Are You Planning For USA, Go Through These Proposed Changes To Various Visa Programmes

1st October 2025 at 11:40 AM

1 minute read

New York : US lawmakers continued tightening rules for the H-1B and L-1 worker visa programmes Monday after three senators introduced two separate pieces of legislation to target “loopholes” used by for- and non-profit employers. Congress created the H-1B and L-1 visa programs as limited pathways for businesses to acquire top talent when it can’t be found at home. But over the years, many employers have used them to cut out American workers in favour of cheap foreign labour, Grassley said.

Congress must step in to protect American workers and fix our broken immigration system, he said. Grassley and Durbin’s bill has shades of a legislation first proposed in 2007, when it was backed by Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama, and Democrat Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, as well as Bernie Sanders, an independent lawmaker from Vermont. Tom Cotton, the Republican from Arkansas, presented legislation restricting universities, research institutions, and non-profits’ ability to hire unlimited foreign workers.

Colleges and universities shouldn’t get special treatment for bringing in woke and anti-American professors from around the world. My bill closes these loopholes that universities have abused for far too long, Cotton said on his website. The L-1 allows companies to transfer existing employees from overseas offices to the US. The H-1B visa programme, widely used by the US technology sector to hire skilled workers from India and China, has been under the spotlight after President Donald Trump last month imposed a $100,000 annual fee – a seismic jump from the current rate of $215 – on applicants.

Indians make up 71 per cent of all H-1B grants, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services data. Indian IT giants like TCS, Infosys, and Wipro rely heavily on these and this could cost them billions. A direct outcome would be reduced hiring or returning jobs to India. The Indian government has acknowledged the proposed rule changes and the one-month comment period. The Ministry of External Affairs underlined the point that skilled talent mobility and exchanges had contributed enormously to technological development and innovation in the US and India.