Some people who were already on planes preparing to leave the country on Friday de-boarded over fears they may not be allowed to re-enter the country, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.<\/p>\n
H-1B visas allow companies to sponsor foreign workers with specialised skills \u2013 such as scientists, engineers, and computer programmers \u2013 to work in the United States, initially for three years but extendable to six.<\/p>\n
Such visas are widely used by the tech industry. Indian nationals account for nearly three-quarters of the permits allotted via lottery system each year.<\/p>\n
The United States approved approximately 400,000 H-1B visas in 2024, two-thirds of which were renewals.<\/p>\n
India, US business concerns<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump announced the change in Washington on Friday, arguing it would support American workers.<\/p>\n
The H-1B programme \u201chas been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labour\u201d, the executive order said.<\/p>\n
Trump also introduced a US$1 million \u201cgold card\u201d residency programme he had previewed months earlier.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe main thing is, we\u2019re going to have great people coming in, and they\u2019re going to be paying,\u201d Trump told reporters as he signed the orders in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n
Lutnick, who joined Trump in the Oval Office, said multiple times that the fee would be applied annually.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe company needs to decide… is the person valuable enough to have $100,000 a year payment to the government? Or they should head home and they should go hire an American,\u201d he told reporters.<\/p>\n
Though he claimed that \u201call the big companies are on board\u201d, many businesses were left confused about the details of the H-1B order.<\/p>\n
US bank JPMorgan confirmed that a memo had been sent to its employees with H-1B visas advising them to remain in the United States and avoid international travel until further guidance was issued.<\/p>\n
Tech entrepreneurs \u2013 including Trump\u2019s former ally Elon Musk \u2013 have warned against targeting H-1B visas, saying that the United States does not have enough homegrown talent to fill important tech sector job vacancies.<\/p>\n
India\u2019s top IT industry body Nasscom said the new measure would hit \u201cbusiness continuity\u201d and was also concerned by the short timeline.<\/p>\n
\u201cA one-day deadline creates considerable uncertainty for businesses, professionals, and students across the world,\u201d Nasscom said in a statement.<\/p>\n
India\u2019s Foreign Ministry said the mobility of skilled talent had contributed to \u201ctechnology development, innovation, economic growth, competitiveness and wealth creation\u201d in both countries and that it would assess the changes.<\/p>\n
It said in a statement the new measure would likely have \u201chumanitarian consequences by way of the disruption caused for families\u201d, which it hoped would be addressed by US authorities.<\/p>\n
– Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some people who were already on planes preparing to leave the country on Friday de-boarded over fears they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34023,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[31949,31951,806,31947,31943,3602,25349,2082,31942,42,10053,31950,2454,18087,661,117,43,31944,2847,29691,4409,31946,7254,8210,2687,370,1361,40,38,41,39,19096,31948,31945,10708,16550,1533],"class_list":["post-34022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-31949","tag-applicants","tag-as","tag-clarification","tag-clarified","tag-earlier","tag-fee","tag-for","tag-h1b","tag-headlines","tag-house","tag-imposed","tag-industry","tag-issued","tag-major","tag-new","tag-news","tag-onetime","tag-only","tag-order","tag-payment","tag-petitions","tag-policy","tag-rattled","tag-saying","tag-tech","tag-that","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-trumps","tag-us100000","tag-us100k","tag-visa","tag-white","tag-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}