Free Republic

Confusion and fear gripped H-1B visa holders over the weekend as a sudden US policy change forced some to choose between family commitments abroad and their careers in the United States. President Donald Trump’s announcement of a USD 100,000 fee on H-1B visa applications, part of a broader immigration crackdown, sent shockwaves through the tech and finance sectors, prompting workers from India and China to abandon travel plans and rush back to the US. At San Francisco airport, an engineer whose wife was scheduled to fly to Dubai described the impossible decision he faced. “It is a situation where we...

After US President Donald Trump and Congress failed to reach a funding deal by Wednesday's deadline, the government shutdown began. As a result, hundreds of thousands of federal employees face furloughs, and many offices will be closed. H-1B visas will also face a pause until the shutdown ends, says immigration attorney Nicole Gunara. She said that H-1B visa filings will not be processed until the Congress can agree on federal funding allocations.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) are scrutinizing major corporations for filing thousands of H-1B skilled labor visa petitions after conducting mass layoffs of American employees. “In evaluating the high unemployment rate for American tech workers, we cannot ignore the massive, ongoing layoffs ordered by you and your peers in Big Tech C-suites over the past few years … At the same time you have been laying off your employees, you have been filing H-1B visa petitions for [thousands of] foreign workers,” Grassley and Durbin wrote in letters to 10 major employers in...

Apoorva arrived in New York in 2018 on an H-1B visa, fresh from one of India’s top graduate schools and brimming with hope of building a life in the United States. She soon joined an architecture firm, eager to contribute her skills and establish roots. But her dreams were quickly dashed — because Apoorva, like many other immigrants on an H-1B, soon experienced some visa-related issues. She recalled being stuck at her minimum wage architecture job for over three years. Changing jobs on an H-1B visa is famously difficult, and often means enduring months of bureaucratic limbo and steep United...

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) are reintroducing bipartisan legislation to reform and close loopholes in the H-1B and L-1 visa programs. The H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act targets fraud and abuse in our immigration system, provides protections for American workers and visa holders and enhances transparency in the foreign worker recruitment process. Grassley and Durbin have long partnered to improve the H-1B visa system and first introduced their bipartisan legislation in 2007. Last week, the senators sent letters to 10 major U.S. employers, including Amazon, Google and Meta, scrutinizing their heavy...

Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) today introduced the Visa Cap Enforcement Act. This bill restricts the ability of universities, research institutions, and non-profits to hire an unlimited number of foreign workers. “Colleges and universities shouldn’t get special treatment for bringing in woke and anti-American professors from around the world. My bill closes these loopholes that universities have abused for far too long,” said Senator Cotton. Text of the bill can be found here. The Visa Cap Enforcement Act would: Eliminate four exemptions to the H-1B visa cap, including one for foreigners who hold a master’s degree or higher from a U.S....

United States lawmakers continued tightening rules for the H-1B and L-1 worker visa programmes Monday after three senators introduced two separate pieces of legislation to target "loopholes" used by for- and non-profit employers. The top Republican and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee - Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, and Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois - tabled a bill to raise wage and hiring standards, mandate public job postings, and narrowing visa eligibility, among others. "Congress created the H-1B and L-1 visa programs as limited pathways for businesses to acquire top talent when it can't be found at home....

The Kremlin has accused President Trump of attempting to erode Russia and China’s nuclear potential with his plan for an Iron Dome missile defence system. The programme was “yet another confirmation of the US focus on turning space into a scene of armed confrontation and deployment of weapons”, Maria Zakharova, the chief spokeswoman of the Russian foreign ministry, said. Trump issued an executive order on Monday mandating a process to develop an “Iron Dome for America”, a reference to the aerial defence shield used by Israel. Zakharova said that this implied “a sharp intensification of the US national missile defence...