Donald Trump barred the entry of high-skilled workers to the county till the end of the year by extending the suspension all H-1B, H4, L1, and J visas, as the US heads for an election in November.
It is said that US President Donald Trump suspended visas till the end of year 2020, a host of work visas including the H-1B type, barring the entry of more than 525,000 high-skilled foreign workers into the United States.
“President Trump is focused on getting Americans back to work as quickly as possible,” a White House official said.
Visa categories which are subject to the freeze include H-4 (for H-1B spouses), L1 (used for intracompany transfers) and J1 type (used by doctors and researchers).
However, healthcare workers, research related to coronavirus and farmers have been exempted from the visa ban.
The Trump administration, citing the pandemic moved ahead with its decision under the ‘America-first recovery’ effort in a bid to restrict the entry of foreign workers and freeing over half-a-million jobs for locals as the American economy stares at a recession in an election year.
Trump will sign an executive order, to widen the initial 60-day freeze on new work permits for non-US citizens two months ago, later Monday.
The US President, signed an executive order to suspended issuing of such visas to foreign workers in April. The ban on foreign workers has been extended until the end of 2020.
shock to tech companies
H-1Bs are non-immigrant visas which allow US employers to depute foreign workers in speciality jobs that require technical or theoretical expertise. These are the most sought after visas, especially by Indian techies who wish to immigrate to the US and are used by tech giants to save labour costs.
A majority of such visas are used by tech giants such as Google and Microsoft and even Indian IT companies such as TCS, Infosys and Wipro to deploy engineers from India to the US.
The move comes as a shock largely to the Indian Information Technology professionals as H-1B is used by them to work in the US.
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