The President of United States of America Donald Trump has issued a pronouncement to suspend all foreign work visas for the rest of the year. The suspension of work visas also includesan H-1B visa which is the most popular among Indian IT professional. Out of all H-1B visas around 75% or more belong to the Indians who go to America for employment.
Donald Trump called this announcement a necessary step because of the pandemic situation millions of Americans has lost their jobs. The global economy has been dropping consistently and unemployment is the major setback over the situation. This announcement and proclamation of Donald Trump is expected to impact a large number of foreign individuals and professionals. The most affected are going to be Indian IT professionals as thousands of Indians have already started the processing of their H-1B visas. Not just employees, several American and Indian companies will also be in trouble because they were issued H-1B visas by the US government for the fiscal year 2021 which was going to commence from the 1st of October.
The companies would now to wait for 6 more months to get the required stamping from the US diplomatic missions. This proclamation is going to come to affect from the 24th of June and is going to affect a lot of Indian professionals who were looking to renew their H-1B visas this year.
What exactly is a US H-1B visa?
The US H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ graduate level workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise in specialized fields such as in IT, finance, accounting, architecture, engineering, mathematics, science, medicine, etc. Every 3 out of 4 H-1B visa holders in the United States are Indians.
In the notification issued by the president, he said that the unemployment rate in the country has increased to 4 times between the months of February and May 2020. He also called it the most extreme unemployment rates ever recorded in the history of labor statistics.
Earlier he had also banned issuing of green cards of lawful permanent residency. Trump mentioned that how American workers and labor compete for jobs with foreign professional in every sector including the working class. American also competes against millions of people who enter the states to perform or get temporary employment. These temporary employees come along with their families who also compete against American workers. Ordinarily temporary employees are properly administered for a temporary work program which also benefits the economy in more ways than worsen it, but as these are the extra ordinary times, where the world is going through a global economic crisis due to the global health crisis called the Covid-19, these temporary foreign workers pose a threat to the American workers and thus suspending the visas is the only available options for millions of Americans to not lose their jobs.
He backed his statement with some facts saying in the last 3 months 17 million American jobs were lost in industries where employers are seeking to fill worker positions tied to H-2B nonimmigrant visas. Not just that employers in some industries are currently requesting H-1B and L workers to fill positions where 20 million Americans have lost their jobs.
Thus, Trump has suspended the issue of work visas like H-1B, H-2B and L as these non-immigrant visas programmes cause a certain threat to employment opportunities for Americans who have been worse affected by the coronavirus outbreak.
The proclamation issued by Trump suspends and also limits entry into US of H-1B, H-2B and L visas and their applicants until the end of the year. The new rules and suspension applies to those who are outside of the US, who do not have a valid non-immigrant visa and someone who has no official travel document other than the visa to enter the country.
This will not impact the non-immigrants lawful residing in their country and also it won’t affect the spouses of an American citizen.
By Deepika Agarwal
