There's a wait-and-see approach in regards to the somewhat controversial H-1B visa program now that President-elect Donald Trump has appointed Sen. Jeff Sessions — who holds strict views on immigration and illegal immigration — as his attorney general.
The program brings highly skilled foreign workers into the United States and is popular in the tech industry. Some companies are now waiting to see what Trump and his administration will do regarding the program, which is supposed to be capped at 85,000 visas per year, according to Fox News.
"Because of lobbying by the Chamber of Commerce and big tech companies, they've succeeded in loosening standards and we've seen the increasingly common scenario where American workers are fired, and have to train their replacements," Dan Stein, the president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, told Fox News.
In the past, Sessions has claimed the number of H-1B visas in circulation is somewhere in the range of 650,000 to 750,000, Fox reports.
Trump's view on the program has changed, but he does favor work visa programs that benefit American workers first instead of foreign workers, not the other way around. That has H-1B visa holders worried, according to Wired.
In March, Trump said, "I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions."
One critic of the program said national security could be at risk if it continues as is.
"Collect the data and make it available to the public. That would strike horror into the industry," John Miano of the Center for Immigration Studies told Fox. "This has been kept secret or not collected. We don't know who are getting the visas, we don't know where the people are, what occupations they're in or what the salary is."
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