H-1B visa programme to soon face onslaught of Congressional bills

WASHINGTON: With the Donald Trump administration seriously mulling H-1B visa reforms, at least half a dozen bills have been tabled in the US House of Representatives and the Senate, contending that the programme that is popular among Indian IT firms eats into American jobs.

Authors of all these bills from both Republican and Democratic parties believe that H-1B work visas, which are highly popular among Indian techies and Indian IT companies, tend to replace American workers.

In less than a week of Trump being sworn in as the 45th US President, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, and Assistant Senate Minority Leader Dick Durbin, introduced the “H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act” to prioritise American workers and restore fairness in visa programmes for skilled workers.

Democrat Zoe Lofgren -- who represents a Congressional district in California that includes Silicon Valley -- introduced “The High-Skilled Integrity and Fairness Act of 2017”.

The bill proposes a skill and wage-based system for allocation of H-1B visas and seeks to more than double the minimum wage for an H-1B visa holder to $130,000. BEIRUT: A US Marines artillery unit has deployed to Syria in recent days to help local forces speed up efforts to defeat Islamic State at Raqqa and the campaign to isolate the city is going “very, very well”, the US-led coalition said on Thursday.

Coalition spokesman US Air Force Colonel John Dorrian said the additional US forces would be working with local partners in Syria - the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Syrian Arab Coalition - and would not have a front line role.

The additional deployment comprises a total of 400 US forces - both Marines and Army Rangers. It adds to around 500 US military personnel already in Syria, Dorrian said.

The SDF, which includes the Kurdish YPG militia, is the main US partner in the war against Islamic State insurgents in Syria. Since November it has been working with the US-led coalition to encircle Raqqa, main urban bastion of IS in Syria.

This week, the SDF cut the road between Raqqa and the jihadists’ stronghold of Deir al-Zor province - the last main road out of the city.

Islamic State is also being fought in Syria by the Russianbacked Syrian military, and by Syrian rebel groups fighting