The United States President Donald Trump’s hard protectionism is achieving its stated objective: America First. A significant feature of this policy has been to keep talented foreigners — including many highly-skilled Indian IT professionals — out of the country’s workplaces.

According to latest reports, there was a sharp 10 per cent decline in the approval of H-1B visas by the US in the fiscal year 2018, which experts attribute to the ‘aggressive’ policies of the Trump administration to clamp down on the use of the work visa programme.

The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. The Trump administration has tightened the noose on firms violating H-1B visa rules.

The President has himself accused many IT companies of abusing work visas to deny jobs to American workers. Two years ago, Trump signed the ‘Buy American and Hire American’ executive order, which seeks to create higher wages and employment rates for US workers to protect their economic interests.

In November last year, his Administration announced an amendment to the Labor Condition Application (LCA) that requires prospective employers of people entering the US on H-1B visas to disclose all intended places of employment, including any proposed short-term assignments and a large amount of information on the company status.

These comprised identification of secondary entities and locations and the number of H-1B visa workers currently employed in the firm and at third-party work sites of the firm. While this is certain to hit American work standards in the long run, it jeopardises the future of many talented Indians. Those chasing the H1-B visa would be well adviced to do a short course in the US and use that as a stepping stone to get into a high-grade institution for formal graduate school qualifications.