Immigration Reform 2017: Trump To Sign 'Buy American, Hire American' Executive Order Targeting H-1B Visas

Taking a step toward fulfilling the promise he made during the presidential campaign last year to promote the "Buy American, Hire American" policy, President Donald Trump will sign an executive order Tuesday targeting the country’s high-skilled immigration visa program. Trump is set to sign an executive order in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he will direct federal agencies to conduct a review of visa programs and federal procurement policies to determine whether American workers are being protected.

Trump will commission the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which issues H1-B visas, to review the procedure of rewarding these visas. Trump also ordered the DHS to come up with reforms in the process of handing out these visas so that they are given to only highly paid, specially skilled applicants, and not foreign workers who are paid less than their U.S. counterparts, Time reported.

Read: Trump Wants To Hire Foreign Workers At Westchester Golf Course

"It's a well-known fact amongst those who study both procurement policy and our visa and guest worker policies that Buy American and Hire American rules have been enormously diluted over time," said one senior administration official Monday on the condition of anonymity, according to Time. "The waivers and exemptions process in Buy American have been abused greatly, resulting in many lost job opportunities for American workers. And similarly, the Hire American rules that govern many of our visa and guest worker policies have gone unenforced or have been abused to the point of rendered, in some cases, even inoperative."

Trump's new directive will not affect the day-to-day working of the H-1B system, and will only open a formal review of the program. However, the executive order may leave many in the tech industry worried, as the move will be the latest in a series of restrictions and changes the administration has introduced to the H1-B visa program in recent weeks, reports said.

Around 85,000 H-1B visas are distributed annually by lottery. Many visas are obtained by the technology companies, which say that the U.S. has shortage of skilled technology workers. However, critics argue that the program is being misused by companies that use the visas to import foreigners who can work on lower salaries in the United States, according to ABC7.