Trump to sign executive order on reform of H-1B visa system

April 18, 2017

Washington, Apr 18: US President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order that would tighten the process of issuing the H-1B visas and seek a review of the system for creating an "entirely new structure" for awarding these visas, the most sought-after by Indian IT firms and professionals.

Trump1Trump is scheduled to travel to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the home state of House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, to sign the 'Buy American, Hire American' Executive Order.

This was a transitional step aimed at achieving a more skills-based and merit-based immigration system. The executive order would be signed a day after the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it has completed the computerised draw of lots from the 199,000 petitions it received for the Congressional mandated 65,000 H-1B visas for the fiscal year 2018 beginning October 1 this year.

The lottery was held for the 20,000 H-1B visas for those applicants having higher education from US educational institutions. Opposing the traditional lottery system for H-1B visas, a senior administration official told White House reporters that these visas were being used by companies to bring in foreign workers at a low wage rate and displace local workers.

The official argued that there were enough qualified people within the country to meet the demand of technology professionals. "With respect to the H-1B visa programme in particular, which deals mostly with STEM jobs, we graduate about twice as many STEM students each year as find jobs in STEM fields.

"The issue of training workers for skilled manufacturing jobs is a different aspect of a policy then, say, the H-1B visa, which obviously is for STEM occupations," the official said. The official argued that the reality was that the US has large numbers of unemployed American workers. "Right now we're creating an environment with our guest- worker programmes where those workers are being bypassed," the official said.

"If you make it harder to abuse the guest-worker programmes, it creates more of a market for domestic workers, as well as more of a market for the kinds of job training and vocational training programmes that you're talking about," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Trump had made the alleged abuse and fraud in H-1B visa system a major election issue during his campaign.

The executive order signed by Trump today will call for the strict enforcement of all laws governing entry into the United States of labour from abroad, for the stated purpose of creating higher wages and higher employment rates for workers in America, the official said.

"It would further call on the departments of Labour, Justice, Homeland Security and State to take prompt action to crackdown on fraud and abuse, which should both be understood as separate problems, in our immigration system in order to protect workers in the United States and their economic conditions," the official asserted.

"As a practical matter, you're creating an entirely new structure for awarding these visas. I mean, it is a completely...total transformation of the H-1B programme," the official said. According to the senior administration official, these reforms were broadly supported by groups that represent American workers in the US, and that a lot of the driving action historically for these kinds of guest-worker reforms have been from groups that in fact even tilt Democratic.

"This (executive order) would apply across the board, but in particular, the executive order has an additional clause on the H-1B visa programme, and calls on those same four departments to put forward reforms to see to it that H-1B visas are awarded to the most skilled or highest-paid applicants," the official said. Noting that right now the H-1B visas were awarded by random lottery, the official said 80 per cent of H-1B workers were paid less than the median wage in their fields.

Only about five to six per cent, depending on the year, of H-1B workers command the highest wage tier recognised by the Department of Labour, there being four wage tiers, he said. "The highest wage tier, for instance in 2015, was only five per cent of H-1B workers. So 80 per cent received less than the median wage and only 10 per cent received the median wage," he noted.

"And, so only five per cent were categorised at the highest wage tier of the four wage tiers that are in place for the H-1B guest-worker visa," the official said. The result of that is that workers are often brought in well below market rates to replace American workers, sort of violating the principle of the programme, which is supposed to be a means for bringing in skilled labour, the official said.

"And instead, you're bringing in, a lot of times, workers who are actually less skilled and lower paid than the workers that they're replacing," he stated. The official said Trump has done more to bring a national spotlight onto the abuses in the H-1B guest-worker programme than anybody in the country has at any point in recent history.

"If you change that current system that awards visas randomly without regard for skill or wage to a skills-based awarding, it makes it extremely difficult to use the visa to replace or undercut American workers. These are not bringing in workers at beneath the market wage," he said. The top three recipients of the H-1B visas, the official said, were Tata (TCS), Infosys and Cognizant.

"Some companies oftentimes are called outsourcing firms. They're like the top recipients of H-1B visa. You know, are companies like Tata (TCS), Infosys, Cognizant. They will apply for a very large number of visas; more than they get. Like putting extra tickets in the lottery raffle, if you will," the official said.

"And then they'll get the lion's share of visas," the official said. As part of the executive order, the agencies have been asked to do everything they can, he said. "But you could be looking at things on the administration side like increasing fees for H-1B visas. You could be looking at things like if we could adjust the wage scale to have a more honest reflection of what the prevailing wages actually are in these fields," the official said.

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News Network
April 24,2020

Washington, Apr 24: President Donald Trump has favoured a phased reopening of the US economy, devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed nearly 50,000 lives and infected over eight lakh people in the country.

More than 95 per cent of the country's 330 million people are under stay-at-home order as a result of the social mitigation measures, including social distancing, being enforced till May 1.

Trump on Thursday indicated that the stay-at-home order might be extended beyond May 1, but vehemently advocated the need to gradually open up the economy.

In the past few weeks, more than 26 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits and the figure is soon likely to cross 40 million.

Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have projected a negative growth in the US in 2020.

To keep America gaining momentum, every citizen needs to maintain the vigilance, and we all understand that very well we've gone over it many, many times this includes practising good hygiene, maintaining social distance, and the voluntary use of face covering, Trump said.

Safe and phased reopening of our economy -- it's very exciting, but it does not mean that we are letting down our guard at all in any way; on the contrary, continued diligence is an essential part of our strategy to get our country back to work to take our country back, he told reporters at his daily White House news conference on coronavirus.

The data and facts on the ground suggest that the US is making great progress, he said.

In 23 states, new cases have declined. In the peak week, 40 per cent of the American counties have seen a rapid decline in new cases. As many as 46 states report a drop in patients showing coronavirus-like symptoms, he said.

Trump said the US is very close to finding a vaccine for COVID-19.

We are very close to testing... when testing starts it takes a period of time but we will get it done, he said.

According to Vice President Mike Pence, data continues to show promising signs of progress in the New York Metro area, New Jersey, Connecticut, Detroit and New Orleans. All appear to be passed their peak and we are seeing consistent declines in hospitalisation and cases in regions across the country, he said.

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News Network
June 29,2020

Paris, Jun 29: More than half a million people have been killed by the novel coronavirus, nearly two thirds of them in the United States and Europe, according to an news agency tally at 2200 GMT Sunday based on official sources.

The official death count for the disease now stands at 500,390 deaths from 10,099,576 cases recorded worldwide. The United States has suffered the highest death count (125,747), followed by Brazil (57,622) and the United Kingdom (43,550).

The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.

Many countries are testing only the most serious cases.

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Agencies
July 22,2020

Houston, Jul 22: China said on Wednesday that the US has ordered it to close its consulate in Houston in what an official called an outrageous and unjustified move that will sabotage China-US relations.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin condemned the action, which comes as tensions rise between the world's two largest economies. He warned of firm countermeasures if the US does not reverse its decision.

The unilateral closure of China's consulate general in Houston within a short period of time is an unprecedented escalation of its recent actions against China, Wang said at a daily news briefing.

There was no immediate confirmation or explanation from the U.S. side.

Media reports in Houston said that authorities had responded to reports of a fire at the consulate. Witnesses said that people were burning paper in what appeared to be trash cans, the Houston Chronicle reported, citing police.

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