from later. Moving between two entities under the same brand is frequently treated as changing employers and can require a new or amended petition.

Can two companies in the same corporate group both register me in the H-1B lottery?

It gains you nothing and creates real risk. Since USCIS moved to beneficiary-centric selection, each unique beneficiary is counted once in the lottery no matter how many registrations name them, so a second registration does not improve your odds. A single petitioner may only submit one registration per beneficiary per fiscal year, and duplicate registrations by that petitioner may all be treated as invalid. Separately, under 8 CFR 214.2(h)(2)(i)(G), where related entities such as a parent, subsidiary or affiliate file for the same beneficiary and cannot show a legitimate business need, USCIS may deny or revoke every petition the related entities filed. If you are interviewing with more than one arm of the same group, raise it with both recruiters before registration season rather than after.

Why can't a database site like an H-1B lookup tool answer this for me?

Because those tools are built on filing records aggregated by employer name string or by tax identification number, and neither one knows which entity is hiring you. USCIS's own employer data hub aggregates counts by tax ID and then displays the most common spelling of the name attached to it — and it publishes only the last four digits of that tax ID. That is useful for seeing that an entity has filed before and useless for resolving which of several similarly named entities is on your offer letter. The lookup tells you about the past; the offer letter tells you about you.

Am I entitled to see the labor condition application my employer filed?

Yes. Under 20 CFR 655.734(a)(3), the employer must give you a copy of the certified labor condition application no later than the date you report to work at the place of employment, and under 20 CFR 655.760(a) it must make a public access file available for examination at its principal place of business or the place of employment within one working day after the application is filed. The file records the entity name, the wage rate, the worksite and the wage methodology, and requesting it is a normal, routine act.

What should I ask a recruiter before I accept?

Four questions, in plain language. Which legal entity will appear as my employer on the offer letter and the Form I-9. Which entity would be the petitioner if the company files an H-1B for me. Whether any related entity in the group is also considering me, so that duplicate registration is avoided. And whether that entity has filed H-1B petitions before, which you can then verify yourself rather than take on trust.

Every meaningful immigration decision in your career will be made about one legal entity with one tax ID. The brand on the building is marketing; the name in the signature block is the employer. F1Jobs helps international candidates check an offer's sponsorship reality — the entity, the filing history, and the questions to ask — before signing.