Trump To Overhaul H-1B Visa Program To Encourage Hiring Americans

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: In a bid to court working class voters, Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Tuesday to revamp a temporary visa program used to bring foreign workers to fill jobs in the U.S. The president will use a visit to a manufacturing company in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a crucial state he snatched from Hillary Clinton in the election, to promote his latest "Buy America Hire America" offensive. Trump's executive order will call on government departments to introduce reforms to ensure that H-1B visas are awarded to the "most skilled or highest paid applicants," a senior administration official said. The executive order will also call for the "strict enforcement" of laws governing entry to the U.S. of labor from overseas, with a view to creating higher wages and employment rates for U.S. workers. The order will also call on government departments to "take prompt action to crack down on fraud and abuse" in the immigration system, a senior administration official said. The administration official sad: "Right now H-1B visas are awarded by random lottery and many of you will be surprised to know that about 80% of H-1B workers are paid less than the median wage in their fields. Only 5% to 6%, depending on the year, of H-1B workers command the highest wage tier recognized by the Department of Labor. [...] If you change that current system that awards visas randomly, without regard for skill or wage, to a skills-based awarding, it makes it extremely difficult to use the visa to replace or undercut American workers [...] It's a very elegant way of solving very systemic problems in the H-1B guest worker visa." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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