‘Trump wants H-1B visas in more highly-skilled as opposed to outsourcing roles’

Washington, November 9

The Donald Trump administration wants to make changes in the existing H-1B provisions for it to play a better role in attracting highly-skilled foreign workers as opposed to the what it has now evolved into an "outsourcing" role, the White House said on Thursday.

“The president's overall instinct -- and he said this publicly a number of times -- he wants to find ways to make sure that people who graduate in a highly skilled area like technology stay in the country. He finds that a very positive part of the overall immigration," White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Coordination Chris Liddell told a Washington audience on Thursday.

During the Washington Post's live discussion on new technology, when asked about the president's thoughts on H-1B immigration, Liddell said, "He (Trump) has talked about merit immigration, clearly that (H-1B) fits in merit immigration." At the same time, he acknowledged that legislatively, the issue might get caught up in a border discussion.

A former executive at Microsoft and General Motors, Liddell is tasked with overseeing and coordinating President Trump's policy process.

"To the extent that we can from a regulatory point of view rather than a legislative point of view, because the H-1B system to a large extent is governed by legislation -- but to the extent that we can modify the regulatory point of view to promote it to be more highly skilled as opposed to outsourcing roles, there's 1,20,000 H-1Bs. So it's quite a big pool," the White House official said.

"Traditionally, unfortunately they have gone to lower-skilled outsourcing types of jobs," Liddell said.

The Trump administration, he said, would love to find ways to change that as more people are coming out with PhDs in the tech sector. "So the president is 100 per cent aligned with that. We'll try and do it as much as we can by regulatory; if it can be done legislatively as well in some way that would as part of a merit-based system, that would be fantastic," Liddell said.

The top White House official emphasised that there is need to carry on reforms in H-1B to keep more talented graduates in this country.

This is an incredibly constructive part of the immigration debate, which, unfortunately doesn't get a lot of focus, he said.

Liddell said President Trump has repeatedly spoken about merit-based reform as part of the immigration platform. The Silicon Valley and the tech industry should welcome that as a concept, he said.

"Relatively, as a country, a very small proportion of the people who come in as legal immigrants do it on a merit-based system relative to any other country I know,” he said.

So promoting the concept of merit-based immigration, which clearly would be at least partially orientated towards the tech sector, I would think that there should be a high degree of alignment on," Liddell said. 

'Chance to be heard'

Trump administration has assured lawmakers and the American corporate sector that the public would get an opportunity to respond to its proposal of revoking work authorisation to H-4 spouse visas after they raised their concerns over the move, which will impact thousands of Indians.

H-4 visas are issued to the spouses of H-1B foreign workers. They are issued only to very close or immediate family members of the H-1B visa holders. It includes the employee's spouse and children less than 21 years of age.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had said that the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will come out with a new proposal by January 2019 under which it is mulling to remove from its regulations certain H-4 spouses of H-1B non-immigrants as a class of aliens eligible for employment authorisation.

The new rules could impact up to 70,000 H-4 Visa holders who have work permits.

The USCIS has recently written a near identical letters to top US lawmakers and leaders of the corporate sector who had raised concern over the Trump administration's proposal to revoke the H-4 visas.

"The public will be given an opportunity to provide feedback during a notice and comment period on any proposed revisions to regulations providing employment authorisation to certain H-4 non-immigrants," L Francis Cissna, USCIS director, wrote to senators Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand in a letter dated October 16, which was posted on the organisation's website this month.

The two lawmakers had urged not to revoke work authorisation to H-4 visas.

However, the letter makes no commitment on the fate of the decision to revoke the work authorisation to H-4 visas, except for saying that the DHS is committed to safeguarding the integrity of the immigration system and protecting the wages and job opportunities for US workers.

In a letter dated September 26 and addressed to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielson, Harris and Gillibrand had said the administration's proposal to revoke the employment authorisation of certain H-4 dependent spouses of non-immigrant H-1B workers would permanently force approximately 1,00,000 predominantly high-skilled women to abandon their professional careers.

"This will harm the wellbeing of these women and their families and have negative consequences for American communities where they live and work," they had said.

In another letter dated July 23 and addressed to the DHS, as many as 34 US legislators had expressed concern that revoking work authorisation to H-4 visas would "create significant uncertainty and financial hardship for many highly skilled professionals who are vital to US economy".

 A group of top corporate leaders had expressed similar concerns to the DHS in a letter dated August 22.

 The H-4 spouses are "often highly skilled" and have built careers and lives around their ability to "contribute to companies here", they said.

 "Other countries allow these valuable professionals to work, so revoking their US work authorisation will likely cause high-skilled immigrants to take their skills to competitors outside the US," stated the letter, which among others was signed by Chuck Robbins, CEO of Cisco Systems; Roger K Newport from AK Steel Corporation; Doug Parker of American Airlines and Stephen Squeri of American Express.

The USCIS director also sent them similar responses as given to the lawmakers. PTI