Through a new executive order, President Donald Trump has added 100,000 US dollars to the annual fee for H1B visa applicants. H1B is a visa programme for skilled foreign workers. So far, the biggest beneficiaries of this visa have been Indian-origin IT workers, employed by American and Indian companies in the US.
President Trump has justified this move by citing abuse of the H1B visa programme to the detriment of American workers. He has also said that through this humongous fee, he wants to raise the cost of hiring foreign workers for jobs that could be filled by local workers.
Is there any merit to Trump’s claims regarding the abuse of H1B program? Has it really led to higher unemployment among American IT graduates, as Trump claims?? And how will this impact Indians currently in the US on an H1B visa?
Guest: Tanul Thakur, an independent journalist and author of Wild Wild East: Exiled Americans, Enslaved Indians, and the Systemic Abuse of the H1-B Programme, due for publication later this year.
Host: G Sampath
Recorded, produced, and edited by Jude Francis Weston
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