US President Donald Trump has directed his administration to reform the H-1B visa system and move towards a merit-based immigration.
“Moving to a merit-based immigration system,” the White House said in a statement after President Trump announced the temporary suspension of H1-B and other visas till the end of the year.
“The Trump Administration will reform the system to prioritise the highest-skilled workers and protect American jobs,” it said.
“Under these reforms, the H-1B program will prioritize those workers who are offered the highest wage, ensuring that the highest-skilled applicants are admitted,” the White House said in a statement.
“The Trump Administration will also close loopholes that have allowed employers in the United States to replace American workers with low-cost foreign labor,” it said.
“These reforms will help protect the wages of American workers and ensure that foreign labor entering our country is high skilled and does not undercut the United States labor market,” it added.
“President Trump is building on this measure with an additional pause on several job-related nonimmigrant visas—H-1Bs, H-2Bs without a nexus to the food-supply chain, certain H-4s, as well as Ls and certain Js—preserving jobs for American citizens,” it said.
“President Trump is focused on getting Americans back to work as quickly as possible,” it added.
“As COVID-19 spread across the globe, many U.S. workers were hurt through no fault of their own. As America recovers, President @realDonaldTrump won’t allow blue-collar and middle-class workers to stay on the sidelines and be replaced by new foreign labor,” the White House tweeted.
