US President Donald Trump has extended the freeze on the most sought H-1B visas along with other types of foreign work visas by three months to protect American employees, saying while therapeutics and Covid-19 vaccines are recently available, their effect on the labour market and community health has not yet been fully realised.
The decision will impact a large number of Indian IT professionals and various American and Indian companies who were issued H-1B visas by the US government for the fiscal year 2021.
Hours before the freeze was set to expire on December 31, Trump administration issued another proclamation on Thursday to extend it till March 30.
He said that the reasons for which he had issued such a restriction has not changed.
The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. The technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.
President Trump said that the effects of Covid-19 on the US labour market and the health of American communities is a matter of ongoing national concern, and the considerations present in the two previous proclamations have not been eliminated.
“The 2019 Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) continues to significantly disrupt Americans' livelihoods. While the November overall unemployment rate in the United States of 6.7 per cent reflects a marked decline from its April high, there were still 9,834,000 fewer seasonally adjusted nonfarm jobs in November than in February of 2020,” Trump said in his proclamation.
“Moreover, actions such as States’ continued imposition of restrictions on businesses still affect the number of workers that can be hired as compared with February of 2020,” Trump said, adding that his latest proclamation may be extended if necessary
