Trump's H1B Visa Threat

To put ‘America First’, the Trump administration wants to restrict white-collar immigration as well. Indian companies should worry.

- Ashish Kumar Sen

In November 2015, Donald Trump sat down for an interview with Stephen Bannon, executive chairman of the Breitbart News Network, a far-right news and opinion site. In the course of the conversation, Bannon made the startling assertion that Silicon Valley has far too many Asian CEOs. An ominous portent of things to come? It certainly seems so today.

Fast-forward to 2017: Trump is the president of the United States, and Bannon, who has been described as a white supremacist, is his all-powerful advisor. Add to this the fact that soon after coming to office, Trump issued a highly-charged and controversial executive order—which had Bannon’s fingerprints all over it—banning citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries and refugees from all over the world from entering the US. A federal judge in Seattle has since blocked the travel ban. Regardless, Trump is determined to get it passed.

Given this recent and not-so-recent history, Indian and American firms that have benefitted from the H1B visa programme are now wracked with anxiety following reports that Trump has another executive order in the works, one that would place severe restrictions on hiring foreign workers. A leaked draft of the order shows that the Trump administration wants to reduce legal immigration to the US. The order directs the secretary of the department of homeland security to promulgate a regulation that would “restore the integrity of employment-based non-immigrant worker programmes” and “consider ways” to amend the H1B programme so that it is “more efficient and ensure that beneficiaries of the programme are the best and the brightest”.