Trump eyes visa programme reform to encourage hiring Americans

President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Tuesday to revamp a temporary visa programme used to bring foreign workers to fill jobs in the US.

The time-limited H-1B visas for skilled workers, which are sought by Silicon Valley heavyweights, are meant for scientists, engineers and computer programmers, and are an important gateway for many attracted by tech hubs across the country.

H-1B visas admit 65,000 workers and another 20,000 graduate student workers each year. Most of the visas are awarded to outsourcing firms, which critics say exploit loopholes to fill lower-level IT jobs with foreign workers, often at lower pay. The White House intends “a total transformation” of the programme from a lottery to a merit-based system, a senior administration official said.

The order he will sign on Tuesday will call for "the strict enforcement of all laws governing entry into the United States of labor from abroad for the stated purpose of creating higher wages and higher employment rates for workers in the United States," one of the senior White House officials said.

It will call on the departments of Labor, Justice, Homeland Security and State to take action to crack down on what the official called "fraud and abuse" in the US immigration system to protect American workers.

Its "original intent (was) awarding visas to the most skilled and highest paid applicants - crucially, at such time as these reforms are eventually implemented, it will prevent the programme from being used to displace American workers," another official said.

"For too long, rather than just allowing the best to come (...), the H-1B program has been applied in a bad way for US workers," the White House said. The executive order will aim to support stated Trump priorities of "buy American, hire American."

The steps announced Monday come when the United States opens the annual allocation of some 85,000 H-1B visas.

The US president cannot, by a simple decree, change the number of visas allocated. But the White House hopes, by signing the decree will build momentum before a possible legislative reform.

"This is a transitional step to get towards a more skilled based and merit based version," a White House official told AFP news agency. "There is a lot we can do administratively, and the rest will be done hopefully legislatively."