Trump: Citizenship for children of H1B visa holders
#News Bureau January 22,2025
US President Donald Trump has announced that unless at least one of the parents of a newborn in the US is an American citizen or a green card holder, the child will not be an American citizen. This is a right that all people born in the US have had for a long time.
Trump’s decision will have a huge impact on all people with temporary visa status in the US. This may affect people from all Asian countries including India and Pakistan the most. Thousands of Indians are on temporary work visas (H-1B and L1), dependent visas (H4), study visas (F1). But Trump’s new order will be applicable to all children born in the US after 30 days i.e. from February 20.
There are more than 50 lakh people of Indian origin in America. But this includes both Indian-Americans and Indians. However, this order has been challenged in the courts of New Hampshire and Massachusetts on Tuesday itself and if the courts stop it next month, then Trump’s order will not be effective. Experts are also saying that this order of Trump is against the basic spirit of the American Constitution. Therefore, the court will definitely stop Trump’s order.
Although Trump later corrected his statement during the debate on H1B visa, he did not change the order. During a press conference at the White House, Trump said that he likes both sides of the debate on H-1B foreign guest visa, worker visa. He welcomes “qualified people” coming to the country.
Trump said- “I like having very capable people in our country, even if it means training them and helping other people who don’t have the same qualifications as them. I don’t want to stop…” When Trump was saying all this, Oracle CTO Larry Ellison, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and Open AI CEO Sam Altman were present with him.
Sword hanging over 20 thousand Indians, India worried: Trump may have taken strict measures to stop illegal immigration from many countries. But his uneasiness is being felt in India as well. The Modi government is worried that a large number of Indians who fall in the illegal immigrant category may return from the US. There are about 300,000 Indian students in America, which is the largest group of any foreign country. Overall, the situation of more than 20,000 is in danger.
If the Trump administration goes ahead with its decision, the first to be affected could be 20,407 “undocumented” Indians by November 2024. Also affected would be those who are facing “final removal orders” or are currently in detention centres of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Of these, 17,940 “paperless” Indians are not in detention but are under “final removal orders”. Another 2,467 are in detention under ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).
The US agency ICE has placed India along with Iraq, South Sudan and Bosnia-Herzegovina in the list of 15 “non-cooperative” countries that are reluctant to accept back their “illegal” citizens from the US. The classification of “non-cooperative” again has several categories.
According to ICE’s 2024 annual report, the number of Indians deported has increased five-fold in four years: from 292 in 2021 to 1,529 in 2024.
