New Delhi: Steve Bannon, an influential figure in Donald Trump’s base who has called for an end to H-1B visas, has said he will lobby prosecutors to use a prospective law to have blanket visa suspensions enforced on countries that could possibly include India.
What is the prospective law, how might it impact visas for Indians and where do Bannon’s views on immigration figure among Trump’s supporters?
‘Laken Riley Act’ seeks to let state prosecutors obtain blanket visa bans
The Senate, the upper house of the US federal legislature, voted on Monday (January 20) to pass its amended version of a Bill prospectively named the Laken Riley Act, which seeks to require federal officials to detain certain foreign nationals for crimes including burglary and shoplifting, and to empower state prosecutors to sue the federal government for alleged failures to implement immigration law.
It will now go to the House of Representatives, the legislature’s lower house, for another vote, which if it clears will take it to Trump’s office for enactment into law, NBC News reported.
One of the failures the Bill aims to pursue is the federal government’s not ordering the discontinuation of visas to the people of a given foreign country despite that country’s refusal to take back its citizens facing deportation from the US. Such discontinuation of visas is provided for under the immigration-related Title 8 of the United States Code.
The Laken Riley Act – named after a nursing student killed by a Venezuelan man who entered the US without authorisation – says that if a state attorney general alleges the federal government’s failure to discontinue visas and demonstrates that this failure harmed their state (this harm can include “financial harm in excess of $100”), they can sue the US secretary of state in federal court.
As per federal immigration data obtained by Fox News through freedom of information law in November, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) considered India a country that does not cooperate in taking back its citizens who face deportation from the US.
So if an Indian national present in America faces deportation but the Indian government is perceived as uncooperative in facilitating their return – which it seems to be – could the Laken Riley Act enable state attorneys general to allege Washington’s failure to deny visas to Indians and move the courts to have such a ban enforced?
Trump loyalist and former aide Steve Bannon told The New Republic he will lobby state attorneys general to use Laken Riley’s visa suspensions provision. Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Yes, says expert
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told The New Republic that federal judges “absolutely could invoke the Laken Riley Act to block all visas from India, or even just specific types of visas, like H-1Bs”.
India has been one of the largest recipients of H-1B visas – issued to workers with specialised knowledge – and was by far the largest recipient in the US federal government fiscal year ending 2023, receiving 206,591 of 265,777 visas or a little less than 78% of the total. China was next with 23,482 or around 9% of the total.
Reichlin-Melnick has also argued that the Act requires federal judges to prioritise this kind of case over other ones even as state attorneys general are able to bring lawsuits against the US government with only “minimal evidence” that the feds’ actions injured their state.
Bannon, who recently called the H-1B program a “scam”, told The New Republic he would pressure attorneys general – who are elected officials in most US states – using his base to make use of Laken Riley’s visa denial provision.
“The populist right, who’s trying to defend American workers’ rights, will be all over these attorney generals,” TNR quoted him as saying.
Bannon also said that his camp may lobby Texas’s Republican governor Ken Paxton to use Laken Riley to enforce visa suspensions. Following this, Paxton could possibly find a “pliant” federal judge willing to enforce blanket visa suspensions for, say, Indians, TNR’s article says.
He did note, as per TNR, that the Laken Riley Act may be more useful under a future government (if the legislation is still around in its proposed form), as he expected Trump to use the visa denial provision on his own without being forced to do so by a judge.
Who is Bannon and what does he want?
Considered among the “architects” of Trump’s successful run for the presidency in 2016, Bannon served as his chief strategist, and then fell out and later patched things up with the president. A conservative radio show host, he supported Trump in the run-up to the 2024 election.
He is also dead set against H-1B visas.
“Let me repeat: the H-1B visa program is a total and complete scam, concocted by lords of easy money on Wall Street and the oligarchs in Silicon Valley to both–initially, to just increase profit margins. But there’s a darker element to it today. A contempt of America and American citizens, and we’re not going to tolerate it,” Bannon said on his War Room podcast a few weeks ago.
His views contrast those of another camp of Trump supporters represented by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, with the former having worked in the US with that visa and publicly advocated for it.
The two camps have also traded barbs over the issue recently.
Trump for his part said he was disinclined to get rid of H-1B visas. “I like both sides of the argument, but I also like very competent people coming into our country, even if that involves them training and helping other people that may not have the qualifications they do,” he said on Tuesday, adding that he did not want to stop the program.
While Trump noted there was high demand for engineers in the AI field, he said the kind of competent workers the US needed to bring in using H-1Bs belong to other occupations as well. “And [H-1B], I know the program very well. I use the program. Maitre d’s, wine experts, even waiters, high-quality waiters. You gotta get the best people.”
“So, we have to have the quality people coming in. Now, by doing that, we’re expanding businesses and that takes care of everybody,” Trump also said.
But Trump seems to have used the H-1B program infrequently, instead being a regular sponsor of H-2B and H-2A visas for unskilled and agricultural workers respectively, the New York Times reported. Trump’s firms received approval to employ at least 1,000 workers through the above categories over the last two decades, the newspaper added.
Illegal immigration from India also a problem
Trump has, though, followed through on the broader anti-migration stance he adopted during the election. In his first day in office, he signed a clutch of executive orders seeking to limit the kinds of US-born children treated as citizens, pausing refugee admissions, requiring those apprehended at the southern border to wait in Mexico for asylum proceedings to begin, and laying the foundation for greater military presence at that border, among other things.
Pew Research estimated that as of 2022, Indian nationals made up the third-largest foreign population living in the US without authorisation. ICE said late last year that there were 17,940 Indians in the US (but not in its custody) who were served final removal orders, while 2,647 Indian nationals were detained as part of its enforcement and removal operations as of the 2024 fiscal. That adds up to over 20,500 Indians on its radar.
Officials in either country are aware of the problem. External affairs minister S. Jaishankar and his US counterpart Marco Rubio discussed, among other things, “concerns related to irregular migration” on Tuesday, as per Washington.
Even as Washington maintains that the Indian government is ‘uncooperative’ in repatriating its citizens living illegally in the US, New Delhi has regularly accepted deportees from the US over the years.
ICE said it removed 1,529 Indians in the 2024 fiscal. This past September, a charter flight carrying Indian deportees landed in northwestern India with assistance from New Delhi.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in response to a question on such charter flights: “… We have facilitated [the] movement of people who are staying in the United States illegally or are part of irregular movement and this has been going on for some time.”
But its cooperation in accepting deportees from the US will expectedly hinge on verifying that those being deported are indeed Indian citizens (and not, say Pakistani citizens). Deportees’ prospective return will likely occur in phases and the number of those removed may vary from the roughly 20,500 figure depending on verification.
At any rate, New Delhi is in favour of the migration of skilled Indian workers to the US. Asked about the contrast between Trump’s statements to the Post and his past views on the visa – in 2016 he termed it “very bad” and called for doing away with it – the MEA said earlier this month that the “mobility of skilled professionals” was an “important component” of bilateral relations.
“India-US economic ties benefit a lot from the technical expertise provided by skilled professionals, with both sides leveraging their strengths and competitive value. We look forward to further deepening India-US economic ties which are to our mutual benefit,” it said.