New Delhi: US President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order that would tighten the process of issuing the H-1B visas, the most sought-after by Indian IT firms and professionals.
Trump is scheduled to travel to Milwaukee in Wisconsin, the home state of House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, to sign the 'Buy American, Hire American' Executive Order, reports said.
The lottery was held for the 20,000 H-1B visas for those applicants having higher education from US educational institutions.
CNN reported that the applications for the visa saw a decline for the first time since 2014. This year the agency has received 199,000 applications, a drop from 2,36,000 applications last year, the report said. The number had been climbing since at least 2013, the report added.
"Some IT firms in India announced they were reducing the number of lower-experienced workers they were filing petitions for, meaning more of those jobs will stay in India rather than being relocated to the US,” she added.
Opposing the traditional lottery system for H-1B visas, a senior administration official told White House reporters that these visas were being used by companies to bring in foreign workers at a low wage rate and displace local workers.
The official argued that there were enough qualified people within the country to meet the demand of technology professionals.
"It would further call on the departments of Labour, Justice, Homeland Security and State to take prompt action to crackdown on fraud and abuse, which should both be understood as separate problems, in our immigration system in order to protect workers in the United States and their economic conditions," the official asserted.
Indian IT giants like TCS, Infosys and Wipro are among the major beneficiaries of H-1B visas.
The annual cap on H-1B visas is 85,000, of which 20,000 are reserved for Master's degree holders.
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