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‘Great’: Elon Musk on Trump admin's proposal to overhaul H1-B visa lottery system
The US Department of Homeland Security has submitted a filing on the proposal to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
The Donald Trump-led administration plans to overhaul the H1-B visa lottery system, replacing it with a more weighted and wage-linked selection process.
According to a filing by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on July 17, the administration has proposed the introduction of a "weighted selection process" for the capped category of the system.
The proposal has been submitted to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
Reacting to the development, Elon Musk gave a one-word response on social media platform X. “Great,” the Tesla CEO said.
Musk has in the past said that the H1B visa system is “broken”, while pledging that he would “go to war on this issue”. “I’ve been very clear that the program is broken and needs major reform,” Musk said last year.
The visa system has been a topic of debate between Trump and his supporters. The US President's MAGA base has also opposed Musk's take on the immigration policy.
The proposal by the DHS looks to prioritise some applicants on the basis of additional criteria. This could be wage-linked selection, which would favour highly-skilled professionals. However, the DHS has not provided details on the revamping of the programme.
At present, 85,000 new H-1B visas are issued annually, including the 20,000 which are set aside for applicants who have a Master’s degree or higher from an educational institution in the US, Business Today reported.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) allocates visas through a random lottery system, which means that the applicants are on the same scale, despite their skills or compensation.
Largely a majority of the beneficiaries of non-immigrant H1-B visa programme are Indians. 77 per cent of the approved visas from the 320,000 alloted ones belonged to Indians, India Today reported. In 2023 too, Indians made up for more than 70 per cent of the approved visas.
