H1 B visa, employment-based green card categories likely to be reformed

Los Angeles : H-1B visa concerns have been on every Indian’s mind in America, and any news simply adds fuel to fire.

Now, a US Senator has made claims that H1 B visa and employment- based green card categories -– very popular among Indian-Americans -- are likely to be reformed.

Top American Senator close to President Donald Trump also said that the current system does not bring in the brightest and the best from the world.

Republican Senator from Arkansas Tom Cotton also added that there is a need to reform it and this is what Trump is planning to do.

He told news channels, "I think, on the H-1B temporary visa but also the permanent green cards, like EB1, EB2, the President wants to get the very best people from around the world. Often those programs are implemented in a way that are not consistent with their purposes. They don't bring in PhDs and computer scientists. They bring in midlevel and they replace midlevel data management workers. That's why you get controversies like people losing their jobs at companies like Disney and Southern California Edison that were just replaced by foreign workers who weren't necessarily high skilled."

He added, "So he (Trump) would like to see reforms to those programs that I would," said Cotton, who is also a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "It's really an empirical questions where we do have gaps in our economy. But I will say this, there is no job that an American won't do. Americans, with the right pay, will do any job. That's just the facts of the matter. We need to make sure that we're focused on Americans getting back to work and getting higher wages, supplemented where need based on the evidence with immigration.”

The new reform calls for elimination of diversity lottery visa and limit issuing of Green Cards to refugees to 50,000 per year.