Trump administration plans changes to skilled worker visas and citizenship tests
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The H-1B visa programme for foreign workers has been the subject of a fierce debate within the Republican Party.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Hamed Aleaziz
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WASHINGTON – The Trump administration is planning to change the visa system for skilled foreign workers, a programme at the centre of a dispute between immigration hardliners and tech industry leaders, said the new director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
In an interview with The New York Times, Mr Joseph Edlow, the director of USCIS, also said the test to become a US citizen was too easy and should change.
“It’s very easy to kind of memorise the answers. I don’t think we’re really comporting with the spirit of the law,” he said on July 24.
He illuminated how the agency at the heart of the country’s immigration system would run in President Donald Trump’s second term, at a time when Mr Trump has ordered a crackdown on immigration and mass deportations.
The H-1B visa scheme for foreign workers has been the subject of a fierce debate within the Republican Party. Mr Edlow said it should favour companies that plan to pay foreign workers higher wages.
The proposed changes to the system could help alleviate criticism from those in the right wing of the Republican Party, who say the programme brings in workers who are willing to accept lower salaries than American workers.
This week, Vice-President J.D. Vance criticised companies who lay off their own employees and then hire foreign workers.
But some of Mr Trump’s most prominent backers in the tech industry have said they rely on the programme because they cannot find enough qualified American workers.
“I really do think that the way H-1B needs to be used, and this is one of my favourite phrases, is to, along with a lot of other parts of immigration, supplement, not supplant, (the) US economy and US businesses and US workers,” Mr Edlow said.
Mr Doug Rand, a former Biden administration official, said changing the H1-B process to favour higher-wage earners was misguided.
“Like it or not, the H-1B programme is the main way that US companies can hire the best and brightest international graduates of US universities, and Congress never allowed DHS (Department of Homeland Security) to put its thumb on the scale based on salary,” he said. NYTIMES
