US President Donald Trump has extended freeze on most sought-after H-1B visas along with other types of foreign work visas by three months

Washington: US President Donald Trump has extended the freeze on the most sought-after H-1B visas along with other types of foreign work visas by three months to protect American workers, saying while therapeutics and Covid-19 vaccines are recently available, their effect on the labour market and community health has not yet been fully realised.

The decision will impact a large number of Indian IT professionals and several American and Indian companies who were issued H-1B visas by the US government for the fiscal year 2021 beginning October 1.

Donald Trump

The freeze on various categories of work visas was ordered by Trump through two proclamations on April 22 and June 22 last year.

Hours before the freeze was set to expire on December 31, Trump issued another proclamation on Thursday to extend it until March 31.

He said that the reasons for which he had issued such a restriction has not changed.

H-1B visa

President Trump said that the effects of Covid-19 on the US labour market and the health of American communities is a matter of ongoing national concern, and the considerations present in the two previous proclamations have not been eliminated.

The 2019 Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) continues to significantly disrupt Americans' livelihoods. While the November overall unemployment rate in the United States of 6.7 per cent reflects a marked decline from its April high, there were still 9,834,000 fewer seasonally adjusted nonfarm jobs in November than in February of 2020, Trump said in his proclamation.