The US President, Donald Trump’s ‘Buy America, Hire American’ initiative threatens the livelihood of thousands of foreign workers in the United States. The Trump administration is considering a proposal that prevents extensions of H-1B visa and directly affects thousands of Indian immigrants working in the US on H-1B visa as they could be deported.
What is H1B?
The H1B is a non-immigrant employment visa for temporary workers to enter the United States. An employer should offer a job to you in order to apply for the H1B visa. An approved H1B visa is treated as a work permit where the employee can obtain a visa stamp and work in the United States for that particular employer.
One can apply for the green card as they continue to reside in the states on the basis of their H1B visa. Having a green card, officially known as a Permanent Resident Card, allows a person to live and work permanently in the United States.
The H1B visa could be extended having put forth an application for a green card till the time the citizenship was granted. As per an unofficial estimate, there are nearly 5,00,000 Indians waiting in the queue for green cards and have to seek annual extensions of their H-1B visas. Many wait for decades to get their green cards.
Tweak in H1B visa rules:
The US is considering new regulations aimed at preventing the extension of H-1B visas, as part of US President Donald Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” initiative.
The move could directly stop hundreds of thousands of foreign workers from keeping their H-1B visas while their green card applications are pending.
It aims to impose new restrictions to prevent abuse and misuse of H-1B visas, besides ending the provision of granting an extension for those who already have a green card.
Consequences:
Backed by the Trump administration, the legislation ‘Securing America’s Future Act’ if passed by Congress and signed into law by US President Donald Trump will end the diversity visa programme and reduce the overall immigration levels from currently averaging 1.05 million to 2,60,000 a year. “The idea is to create a sort of ‘self- deportation’ of hundreds of thousands of Indian tech workers in the US to open up those jobs for Americans,” it said, quoting a source briefed by Homeland Security officials.
In a late-night statement, the White House said the legislation “would accomplish the President’s core priorities for the American people”.
Current Scenario:
“This would be a major catastrophic development as many people have been waiting in line for green cards for over a decade, have US citizen children, own a home,” said Leon Fresco, who served as a deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department in the Obama administration and now represent H-1B workers.
A legislation that seeks to push for a merit-based immigration system and increase the allotment of green cards by 45 percent annually has been introduced in the US House of Representatives. This may benefit Indian techies if signed into law by helping a larger crowd get their green card before their H1B expires. However, most Indians continue to remain bound by the uncalled changes in the visa rules as they struggle for the much sought American citizenship.