The Donald Trump Administration is considering a proposal to suspend several employment-based immigration visas, including the H-1B visa, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

Though details of the proposed suspension are vague so far, the report says that the suspension “could extend into the government’s new fiscal year, beginning October 1, when many new visas are typically issued”.

It further says that the US could bar new H-1B visa holders outside the country from coming to work until the suspension is lifted, though visa holders already in the country are unlikely to be affected. The Indian information technology industry, which has long been a beneficiary of the H-1B visa regime, is likely to be directly impacted if such a suspension is announced for a longer term. However, experts suggest that getting legal sanction for such a proposal will not be easy. They also point out that this is expected rhetoric in an election year — the presidential election is scheduled for November.

Poorvi Chothani, managing partner of LawQuest, an immigration firm headquartered in Mumbai, said rumours of H-1B visa restrictions had been doing the rounds for the past few days but the details remained scanty. The impact of a temporary ban on new H-1B or L-1 visas will depend on its nature and duration.

“I doubt very much that a sweeping restriction on non-immigrant work visa categories could be implemented (without a change to the laws) and/or go unchallenged in a court of law,” said Chothani. She pointed to the approximately 85,000 new H-1B petitions that had been filed or would be filed before June 30, 2020 for FY 2021, for which the US government has already collected millions of dollars in fees. Many of these petitions are under process.

“A ban on the H-1B programme would surely trigger litigation against the government and I personally don’t think the government will be able to adequately defend its position in view of the reduction in unemployment,” said Chothani.

L-1 visas are issued for intra-company transfers. For instance, if an Infosys executive moves from India to the company’s office in the US, it will be on an L-1 visa. But if the same executive is going to the US to work at a client site, then he or she will be issued an H-1B visa.

The National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) said workers on non-immigrant visas such as L-1 and H-1B were helping run critical US infrastructure, building products for health care and hospitals, among others, and playing a key role to develop treatments for Covid-19.