United States President Donald Trump's relationship with the Silicon Valley has never been smooth, but it appears it is about to become even more contentious as his recent executive orders are being drafted to hit at H-1B visas.
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The US H1-B visa is a non-immigrant visa, which allows firms to hire foreign workers in specialised occupations. The H-1B and L1 work visas are majorly used by Indian IT professionals. Currently, the cap on H1B visas stands at 65,000, out of which 25,000-35,000 are issued to Indian nationals.
Trump's administration officials have drafted a new executive order which aims at overhauling the H-1B work-visa program, which is majorly used by technology companies to reign in top foreign engineering talent to their US-based locations. With restrictions on the visa, it will become tough for these firms to hire appropriate talent for the specific jobs.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that the possible executive order on work visas "is part of a larger immigration effort" and comes from "an overall need to look at all of these measures."
Soon after the news of the new executive orders was reported by Bloomberg, tech sector stocks took a hot and were down 1 percent on Monday. The fresh orders are also set to affect temporary agricultural workers, summer student workers and intracompany transfers.
The fresh order is aimed at ensuring that "officials administer our laws in a manner that prioritises the interests of American workers and — to the maximum degree possible — the jobs, wages and well-being of those workers," according to USA TODAY.
A legislation was also introduced in the US House of Representatives on Tuesday calling for more than doubling the minimum salary of H-1B visa holders to $130,000 from $60,000, making it difficult for firms to use the programme to replace American employees with foreign workers, including from India. The High-Skilled Integrity and Fairness Act of 2017 introduced by California Congressman Zoe Lofgren.
Senator Sherrod Brown has announced to introduce H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act in the Senate which he said would close loopholes in the H-1B and L-1 visa programs and provide increased protections for both American workers and visa holders.
The order targeting the specialised immigrant workers has not come into effect yet but is scheduled to be passed by the Trump administration soon. The latest controversial draft comes as the world is already uprising about Trump's orders of a sweeping ban on entry of immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries including Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Libya and Yemen.
Soon after trump signed the orders on immigration ban, major tech companies voiced against Trump's move. The CEOs of Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, Uber, Airbnb and Tesla Motors said that Trump's policy was affecting their own employees working in America legally and it would also jeopardise their competitive quest for talent.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai was the first to condemn Trump's orders citing that around 200 of his employees were immediately stranded abroad after the passing of the anti-immigrant orders.
Rebelling against Trump's orders, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky offered free housing to anyone who had been displaced by the ban and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings in a Facebook post said that it was "time to link arms together to protect American values of freedom and opportunity."
The new orders on the H-1B visas will come into effect on April 1, when the annual application process these visas start.
