Washington DC, June 21: The US state department has on Thursday said the President Donald Trump administration has no plans to restrict H-1B work visas for countries that force international firms to store data locally.
In an official statement, a state department spokesperson, in response to a Reuters article, said, “The Trump Administration has no plans to place caps on H-1B work visas for nations that force foreign companies to store data locally.”
Whereas the Trump administration’s “Buy American Hire American” executive order has called for a broad review over US worker visa programme, including the H-1b visa programme, it wasn’t targeted at a specific nation, the spokesperson said.
According to Reuters news reports, it is “completely separate from our ongoing discussions with India about the importance of ensuring the free flow of data across borders”, the spokesperson added.
US Government Statement on H1B: It is completely separate from our ongoing discussions with India about the importance of ensuring the free flow of data across borders.
— ANI (@ANI) June 21, 2019
India has earlier on Thursday stated it was in dialogues with the US over H-1B visas, but ministry of external affairs (MEA) spokesperson Raveesh Kumar told a media briefing, “We have not heard anything officially from the U.S. government” about restricting H-1B visas such allows for Indias.
On Wednesday, two senior Indian government officials said last week they were briefed up on Washington’s plan to restrict H-1B visas, issued every year to Indians at the annual quota between 10 percent to 15 percent.
Both officials stated the plan was linked to an international effort for “data localization”, under which a nation places a cap on data in order to gain better control on it and possibly curb foreign companies’ power. US companies have tried hard against data localization rules across the world.
“The proposal is that any country that does data localization, then it (H-1B visas) would be limited to about 15% of the quota. It’s being discussed internally in the U.S. government,” the person said.
Also read: US tells India: Mulling cap over H-1B visas to deter data rules amidst trade tensions