President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team has been actively considering ways to revamp a temporary visa programme used to bring foreign workers to the United States to fill high-skilled jobs, according to sources familiar with the discussions.
The move is likely to significantly affect Indian IT firms and professionals as 65 per cent of H-1B petitions approved in the 2014 went to tech workers, mostly from India, according to USCIS.
Possibilities for reforming the distribution of H-1B visas, which are used largely by the tech industry, were discussed at a meeting last month with chief executives of tech companies at Trump Tower, said two sources, who asked not to be named because they were not authorised to talk about the closed-door talks.
Trump senior policy adviser Stephen Miller proposed scrapping the existing lottery system used to award the visas. A possible replacement system would favour visa petitions for jobs that pay the highest salaries, according to the sources.
H-1B visas are intended for foreign nationals in “specialty” occupations that generally require higher education, which according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) includes, but is not limited to, scientists, engineers or computer programmers. The government awards 65,000
visas every year.
Companies say they use them to recruit top talent. But a majority of the visas are awarded to outsourcing firms, sparking criticism by skeptics that say those firms use the visas to fill lower-level information technology jobs. Critics also say the lottery system benefits outsourcing firms that flood the system with mass applications.
The H-1B visa programme tends to be more critical to outsourcing firms than US tech firms. For instance, more than 60 percent of the US employees of Indian outsourcing firm Infosys are H-1B holders, and the company in its annual report has cited an increase in visa costs as among factors that could hurt its profitability.
In several high-profile ca?ses, American workers were asked to train H-1B holders to do their jobs before being laid off themselves.
The idea advanced by Miller in the tech meeting has also been pushed by the IEEE-USA. Miller previously served as a staffer for Senator Jeff Sessions, Trump’s pick for attorney general, who has been an outspoken critic of abuses of the H-1B programme.
Trump, who has applied for H-1B visas to bring in foreign workers to his own businesses sent mixed messages about the programme on the campaign trail.
He assailed it for taking jobs from US workers, but during a Republican debate last March said he was “sof?t?ening” his position “beca?use we have to have talented people in this country.”
He later issued a statement on his website saying he would “end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labour programme.”
Trump businesses, like Trump National Golf Club and Trump Model Management, have received permission to bring in more than two-dozen foreign employees on H-1B visas since 2011, according to the US department of labour data.
During the meeting last month in New York, Trump seemed to be searching for middle ground, and members of his transition team raised specific proposals, the two sources said. A third source familiar with the talks said the Trump team has also discussed the plan to change the lottery system internally.
There were more than a dozen top tech executives from some of the country’s largest technology companies, including Google, Facebook and Apple, present at the meeting.
The move is likely to significantly affect Indian IT firms and professionals as 65 per cent of H-1B petitions approved in the 2014 went to tech workers, mostly from India, according to USCIS.
Possibilities for reforming the distribution of H-1B visas, which are used largely by the tech industry, were discussed at a meeting last month with chief executives of tech companies at Trump Tower, said two sources, who asked not to be named because they were not authorised to talk about the closed-door talks.
Trump senior policy adviser Stephen Miller proposed scrapping the existing lottery system used to award the visas. A possible replacement system would favour visa petitions for jobs that pay the highest salaries, according to the sources.
H-1B visas are intended for foreign nationals in “specialty” occupations that generally require higher education, which according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) includes, but is not limited to, scientists, engineers or computer programmers. The government awards 65,000
visas every year.
Companies say they use them to recruit top talent. But a majority of the visas are awarded to outsourcing firms, sparking criticism by skeptics that say those firms use the visas to fill lower-level information technology jobs. Critics also say the lottery system benefits outsourcing firms that flood the system with mass applications.
The H-1B visa programme tends to be more critical to outsourcing firms than US tech firms. For instance, more than 60 percent of the US employees of Indian outsourcing firm Infosys are H-1B holders, and the company in its annual report has cited an increase in visa costs as among factors that could hurt its profitability.
In several high-profile ca?ses, American workers were asked to train H-1B holders to do their jobs before being laid off themselves.
The idea advanced by Miller in the tech meeting has also been pushed by the IEEE-USA. Miller previously served as a staffer for Senator Jeff Sessions, Trump’s pick for attorney general, who has been an outspoken critic of abuses of the H-1B programme.
Trump, who has applied for H-1B visas to bring in foreign workers to his own businesses sent mixed messages about the programme on the campaign trail.
He assailed it for taking jobs from US workers, but during a Republican debate last March said he was “sof?t?ening” his position “beca?use we have to have talented people in this country.”
He later issued a statement on his website saying he would “end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labour programme.”
Trump businesses, like Trump National Golf Club and Trump Model Management, have received permission to bring in more than two-dozen foreign employees on H-1B visas since 2011, according to the US department of labour data.
During the meeting last month in New York, Trump seemed to be searching for middle ground, and members of his transition team raised specific proposals, the two sources said. A third source familiar with the talks said the Trump team has also discussed the plan to change the lottery system internally.
There were more than a dozen top tech executives from some of the country’s largest technology companies, including Google, Facebook and Apple, present at the meeting.
Tags:
