Trump’s proposals may hit US Indians
WASHINGTON: The Trump administration on Sunday sent to the Congress a set of immigration proposals, including eliminating Green Cards for extended families, other than minor children and spouses, that has long been a popular route for legal immigration from India.
Under the new merit-based immigration system, president Donald Trump has proposed eliminating family-based Green Cards for parents and other relatives such as siblings, a major avenue of expansion for the Indian diaspora, to be replaced by those with more skills and ability to fend for themselves.
The new proposals, which also included southern border walls, tougher asylum rules, a crackdown on minors brought illegally from Central America, were in the nature of conditions set by the administration in return for legalising nearly 700,000 undocumented immigrants called Dreamers.
Nearly 8,000 of them came from India. They are facing deportation, along with all the others, starting March, if the Congress fails to pass a legislation legalising their stay, which Trump will sign into law if his proposals, meant as conditions, were accepted and included.
There was no reference to the H-1B visas used by American companies to hire highly-skilled professionals from abroad but some proposals were intended to prevent “replacement of US citizen workers by non-immigrant workers (such as those on H-1B) or the preferential hiring of such foreign workers”.
Trump had ordered a review of H-1B rules and regulations to prevent job losses to foreigners and a crackdown on visa fraud and abuse earlier this year in a move that was keenly watched and followed in India.
Indian IT workers and companies operating in the US are among major recipients of the H-1BS. But it wasn’t immediately clear if the Sunday announcements were intended to cover H-1B also.
In a letter to Congressional leaders, Trump said these reforms “must be included as part of any legislation addressing the status” of those protected from deportation by an Obamaera regulation called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
“Without these reforms, illegal immigration and chain migration, which severely and unfairly burden American workers and taxpayers, will continue without end,” he added.
Democrats, who were under the impression they had reached a deal with the president on DACA, denounced the new proposals saying the administration “can’t be serious about compromise or helping the Dreamers if they begin with a list that is anathema to the Dreamers, to the immigrant community and to and to the vast majority of Americans”.