by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : US President Donald Trump’s administration is set to propose revoking a rule that makes spouses of thousands of H1-B visa holders eligible to work while in the US, potentially complicating a major driver of technology jobs, the media reported.
Since 2015, the spouses of H-1B, or high-skilled, visa holders waiting for green cards have been eligible to work in the US on H-4 dependent visas, under a rule introduced by former President Barack Obama’s administration, CNN reported on Friday.
The tech sector is a major employer of H-1B visa holders.
But in a statement late Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security said that it intended to do away with the rule.
However, the department did not explain its reasons in the announcement, saying that it was only acting “in light of” the “Buy American, Hire American” executive order that Trump had signed in April.
The formal process to rescind the rule will still need to be initiated at a later date.
While changing the rule would not prevent spouses of H-1B holders from pursuing other avenues for work authorisation, it could deter a number of high-skilled immigrants from staying in the US if their spouses cannot easily find work.
As well as dropping the rule allowing spouses to work, the Department of Homeland Security statement mentioned plans for other changes to the H-1B visa programme, reports CNN.
They include revising the definition of what occupations are eligible for the programme “to increase focus on truly obtaining the best and brightest foreign nationals”, which would be a standard potentially far above what is currently understood under the law.
The Obama-era rule allowing spouses to work already faces a legal challenge. A group called Save Jobs USA filed a lawsuit in April 2015 arguing that it threatens American jobs.
It has continued to press the case following Trump’s election, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said in the past that the H-4 rule “hurts American workers”.
The administration’s plans to overhaul the H-1B programme has caused particular alarm in India, which accounts for 70 per cent of all H-1B workers.
The H-1B is a common visa route for highly skilled foreigners to find work at companies in the US. It is valid for three years, and can be renewed for another three years.
It is a programme that’s particularly popular in the tech community, with many engineers vying for one of the programme’s 85,000 visas each year.
In October, the government said it was toughening up the process for renewing the visa. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services instructed its officers to review requests for renewal as thoroughly as they would initial visa applications.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : US Senate and House Republicans have struck an agreement on a sweeping tax-cut bill that, if passed, would be the first major piece of legislation signed by President Donald Trump, the media reported.
Senate Republican leaders shared the details of the revamped bill with members of their conference on Wednesday and Speaker Paul Ryan updated his colleagues later in the day, reports The Hill magazine.
“I’m confident we’ll pass the bill next week,” Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn, a member of the Senate-House negotiating conference, told reporters.
Republican leaders plan to hold an initial procedural vote on December 18, a final Senate vote on December 19 and then send the measure to the House for final passage.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell heralded the development as something that would boost the middle class.
“We want to take more money out of Washington’s pocket and put more money into the pockets of the middle class. I’m confident the conference committee will finalize a bill that does just that,” he tweeted.
Senate negotiators convinced their House counterparts to preserve two important middle-class tax breaks: the deduction on student loan interest and the exclusion for tuition waivers received by graduate students, reports The Hill magazine.
The bill would also cap the popular mortgage interest deduction at $750,000, a midpoint compromise between the Senate and House bills.
Negotiators were still working on how many tax brackets to set, said congressional aides. Republican senators said they expected the final bill to tilt toward the seven brackets they passed in their version.
Lawmakers were rushing to get the bill done before the Christmas holiday.
The legislation will repeal the federal mandate requiring people to buy insurance – a core piece of ObamaCare.
The bill also would give some relief to people in high-tax areas by allowing them to deduct up to $10,000 in state and local taxes.
Meanwhile, a provision to set a corporate alternative minimum tax – which would have raised $40 billion over 10 years – has been stripped out.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : US Federal Reserve has raised the benchmark interest rates for the third time this year and maintained the forecast of three more rate hikes in 2018, as the economy and job market continued solid growth.
“In view of realized and expected labor market conditions and inflation, the (Federal Open Market) Committee decided to raise the target range for the federal funds rate to 1.25 to 1.5 per cent,” said the Fed in a statement on Wednesday after concluding two-day monetary policy meeting, Xinhua reported.
In December 2015, the central bank first raised the interest rates from nearly zero and hiked three more respectively in December 2016, March, and June this year. It also started to reduce its $4.5 trillion balance sheet from October this year.
The decision to raise interest rates is based on the assessment that the job market will remain strong growth. The central bank adjusted the statement language about the job market, painting a rosy outlook.
“This change highlights that the committee expects the labor market to remain strong, with sustained job creation, ample opportunities for workers and rising wages,” Fed Chair Janet Yellen said on Wednesday at her last press conference before her four-year term ends early next year.
According to the quarterly economic projections released the same day, Fed officials expected the unemployment rate will maintain at 4.1 per cent by the end of 2017, lower than September’s forecast of 4.3 per cent. It will further drop to 3.9 per cent in 2018.
She emphasized the risks of labor market overheating, saying that it would require the central bank to tighten monetary policy abruptly, jeopardizing economic expansion.
Fed officials also raised their forecast for economic outlook. According to their forecast, the US economy will grow 2.5 per cent both in 2017 and 2018, higher than their forecasts in September which projected a 2.4 per cent growth for 2017 and 2.1 per cent increase for 2018.
“Participants generally identified changes in tax policy as a factor supporting this modestly stronger outlook, although many noted that much uncertainty remains,” said Yellen.
During the conference, Yellen cautioned that the new forecasts shouldn’t be viewed as estimates of the impact of the tax policy and stressed the uncertainty about the impact.
Fed officials, including herself, widely believed that the tax policy would tend to provide only “modest” lift to GDP growth in the coming years, said Yellen.
On this expectation, Fed officials largely kept their forecasts for inflation outlook and the pace of future rate hikes unchanged.
They expected the inflation would grow 1.7 per cent in 2017 and further strengthen to 1.9 per cent in 2018, and still envisioned three more rate hikes in 2018, unchanged from their forecast in September.
The forecasts indicated that Fed officials saw no reason to accelerate the pace of future rate hikes, although the proposed tax cuts would modestly boost the growth.
Yellen recognized that the soft inflation was one of the risks the policymakers were facing. However, she said that Fed officials continued to believe that the factors which were holding down inflation this year were likely to prove transitory.
They continued to expect the inflation will go up to the central bank’s 2 per cent target in the medium term, said Yellen.
In view of the rather low inflation reading, Yellen stressed that it’s appropriate for the central bank to tighten monetary policy gradually.
At the press conference, Yellen noted that her nominated successor, Jerome Powell, has been part of the consensus shaping the Fed’s gradual rate hike strategy.
Powell, now a Fed governor, was nominated by President Donald Trump in November to replace Yellen when her terms ends in February, 2018.
Investors and market watchers widely expected that Powell will maintain the continuity of the monetary policy at the central bank.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : The US Congress has approved a stopgap budget that averts, for now, a partial government shutdown, which had been a strong possibility due to the failure of Republican and Democratic lawmakers to agree on a more comprehensive bill.
The approval came after President Donald Trump met Democratic and Republican congressional leaders on Thursday to negotiate an agreement that would allow federal agencies to continue receiving funding before their allocated budget money ran out on Friday, reports Efe news.
The Senate approved the deal in an 81-14 vote, allowing the government to be financed through December 22, and the House had earlier given its support to the measure in a 235-193 vote, with all the “yes” votes being cast by Republicans and all the no votes by Democrats.
The budget bill is a temporary solution that will now be sent to the White House, where Trump is expected to sign it.
Congress, which had until Friday to approve the law, now has two weeks to work out a budget bill for the next fiscal year.
Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that the temporary measure gives lawmakers “the time we need” to finalize discussions on a long-term budget solution.
After Democratic congressional leaders Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Nancy Pelosi cancelled a meeting with the president several days ago, they agreed to meet with him in the Oval office on Thursday to narrow their differences.
“We hope we can come to an agreement,” said Schumer.
“Funding the government is extremely important. Helping our soldiers is very important and helping average citizens is very important. So we’re here in the spirit of ‘Let’s get it done.'”
Also on hand for the meeting with the president were the two top Republicans in Congress: House Speaker Paul Ryan and McConnell.
However, after the meeting, Schumer and Pelosi said in a joint statement that, despite having a “productive conversation… Nothing specific” was agreed to by the participants.
The main stumbling block is the Democratic demand that they will only agree to approve a budget bill if a law is enacted safeguarding so-called Dreamers, young undocumented foreigners brought to this country as children and protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme, which was cancelled by Trump.
In September, the President cancelled DACA, which was implemented by his predecessor, Barack Obama, but he gave Congress six months to provide a legislative solution to the Dreamers’ situation.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Business, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Large Enterprise, Markets, Technology
Bengaluru : With a renewed focus on aerospace and defence sector, Hyderabad-based Sankhya InfoTech Limited, a simulation and Cloud-based training management solutions provider, on Wednesday announced the expansion of its footprint into the US and Singapore markets.
As part of the aggressive growth initiative, the company will also strengthen its presence in Europe and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
Sankhya Infotech also announced a new analytics and Artificial Intelligence-based solution that predicts specific training needs, customised for an individual, over an immersive experience.
“Whether it’s the simulation of a fighter jet aircraft engine for maintenance that covers over a million parts and thousand sub-systems for maintenance purposes or a platform to implement world’s first Evidence-Based Training to Etihad Airways, we are intent on shaping the future of training technology,” said Sridhar Krishna, Chairman and Managing Director, Sankhya Infotech.
Over 1.5 million users across 50 global locations are empowered by Sankhya’s innovative technology and solutions.
The firm which registered an annual turnover of Rs 161.6 crore in the last fiscal, also announced new Board of Directors with former Microsoft chairman Bhaskar Pramanik, NetApp India and Saarc President Anil Valluri and Ravindran Govindan, Founder of Mercatus Capital Pte Ltd.
“My global experience at technology majors Microsoft, Oracle and Sun Microsystems will help Sankhya scale operations profitably,” said Pramanik.
Founded in 1997, Sankhya Infotech has had a strong presence in aerospace and defense sector, working with leaders like Airbus, Boeing, Embraer, Etihad and Safran Aircraft Engines (previously Snecma).
“With over 32 years in high-tech industry in marketing, sales and general management, I look forward to adding value to Sankhya’s market growth and technology expansion plans,” said Valluri.
—IANS
