Amid mounting uncertainties over the future of H-1B visas, used predominantly by Indian tech firms with US operations and software professionals, President Donald Trump will be taking a “comprehensive look” on this important work visa programme, the White House said on Wednesday.
“Whether it’s H-1B visas or the other one — spousal visas — other areas of student visas, I think there is a natural desire to have a full look at — a comprehensive look at that,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters when asked if Trump has any plans to revamp the H-1B programme before filing of visa petitions for next fiscal begins on April 1.
Spicer referred to Trump’s recent address to Congress when he spoke in favour of a “merit-based” system of legal immigration like the ones in Canada and Australia. “He mentioned it in his joint address that we’re one of only a handful of countries that doesn’t use a merit-based system of immigration, and that is something that we need to look at in its totality,” Spicer said.
With a clutch of Bills introduced by lawmakers in Congress over the past couple of months to reform the H-1B programme, Trump held a discussion on Tuesday with Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue, whose Bill aims to lower the US’s overall immigration by 50 per cent over a 10-year period.
On immigration of high-skilled workers, Senator Cotton later told MSNBC: “I think on the H1B temporary visa, but also the permanent green cards like EB1 and EB2, the President wants to get the very best from around the world.”
“Often those programmes are implemented in a way that are not consistent with their purposes. They don’t bring in PhDs and computer scientists. They replace mid-level data management workers,” the Senator from Arkansas said referring to the controversial steps by companies like Disney and Southern California Edison, replacing American workers by foreign workers on H-1B visas.
“He (Trump) would like to see reforms to those programs, as I would,” Cotton said, adding: “It’s really an empirical question of, where we do have gaps in our economy. But I will say this. There is no job that an American won’t do. Americans, with the right pay, will do any job, and that’s just the facts of the matter, and we need to make sure that we’re focused on Americans getting back to work and getting higher wages, supplemented where needed, based on the evidence, with immigration.”
Referring to the merit-based system, Cotton said: “The President has said in public, as he told us yesterday, that he wants to move in the direction of, for instance, Canada and Australia, and focused on more of what he calls a merit-based system. Our legislation is the first step in that. He’d like to see additional steps focusing on some of the employment based green cards and visas. And we’re happy to work with him on that.”
Called RAISE Act (Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment Act”, the Bill sponsored by Cotton and Perdue seeks to lower America’s overall immigration to 637,960 in its first year and to 539,958 by its 10th year. That will represent a 50 per cent reduction from the 1.05 million who arrived in 2015.
Their Bill seeks to limit immigration of family members of those already in the US, instead allowing only minor children and spouses of citizens and green card holders to get green cards themselves. Right now, other family members of American citizens are able to obtain green cards. The Bill also proposes elimination of diversity lottery visas and, in respect of refugees, limiting issuing of green cards to 50,000 per year.