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...

Thousands of young Indians have mapped their adult lives with the aim of moving to the US, plans that now lie in tatters. Meghna Gupta* had planned it all – a master’s degree by 23, a few years of working in India, and then a move to the United States before she turned 30 to eventually settle there. So, she clocked countless hours at the Hyderabad office of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest IT firm and a driver of the country’s emergence as the global outsourcing powerhouse in the sector. She waited to get to the promotion that would...

Several Indian students who secured job offers in the United States have seen their offers withdrawn after US President Donald Trump announced the $1,00,000 H-1B visa policy. Under the new rule, US employers who are looking to sponsor H-1B visas should pay a one-time fee of $1,00,000, which many companies now cite as a reason to back out. Thousands of students, who are currently on F-1 visas, wanted to bag a job in the United States and obtain an H-1B visa. But with the new rules and skyhigh price on the visa, the companies are reluctant to pay the amount,...

Paridhi Upadhaya was packing her bags after securing a computer science scholarship in the US until headlines of President Donald Trump's H-1B visa crackdown last week prompted her family in Lucknow, India, to scrap the plan. “Trump's unending onslaught against immigrants is forcing us to consider other destinations for her,” the 18-year-old's father Rudar Pratap said. Upadhaya is among thousands of Indians for whom the American dream of world-class education, lucrative careers, better quality of life and social mobility is turning sour due to rising US visa restrictions and policy unpredictability. For decades the H-1B visa has been the gateway...