Free Republic

When Pratham Jain graduated in May with a Master’s in Business and Science from a reputable US university, job-hunting wasn’t the main hurdle.“In the beginning, my focus was on classes, internships and making the most of the campus life. But as graduation got closer,” he says, “the visa conversation started to overshadow everything.” -snip- “Every international student I know keeps one eye on their grades and the other on Washington, because even a small policy change can completely reshape your career path,” Jain says. “It’s almost like earning a second degree here, one in navigating immigration paperwork, deadlines, and constantly...

Companies could face probes into their compliance with the H-1B visa program as part of the Trump Administration’s effort to clamp down on the program and force companies to hire more Americans. The Department of Labor announced on Friday that it was launching Project Firewall, an “enforcement initiative” that will investigate employers for potential abuse of the H-1B visa process. The initiative may be the first time the federal government has sought to broadly enforce H-1B legal standards intended to protect both the H-1B employee and American workers, such as paying wages on par with other workers of similar qualifications...

Two of the US Senate’s most senior lawmakers are once again teaming up to overhaul America’s high-skilled H-1B and L-1 visa systems, saying companies have turned what was meant to be a tool for innovation into a loophole for outsourcing. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Ranking Member Dick Durbin reintroduced the H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act. This latest push comes just weeks after US President Donald Trump signed a sweeping presidential proclamation on H-1B visa applications. Under the new order, companies are now required to pay a one-time fee of $100,000 (around Rs 88 lakh) on every...

American President Donald Trump's decision to finally impose a massive 100% tariff — import duty or tax — on movies made outside the US comes as another major blow to India, which has been facing his wrath, with blips of bonhomie, for the past three months and more. -snip- The Indian diaspora in the US spends around $100 million a year to watch Telugu, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Punjabi, Bengali and other Indian language movies released in the US country, according to the Producers Guild of India. Indians are about 1.6% of the total US population, with other South Asians also...

Ukrainian defense and national security officials are on their way to Washington to hammer out details of a proposed drone deal with the Trump administration, The Post has learned. Representatives of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and its National Security and Defense Council will be working with their American counterparts Tuesday through Friday as Washington and Kyiv aim to solidify a defense agreement that would bind the countries closer together. “Following the results of the negotiations between the presidents of Ukraine and the United States, a Ukraine delegation will arrive to Washington from Sept. 29 to Oct. 2 for technical...

Vladimir Putin is set to make a "major speech" in what the Kremlin is promising to be an "interesting week". The announcement comes following remarks by the US Vice President J D Vance on Friday, in which he said Donald Trump was considering a request to supply Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk missiles. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dropped the cryptic message in an interview on Sunday with the Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin. "The President will deliver a fairly major speech next week," he said. "We will announce what it will be about, as well as exactly when and where. But the...