#h-1b

#h-1b

The United States is reviewing the social media accounts of some visa applicants, adding another hurdle for workers and other visitors to clear under the Trump administration. It's also adding a hurdle for embassies processing those visa applications. The State Department said in June that certain visa applicants would have their online activity vetted as part of its screening process. Six months later, the department expanded the list of visas that were subject to "online presence reviews." The new rule has complicated the visa application process, causing significant delays for approvals.

The State Department is instructing its staff to reject visa applications from people who worked on fact-checking, content moderation or other activities the Trump administration considers "censorship" of Americans' speech. The directive, sent in an internal memo on Tuesday, is focused on applicants for H-1B visas for highly skilled workers, which are frequently used by tech companies, among other sectors. The memo was first reported by Reuters; NPR also obtained a copy.

Yet Trump last month signed a proclamation "restricting entry unless employers make a $100,000 payment with the petition." The proclamation stated companies were abusing the scheme, suppressing wages, laying off domestic workers, and undermining economic and national security. Trump took particular aim at IT outsourcing companies in the proclamation, citing research that computer science and engineering graduates were facing worse prospects than biology and even art history graduates. Nothing to do with GenAI then.

Trump trying to charge people $100,000 for visas is only one of his administration's over-the-top new restrictions on visas, and state Attorney General Rob Bonta is leading a crusade to reverse the administration's proposed new student visa rules. It was generally seen as demonstrably nuts last month when the Trump administration started charging $100,000 for H-1B visas, despite those visa holders' enormous contributions to the US tech sector.

Trump's overhaul of the program, by mandating a $100,000 fee for new applications, may disrupt projects of Indian outsources like Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. and Infosys Ltd. that derive a large chunk of revenue from the US. TCS shares fell as much as 3.4%, the most in more than two months, while Infosys slipped as much as 3.9%. Tech Mahindra Ltd. declined 6.5%.

President Donald Trump on Friday changed the rules of the H-1B visa program, which provides skilled foreign professionals permission to work in the United States. His executive order, which raised the visa application fee for new applicants from under $10,000 to $100,000, scrambled stakeholders around the world. Tech giants such as Amazon and Microsoft issued travel advisories to their visa-holding staff, warning them to stay in the US or return to the country within 24 hours.