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WASHINGTON: Four influential US senators pressure president Donald trump suspend all guest workers visas including H-1B tickets and optional practical training (OPT) for foreign students – freeze that will negatively affect India – amidst an astonishing American jobs wipeout not seen since the Great Depression.
In a letter to Trump just before the Labor Department report on Friday that showed coronavirus The pandemic decimated 20.5 million jobs in April to cause 14.7 percent unemployment, with senators calling for “the suspension of new guest worker visas for at least next year, or until unemployment has returned to normal levels,” arguing that “given the extreme lack of jobs available to American job seekers, it defies common sense to admit additional foreign guest workers to compete for such limited employment.”
Legislators specifically sought the suspension, at a minimum, of H-2B visas (temporary non-farm workers), H-1B visas (skilled occupation workers), the optional practical training program (OPT) (extension of foreign student visas after graduation) and the EB-5 immigrant visa program used by wealthy aliens to obtain US residency in exchange for an investment.
While H-2B visas will primarily affect the Mexican workforce, the other categories will hurt India, whose IT services sector needs guest worker visas to fulfill contracts, even when those visas are used by aspiring immigrants like a route to residence and US citizenship. USA According to the senators Chuck grassleyTom Cotton, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, the United States it admits more than a million nonimmigrant guest workers each year, and “there is no reason to admit most of those workers when our unemployment is so high.”
Your letter to the President of the USA The US, some of whose White House aides are fundamentally against all immigration, comes even when thousands of H1B visa holders and Indian students are in limbo in the long and short term, some of them also stuck in transit with La suspension of flights. American and Indian authorities are inundated with pleas from visiting worker visa holders who were visiting India and trapped there with the suspension of flights, and those who have lost jobs in the US. USA And they have 60 days to self-deport under the terms of the H1B visa, which is subject to having a qualified job.
The call for the suspension of optional practical training, in particular, has scared thousands of Indian students who spend between $ 100,000 and $ 200,000 to obtain degrees from US universities. And they put their faith in a system that allows them to work in the United States. USA three years (for STEM graduates) in paid internships that often turn into H1B visa staple jobs and eventually permanent residency and citizenship. In 2019, more than 223,000 former foreign students, about 40 percent of them from India, had their OPT applications approved or extended.
With the pandemic closing, decimating the labor market, thousands of students currently obtaining their degrees by mail without even the call that generally takes place in May-June (dismissed due to closure), have no internships, let alone jobs at the end of your grade.
While in the past, high-tech immigration advocates, such as Bill Gates, argued that US-educated Science Technology Engineering Mathematic (STEM) graduates are an asset to the United States and should have a stapled green card. to his degrees, the Republican Senators argued that with about a fifth of the US workforce currently out of work, “there is no reason why unemployed Americans and recent college graduates should have to compete in such a limited job market against an influx of additional workers H-1B, most of whom work in business, technology or STEM fields. ”
Temporarily suspending the issuance of new H-1B visas would also protect the hundreds of thousands of H-18 workers and their families already working in the United States, workers who could otherwise be deported if they are fired for more than 60 days. They said, suggesting that “appropriate exceptions could also be created for the suspension of the H-1B program to allow doctors, nurses and other health professionals who wish to come to the United States to help combat the coronavirus pandemic.”
While the Labor Department report on Friday showed that 20.5 million jobs cut in April caused an unemployment rate of 14.7, the total number of unemployed is much higher considering the jobs lost in March and the millions who They have not yet filed or been unable to apply for unemployment. At least 33.5 million have applied for unemployment aid in the past seven weeks, bringing the unemployment number in the United States to about 20 percent.
President Trump said Friday that the figures were “fully expected” and promised that “all those jobs will come back and will come back very soon.”
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