US President Donald Trump seems to have changed his mind on the H1-B visa policy.
Indians, and other hopefuls, now seem to have 3 options. Either find a US job that's willing to pay a hefty visa fee or look for job based out of America. Here's the third and the new option: Come to the US, pass on your skills and then leave.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Trump's vision has shifted and overseas workers would now be allowed to come for up to 7 years, participate in a 'knowledge transfer' before moving back.
"So, I think the President's vision here is to bring in overseas workers who have the skills for three, five, or seven years to train the US workers. Then they can go home, and US workers will take over," US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News.
"For 20-30 years, we have not offshored precision manufacturing jobs... We can't snap our fingers and say you are going to have ships overnight. We want to bring the semiconductor industry back to the US," he added.
Just a day before, Trump himself admitted that Americans 'don’t have certain talents' and would need for foreign talent to fill that void.
Trump's immigration crackdown
This comes not long after he launched a major crackdown on the H1-B visa and even its lottery system. He signed an order that all businesses in US would have to pay $100,000 to hire an H1-B holder. But the rule was later softened.
He even tried to overhaul the decades-old H1-B lottery system and replace it with a wage-based criterion. It suggested a weighted selection process that would prioritise workers with higher skills and a bigger pay.
The allure of American jobs already seems to be dropping as a fall of nearly 27% in registrations has already been noted this year.
Data says that 422,335 Indian students were in the United States in 2024, an increase of 11.8% on the year before.
Now China, the second biggest economy and a rapidly expanding market, may just become the preferred destination for many. And the recent thaw in diplomatic ties between New Delhi and Beijing has already set the stage for this.
