The US President Donald Trump is all set to deliver a body blow to the Indian information technology (IT) services industry as his administration has drafted an executive order that will overhaul the work visa programmes.
Bloomberg reported on Monday, following similar reports last week, that the executive orders could seek to curb the long term H-1B visas, and the short term L-1, E-2 and B1 visas.
Indian IT companies have long been a beneficiary of the H-1B work visas for transfer of skilled workers. About 300,000 to 350,000 Indian engineers are on H-1B visas in the US, according to industry estimates. ''Our country’s immigration policies should be designed and implemented to serve, first and foremost, the US national interest,'' the draft proposal reads, according to Bloomberg. ''Visa programs for foreign workers…should be administered in a manner that protects the civil rights of American workers and current lawful residents, and that prioritises the protection of American workers - our forgotten working people - and the jobs they hold.''
The US is also Indian IT’s largest market, accounting for about 60% of business.
''In terms of the H-1B visa, there are limits to what Trump can do. He may be able to change the annual H-1B lottery through executive order, and shift to merit or priority-based system that replaces the random lottery with a salary-based distribution, for instance,'' Patrick Thibodeau, national correspondent at Computerworld, told ET.
Because broader H-1B reforms require changes in the law and actions by Congress, there would likely be a court challenge testing his authority to make such changes, he added.
Analysts say changes to the visa program could shave as much as 300 basis points off the margin at a time when their customers are already clamouring for lower prices and they need to invest in digital offerings. "It will be a headwind to the margin. We will have to accept the higher costs and seek out the improvements and margin levers internally," Milind Kulkarni, chief financial officer at Tech Mahindra, told ET on Monday.
The H-1B visa has allowed Indian IT companies to send Indian engineers to the US, keeping costs low and giving them a margin advantage over the multi-national players. Industry body Nasscom said it does not react to reports of drafts. ''Not only is offshoring of IT and BPO slowing because of lessening demand, but increased political pressures and policies being driven by the Trump leadership are completely changing the game.
When it comes to IT services and BPO, it’s no longer about ''location, location, location'', it’s now all about ''skills, skills, skills'','' said Phil Fersht, CEO at consultancy Horses for Sources in a blog.
Authorities have placed Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed under house arrest, sources within Punjab Home Department said Monday.
Saeed has been placed under house arrest at Jamia Qadsia Chauburji in Lahore, sources told Geo News.
He, however, was not the only one as four more were taken into preventive custody. They were identified as Abdullah Ubaid, Zafar Iqbal, Abdur Rehman Abid and Qazi Kashif Niaz.
The Ministry of Interior has "placed Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF) and Jamaat-Ud-Dawa (JUD) on the Watch List as per UNSC 1267 Sanctions and have listed these organizations in the Second Schedule of the ATA 1997 (as amended)."
"Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, Abdullah Ubaid, Zafar Iqbal, Abdur Rehman Abid and Qazi Kashif Niaz are reportedly active members of the aforementioned organizations within the meaning of Section 11EEE(1) of the ATA 1997 (as amended). As such, they must be placed under preventive detention."
The notification asks the Home Secretary to "kindly direct the concerned agencies to move and take necessary action" as the matter "is most urgent".
The decree of the american president, Donald Trump, prohibiting entry into the United States from nationals of the seven countries with a muslim majority is forcing airlines to refuse certain passengers to board their planes. Since the signing of the decree, Friday, January 27, Air France has already retained a couple of people to go to the United States, said it learned Sunday from the company.
The presidential decree are prohibited from entering the United States to nationals of Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, and Libya for a period of ninety days. All Syrians are not allowed to enter the territory of the united states until further order. Of the netherlands, to Egypt, by way of Austria, nearly two hundred people were prevented from embarking to the United States, according to the adviser of Donald Trump Kellyanne Conway.
Some of the passengers from countries which are ''banned'', however, may be subject to exceptions, such as diplomats, ambassadors, members of the UN and NATO. In addition, the permit holders of permanent resident in the United States and citizens of seven muslim countries affected by a decree may continue to make it in America, announced Sunday, Reince Priebus, the general secretary of the White House.
passengers denied boarding by Air France are nationals of these countries proscribed by Donald Trump, ''but this does not mean that they were necessarily of these countries'', said the spokesperson of Air France on Sunday.
The airline defends itself from any excess of zeal and ensures to conform to the new rules imposed by the United States. the ''We are applying the requirements received by the american authorities. Each airline, regardless of the country of arrival, is obliged to comply with the entry requirements of the countries served. This is not a situation unique to Air France'', reported a spokesman for Air France, interviewed by LCI.
''We have taken care of all these passengers, no one is blocked in Paris, we took the necessary steps to redirect these people to their point of origin'' and this at the expense of the airline, said a spokesman for the group.
To avoid too much disappointment to passengers, Air France has also provided for prevention by e-mail or SMS of new rules in order to avoid taking a flight and be denied once we arrived in Paris to board an Air France flight to the United States.
numerous airlines have reported in the past twenty-four hours, have applied this decree. In Switzerland, the Swiss has also used the decree Trump. She has ''the legal obligation'' said on Saturday its director general for the French-speaking Switzerland, which has, however, stated on the Radio-Télévision Suisse that ''very little'' of nationals of the countries concerned were transiting through Zurich and Geneva on the airline’s flights.
The Dutch company KLM has refused to embark seven people to the United States Saturday. the ''We would have loved to travel with us, but this does not make much sense, the entry of the country would have been denied'', said a spokesman for KLM.
Hamaseh Tayari, an iranian student in veterinary medicine who had to return to her home in Glasgow, Scotland, a holiday stay in Costa Rica via New York had to change its travel due to denied boarding, according to the BBC.
''This is a story of crazy, I didn’t think it could happen to me'', she exclaimed. She and her companion had to pay around 2 600 pounds (more than 3,000 euros) for the purchase of new tickets for a flight San Jose-Madrid.
In Austria, at least three Iranians have been prohibited from boarding on Saturday for the United States to the Vienna airport, according to a spokesperson of Austrian Airlines. The three passengers, an elderly couple and a young woman, were all in possession of visas for the United States, said Peter Thier at the news agency of austria (APA).
An iraqi couple and their two children have also been blocked in Cairo, Egypt, then they had booked tickets on a flight EgyptAir and had visas for the United States, according to officials of the airport.
According to an official of EgyptAir, the company had not been officially informed of new regulations, and its own web site, no information was given on the new rules in force, for travel in the United States.
The associations of defence of human rights were granted on Saturday to the partial blocking of evictions by a federal judge in the united states, which has imposed a suspension of the emergency decree of Donald Trump.
The decision prohibited for the time being to the american authorities to deport people who arrived after the signing of the decree in airports in the united states with a valid visa, and allows them to enter the United States.
However, a ''twenty people'' were still held on Sunday by the us immigration services for ''checks more advanced'', according to the secretary-general of the White House, Reince Priebus.
According to the spokesperson of the White House, Sean Spicer, ''109 people'', were held Saturday, at their descent of plane. Since the promulgation of the decree on Friday evening, two Iraqis, however visa holders have been arrested at the airport JF Kennedy of New York.
A US raid in Yemen killed 41 suspected al-Qaeda militants and 16 civilians on Sunday, an official said, in what would be America’s first military action in the country under President Donald Trump.
Eight women and eight children were among those killed in the dawn raid on Yakla district, in the central province of Baida, said the provincial official, who did not want to be named, and tribal sources.
Sources in the region said the raid targeted the houses of three tribal chiefs linked to al-Qaeda, adding that an unspecified number of civilians were also killed.
But the provincial official said Apache helicopters also struck a school, mosque and a medical facility used by al-Qaeda militants.
Other sources spoke of US commandos taking part in the operation, but this was difficult to confirm with credible sources.
The three prominent tribal figures killed in the attack were identified as brothers Abdulraouf and Sultan al-Zahab and Saif Alawai al-Jawfi, the official and other sources said.
They were known for their strong links to al-Qaeda, the sources said.
The Zahab brothers have two other al-Qaeda brothers who were also killed in the past by drone strikes.
An al-Qaeda chief in the region, who was identified as foreigner Abu Barazan, was also killed in the attack, the official said.
The military operation is the first to be attributed to the United States against jihadists in Yemen since Trump took office on January 20.
Under Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama, the United States stepped up its use of drone strikes against suspected jihadists in Yemen, as well as other countries including Afghanistan.
The United States considers the extremist group’s Yemen-based franchise, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, to be its most dangerous.
But although it only sporadically reports on a long-running bombing campaign against AQAP, it is the only force known to be operating drones over Yemen.
On January 14, the Pentagon announced the killing a senior al-Qaeda operative in Baida the week before in an air strike.
Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State jihadist group have exploited a power vacuum created by the two-year-old conflict in Yemen between the government and Shiite Huthi rebels, especially in the country’s south and southeast.
Baida province is mostly controlled by the Huthis, but Yakla is ruled by the tribes, and has at least two training bases for al-Qaeda, local sources said.
Forces loyal to President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi have mounted offensives against jihadists in the south, but the militants remain active in several areas.
The conflict in Yemen has killed more than 7,400 people, since a Saudi-led Arab coalition intervened to support Hadi in March 2015, according to the World Health Organization.
But UN humanitarian coordinator Jamie McGoldrick said last week that as many as 10,000 civilians may have died.
Saturday afternoon, US President Donald Trump again took pen in hand and signed three more executive orders, one of them mandating U.S. military leadership draft and present a plan to defeat the Islamic State in the next 30 days.
The Hillreports a senior administration official said the other two orders signed Saturday were related to 5-year lobbying ban for administration officials, including a lifetime ban on administration officials lobbying for a foreign country; and a plan to reorganize the National Security Council.
“OK, that’s big stuff,” Trump said to the cameras and media present in the Oval Office during the signing. “Have a good weekend.”
The actual text of the orders has not yet been made available.
Two federal courts ruled late Saturday against part of US President Donald Trump’s executive order barring citizens of seven Muslim nations from entering the United States.
A federal court in Brooklyn granted a nationwide stay preventing the government from deporting people who arrived with valid U.S. visas. “Our own government presumably approved their entry to the country,” said Judge Ann Donnelly of the Eastern District of New York.
A second judge in Virginia issued a temporary restraining order preventing the deportation of permanent U.S. residents who arrived at Dulles International Airport outside Washington. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia also ruled that the detained passengers must be given access to an attorney.
Donnelly was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama. Brinkema, who sentenced Zacarias Moussaoui, a 9/11 conspirator, to life in prison, was appointed by President Bill Clinton.
Donnelly granted the stay after an emergency hearing in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the rights watchdog better known as the ACLU, on behalf of two men who’d been detained at JFK airport in New York. The men were later released.
The ACLU, other civil rights groups and hundreds of protesters at U.S. airports cheered the decision, though they cautioned that the reprieve is temporary and affects only visa holders who’ve already arrived in the United States and are being held at airports. While it prevents them from being deported, the ruling stops short of ordering their release, raising concerns among attorneys about an extended detention as the arrivals wait in limbo for a permanent decision in the case.
“Our courts today worked as they should as bulwarks against government abuse or unconstitutional policies and orders. On week one, Donald Trump suffered his first loss in court,” ACLU executive director Anthony D. Romero said in a statement.
The ACLU estimates that between 100 and 200 people are being held in U.S. airports because of Trump’s executive order, which upended thousands of lives overnight, including permanent U.S. residents who were denied entry or stranded abroad over the weekend.
Outraged families and advocacy groups publicized cases of visa holders and permanent residents, including some who’ve held so-called green cards for decades, being detained at airports or barred from entering the United States, including at least 50 who were being held at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Angry, confused and frustrated family members who’d been waiting for loved ones chanted “this is what democracy looks like” and held signs that read “Release our Family!” and “Deport Trump!!” in the international area of DFW’s Terminal D. Federal officials would not confirm the number of people being detained and DFW Airport officials declined to comment.
Large crowds of protesters also gathered outside John F. Kennedy airport in New York after word circulated that two Iraqis had been detained. Airports in San Francisco and a few other cities drew similar demonstrations.
Trump’s order halted refugee admissions and imposes a 90-day ban on entry for citizens of a select group of Middle East and North African nations.
Trump told reporters at the White House that the new order is “working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it all over.”
Immigration specialists, however, said the wording of the order is so murky that its true scope – at least as it applies to permanent residents and dual citizens – will become clear only through test cases.
A first round of arrivals Saturday caused chaos, with outcomes ranging from immediate deportation to entry for green-card holders only after they’d been questioned for hours about their beliefs. There were also reports of airlines turning back passengers with reservations to travel to the United States because of the new order.
Google, the Silicon Valley search giant, announced that the order may affect as many as 200 of its staff who were traveling outside the country either for work or vacation. Google CEO Sundar Pichai blasted the order in a note to employees.
Employees of other technology companies were likely to find themselves in similar straits because of the order. Silicon Valley firms employ thousands of non-U.S. citizens.
Also affected were Iraqis who’d helped the United States during the war there but were denied entry, even though they’d been approved under a program that gives them priority for resettlement. U.S. military veterans angrily took to Twitter, denouncing Trump’s order as a betrayal of Iraqis who provided life-saving intelligence and translation services.
The order applies to citizens of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya. Visa holders and refugees shouldn’t even try to enter, immigration attorneys said. Permanent residents and dual citizens might be able to persuade border security officials to allow them in, they said.
Green-card holders who’d been issued permission to live and work in the United States permanently but who were abroad when Trump’s order went into effect will have their cases reviewed individually and will require a waiver before they can enter the United States, said a senior administration official with knowledge of the situation but who’s not authorized to speak publicly.
Green-card holders in the United States will have to meet with a government official before leaving the country, the official added.
The White House pushed back on the portrayal of the order as a “Muslim ban,” listing several predominantly Muslim countries that are exempt.
“We’re dealing with a relatively small universe of people,” the official said. “It’s important to keep in mind that no person living or residing overseas has a right to entry to the U.S.”
The official also implied that the administration was considering some sort of hardship exemption for refugees who’ve been approved to enter the United States but are currently in a third country. He said the administration is working to define what “in transit” means before announcing how such a procedure might work.
Civil rights groups called Trump’s measures discriminatory and ineffective. They fought back by filing the first legal challenge to the order, on behalf of two Iraqi men who’d been targeted in Iraq because of their work with the U.S. military. The men had been approved for resettlement but were denied entry and detained at JFK airport in New York, according to a statement by the National Immigration Law Center, an advocacy group. Their case was the basis of the emergency stay issued late Saturday night.
Attorney Tarek Z. Ismail said he’s been on the phone nonstop with anguished travelers and their families. One was from a university student, a permanent U.S. resident who’d spent most of her life here, who heard about the ban while on a research trip to her country of origin, which Ismail did not name out of privacy concerns. She boarded a flight to the United States 20 hours before Trump signed the order, but her plane was delayed and she landed half an hour after it took effect.
“This was a complete life shift that was going to happen in the blink of an eye,” said Ismail, the senior staff attorney at CUNY Law School’s CLEAR project, which addresses legal needs of Muslim, Arab and South Asian communities in the New York City area.
Ismail said he had little faith that the government would repeal the ban after a review in 90 days. The idea that it’s temporary, he said, “is folly.”
“This is Donald Trump we’re talking about,” Ismail said.
Allegra Klein spent Saturday frantically calling legal experts to advise her on how to get her Iraqi-born husband, a green card holder since 2015, back from Thailand.
Klein and her husband met on a plane five years ago when they both worked in Baghdad – “love at first sight,” she said – and endured years of turmoil in Iraq before moving to the States to build a more tranquil life. Her husband, a professional athlete who asked not to be named, was in Thailand officiating at an International Wheelchair Basketball Federation championship when Trump announced the order. He was scheduled to return in a few days.
Now Klein faces the prospect of an open-ended separation from her husband as well as thousands of dollars in expenses for immigration attorneys and housing abroad for her stranded spouse. He faces loss of wages if he can’t return to the United States, and Klein said the ordeal could force her to withdraw from classes at the University of Connecticut.
“I am frankly, terrified,” Klein said. “And it’s not some terrorist organization that’s done this to us – it’s our president.”
Osama Alolabi, 20, of Syria, a junior at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said he also feared for his parents, who’d come for a visit, but were denied entry.
Aloabi said his parents, who’d been staying in Saudi Arabia but have Syrian passports, were traveling on B1-B2 Visitor Visas, which are generally used for business, tourism or visiting.
“I’m really terrified about my family,” said Aloabi, who last saw his parents in August. “That’s all I can think about, is their safety.”
Iraqi special forces say Islamic State were planning to launch long and short-range missiles tipped with chemical or biological war heads from western Mosul.
President Donald Trump moved aggressively to tighten the nation's immigration policies Wednesday, signing executive actions to jumpstart construction of a US-Mexico border wall and block federal grants from immigrant-protecting "sanctuary cities."
"We've been talking about this right from the beginning," Trump said during a brief signing ceremony at the Department of Homeland Security.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the White House had not circulated copies of the documents or briefed reporters on the details, as has been typical practice in past administrations. But Trump cast his actions as fulfillment of his campaign pledge to enact hard-line immigration measures, including construction of a wall paid for by Mexico. US taxpayers are expected to pay for the upfront costs, though Trump continues to assert that Mexico will reimburse the money through unspecified means.
In an interview with ABC News earlier Wednesday, Trump said, "There will be a payment; it will be in a form, perhaps a complicated form."
While Trump has repeatedly said the border structure will be a wall, his spokesman Sean Spicer said more generally Wednesday the president was ordering construction of a "large physical barrier."
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who has insisted his country will not pay for a wall, is to meet with Trump at the White House next week.
The orders Trump signed Wednesday also increase the number of border patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to be hired. And the president ordered the end of what Republicans have labeled a catch-and-release system at the border. Currently, some immigrants caught crossing the border illegally are released and given notices to report back to immigration officials at a later date.
Later in the week, Trump is expected to sign orders restricting the flow of refugees into the United States. His current proposal includes at least a four-month halt on all refugee admissions, as well as a temporary ban on people coming from some Muslim-majority countries, according to a source from a public policy organization that monitors refugee issues. The person was briefed on the details of that proposed action by a government official and outlined the plan to The Associated Press.
The public policy organization source insisted on anonymity in order to outline the plans ahead of the president's official announcements.
Trump campaigned on pledges to tighten US immigration policies, including strengthening border security and stemming the flow of refugees. His call for a border wall was among his most popular proposals with supporters, who often broke out in chants of "build that wall" during rallies.
In response to terrorism concerns, Trump controversially called for halting entry to the US from Muslim countries. He later turned to a focus on "extreme vetting" for those coming from countries with terrorism ties.
To build the wall, the president may rely on a 2006 law that authorized several hundred miles of fencing along the 2,000-mile frontier. That bill led to the construction of about 700 miles of various kinds of fencing designed to block both vehicles and pedestrians.
The Secure Fence Act was signed by then-President George W. Bush, and the majority of that fencing in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California was built before he left office. The last remnants were completed after President Barack Obama took office in 2009.
The Trump administration also must adhere to a decades-old border treaty with Mexico that limits where and how structures can be buil. The 1970 treaty requires that structures cannot disrupt the flow of the rivers, which define the US-Mexico border along Texas and 24 miles in Arizona, according to The International Boundary and Water Commission, a joint US-Mexican agency that administers the treaty.
Trump's order to crack down on sanctuary cities - locales that don't cooperate with immigration authorities - could cost individual jurisdictions millions of dollars. But the administration may face legal challenges, given that some federal courts have found that local jurisdictions cannot hold immigrants beyond their jail term or deny them bond based only a request from immigration authorities.
It appeared as though the refugee restrictions were still being finalized. The person briefed on the proposals said they included a ban on entry to the US for at least 30 days from countries including Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, though the person cautioned the details could still change.
There is also likely to be an exception for those fleeing religious persecution if their religion is a minority in their country. That exception could cover Christians fleeing Muslim-majority nations.
As president, Trump can use an executive order to halt refugee processing. Bush used that same power in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Refugee security vetting was reviewed and the process was restarted several months later.
The Israeli government hasn’t wasted any time, since Donald trump has been in the White House for less than a week, and they have already announced two installments to its expansion of new housing settlements.
Indian soldier Chandu Chavan, who inadvertently strayed across the Line of Control hours after the cross border firing on terror camps in September last year, was handed over to the Indian authorities by Pakistan at Wagah border.
Earlier today, as a ‘gesture of goodwill’, Pakistan Army announced that it would return Indian soldier Chandu Babulal Chavan who had accidentally strayed across the border last year. Chavan, posted with 37 Rashtriya Rifles battalion, had “inadvertently crossed over” from his post on the LoC on September 29, hours after the cross border firing by Indian forces on terror launch pads across LoC. The Army maintains that Chavan’s battalion was not part of the cross border firing and the 22-year-old crossed over from the LoC in Mendhar sector after a tiff with his superior at the post.
In a tweet however, Pakistan claimed the soldier had ‘willfully crossed LOC’ on September 29, 2016. The Pakistani statement also claimed the soldier had surrendered himself to the Pakistani army after deserting his post at LoC due to grievances of maltreatment against his commanders.
Although Indian Army officials informed their Pakistani counterparts about Chavan’s crossing over on September 29, Pakistan army formally acknowledged him being in its custody on October 13. Beyond established norms for individuals crossing the LoC, the two countries are also bound by Geneva Conventions on dealing with enemy soldiers in their custody.
Minister of State for Defence Subhash Bhamre had said in November last year, “He hails from my constituency. We are in constant touch with his family. Talks are on at the level of the Director General of Military Operations, and also through the Ministry of External Affairs and diplomatic channels. One positive thing is that they have accepted that Chandu Chavan is with them. They will have to send back Chavan some day… the question is when.” He added, “The neighbour is hostile. We are sure that Chavan will be back when the situation comes back to normal. The efforts are on at all levels.”
Chavan, 22, hails from Borvihir village in Dhule district that falls under Bhamre’s Lok Sabha constituency.
In September, Pakistani newspaper Dawn had quoted security sources saying that Pakistan military had said it had captured an Indian soldier and he had been shifted to an undisclosed location. It had also said the soldier was caught after the Indian military fired across the Line of Control (LoC). Dawn later withdrew the story.
According to the Daily Pakistan Global, Pakistan Army on Saturday handed over Sepoy Chandu Babulal Chohan, an Indian Army Soldier who willfully crossed Line of Control (LOC), to Indian authorities at Wagah Border on humanitarian grounds.
According to the ISPR, Chohan, who deputed at Indian Occupied Kashmir, deserted his post at LOC due to his grievances of maltreatment against his commanders. He willfully crossed the LOC on September 29, 2016 and surrendered himself to Pakistan Army.
As a gesture of goodwill and in continuation of efforts to maintain peace and tranquility along LOC and Working Boundry, Sepoy Chohan has been convinced to return to his own country.
