On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order barring workers on H-1B visas from replacing American workers on federal contracts.
The executive order makes it harder for federal agencies to hire workers in the U.S. on H-1B visas, requiring employers to prove they are not replacing qualified American workers with people from other countries and preventing federal contractors from shifting H-1B workers to other job sites in a manner that would “displace American workers.”
The new order does not represent a significant policy shift but rather escalates Trump’s assault on the U.S.’s H-1B visa program for high-skilled foreign workers, the vast majority of whom are from India.
The president has ramped up his criticism of the H-1B program in recent months as the coronavirus pandemic has led to widespread joblessness and decimated the economy on which he’d hung his reelection bid.
In June, he ordered a temporarily halt to visas for foreign workers through the end of the year, a moratorium that targeted the H-1B and H-4 visas issued to workers in the tech industry and their families.
Monday’s order also made an example of a single organization, the Tennessee Valley Authority or TVA, which had planned to outsource some of its technology contracts to companies with foreign workers.
“H-1Bs should be used for top, highly paid talent to create American jobs, not as inexpensive labor program to destroy American jobs,” Trump said on Monday.❑
