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Veteran Hong Kong Activists Convicted Over Huge Democracy Rally

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Hong Kong veteran activists Martin Lee at the West Kowloon Magistrates Court. (File)
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Hong Kong, China:
Nine veteran Hong Kong activists face jail after they were convicted Thursday for their roles in organising one of the biggest democracy protests to engulf the city in 2019.
The defendants included some of Hong Kong's most prominent pro-democracy campaigners, many of whom are non-violence advocates who have spent decades campaigning in vain for universal suffrage.
They are the latest group of democracy figures to be prosecuted as China oversees a sweeping crackdown on dissent following seven straight months of democracy protests in the financial hub.
Among them are Martin Lee, an 82-year-old barrister who was once chosen by Beijing to help write Hong Kong's mini-constitution, and Margaret Ng, a 73-year-old barrister and former opposition lawmaker.
Media tycoon Jimmy Lai, currently in custody after his arrest under Beijing's new national security law, was among those convicted.
Leung Kwok-hung, an opposition politician known by his sobriquet "Long Hair" who has also been detained on national security charges, was also sent down.
Others are leading members of the Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF), the coalition that organised a series of huge rallies throughout 2019.
Some struck a defiant tone outside court on Thursday morning ahead of the verdict, holding banners that read "protest political suppression". 
"We are very proud even if we have to go to jail for it," Lee Cheuk-yan, a former legislator and labour leader told reporters. "We will still march on no matter what lies in the future."
Seven were found guilty of organising and knowingly participating in an unauthorised assembly. Two others had previously pleaded guilty. 
They face up to five years in jail.
Massive rally
The group was prosecuted for organising an unauthorised assembly on August 18, 2019 -- one of the biggest in Hong Kong that year as people took to the streets calling for democracy and greater police accountability.
Organisers claimed 1.7 million people turned out -- almost one in four Hong Kong residents -- though that number was difficult to independently verify.
It was easily one of the biggest rallies that year, with dense crowds marching peacefully for hours under a sea of umbrellas and thundery skies.
Protests in Hong Kong can only go ahead with the permission of authorities and rights groups have long criticised the use of unauthorised assembly prosecutions.
British lawyer David Perry, hired by the Hong Kong government to be the lead prosecutor, stepped down following withering criticism from both the UK government and British legal bodies over his decision to take the job.
Prosecutors accused the group of defying police instructions that day and encouraging crowds to march across Hong Kong's main island, bringing traffic disruption.
In her verdict, district Judge AJ Woodcock indicated that she was inclined to go for a maximum jail sentence and said the fact the march was peaceful was no defence. 
"It cannot be right for an offender to argue that although his act was unauthorised... but because it was ultimately peaceful and there was no violence he should not be arrested, prosecuted or convicted," she wrote. 
The group will be sentenced on 16 April and those not already detained on separate charges were granted bail on condition they surrender their passports and remain in Hong Kong.
Since 2019, protests have been all but outlawed with authorities either refusing permission on security grounds or because of the pandemic.
The rallies often descended into clashes between riot police and a knot of hardcore participants, and posed the most concerted challenge to China's rule since the former British colony's 1997 handover.
The movement eventually fizzled out under the combined weight of exhaustion, some 10,000 arrests and the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic.
Authorities have since unleashed a broad crackdown and Beijing has imposed a new security law which criminalises much dissent.
Earlier this week Chinese leaders also passed a new law governing Hong Kong's already limited local elections. 
The number of directly elected seats for the 90-seat legislature was slashed to less than a quarter while anyone wanting to stand for public office will have to be vetted by national security police and officials for their "patriotism".
China and Hong Kong's leaders say the moves are needed to restore stability to the finance hub.
Critics counter that Beijing has shredded the liberties and autonomy it promised Hong Kong could maintain after the handover.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
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news world Veteran Hong Kong Activists Convicted Over Huge Democracy Rally

Hong Kong veteran activists Martin Lee at the West Kowloon Magistrates Court. (File) Hong Kong, China: Nine veteran Hong Kong activists...

4 Dead, Including Child, In California Office Complex Shooting: Report

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The violence marked the third deadly mass shooting in the United States over the past two weeks.
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Los Angeles:
Police in the Californian city of Orange reported a shooting on Wednesday with "multiple victims at the scene including fatalities," and local news media outlets said four people were killed before a suspect was arrested.
Few official details of the violence in the city south of Los Angeles were immediately available, but the Los Angeles City News Service (CNS) and television station KNBC-TV reported that in addition to the four dead, two people were wounded by gunfire.
Reporting the incident on its official Facebook page, the Orange Police Department said its officers arrived at about 5:30 p.m. local time "as shots were being fired and located multiple victims at the scene including fatalities."
The police statement said an "officer-involved shooting" had occurred and that the situation had since been "stabilized" with no further threat to the public.
KNBC-TV reported the shooting erupted at a business complex in Orange, a city about 30 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. The television station and CNS reported that the dead included a child. Various news outlets also reported that the shooter was among those injured.
The violence marked the third deadly mass shooting in the United States over the past two weeks.
Eight people were shot to death by a gunman who went on a rampage at three day spas in the Atlanta area on March 16. And 10 people were killed on March 22 when a man opened fire at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado. The lone suspects in both those shootings were arrested.
Reacting on Twitter to Wednesday's events in Orange, California Governor Gavin Newsom called the latest bloodshed "horrifying and heartbreaking."
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
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news world 4 Dead, Including Child, In California Office Complex Shooting: Report

The violence marked the third deadly mass shooting in the United States over the past two weeks. Los Angeles: Police in the Californian...

How SoftBank Chief Masayoshi Son's "Money Guy" Went From Hero to Zero

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SoftBank lost money again in its Vision Fund, a quarter after the company posted a record quarterly loss.
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In February 2020, SoftBank Group Corp.'s Masayoshi Son visited Indonesia, offering to invest billions of dollars toward the development of a new capital city. Lex Greensill, at the time a favorite of Son's, was part of the entourage.
SoftBank had invested $1.5 billion in Greensill's eponymous finance company, but in a meeting with Indonesian president Joko Widodo, Son introduced Greensill as the "money guy," according to local TV footage.
One year later, the money guy has become a money pit. Greensill Capital collapsed in March in one of the most spectacular financial blow-ups of recent years, sending shock waves through a Swiss banking giant, two of Japan's largest firms and a British tycoon's industrial empire.
Son has had to write down his investment, making it among the worst in the history of his Vision Fund, alongside the implosion of WeWork Cos., another SoftBank portfolio company. That's unlikely to prevent SoftBank from posting its strongest quarter on record, including a profit of more than $30 billion at the Vision Fund, thanks to the IPO of South Korean e-commerce firm Coupang Inc. and a soaring valuation of Chinese ride-hailing startup Didi Chuxing Technology Co., according to people with knowledge of the matter. Still, the episode underscores the risks of Son's strategy of taking big equity stakes in startups and then encouraging those portfolio companies to collaborate with each other.
Spokespersons for SoftBank Group in Tokyo and Greensill Capital in London declined to comment.
Son's relationship with Greensill began haphazardly: A junior executive at the Vision Fund reached out seeking an introduction, people with knowledge of the matter said. By May 2019, SoftBank had invested $800 million in Greensill. It put in an additional $655 million that October.
Soon the two were talking regularly, even though SoftBank had investments in more than 80 startups and Greensill was far from the biggest, according to people close to the executives. Son touted Greensill at SoftBank events as an example of the cooperation he expected from his portfolio companies, the people said.
Greensill got the same star treatment as former WeWork Chief Executive Officer Adam Neumann before him and, more recently, Ritesh Agarwal, head of India's Oyo Hotels, which has since had to retrench. A presentation at a 2019 SoftBank shareholders meeting featured photos of the three men, identifying them as artificial intelligence entrepreneurs in "the biggest revolution in human history."
Greensill, in turn, basked in the attention, boasting about his conversations with the SoftBank founder, executives at his company said.
"One of the great things about joining the SoftBank Vision Fund family hasn't just been the network, the capital and the advice, it's actually been having Masa as a partner and a mentor," Greensill was quoted as saying on a now-deleted Vision Fund web page. "He has worked with us, and particularly with me, to think about our core business and how we can actually take that core business and tackle other inequalities and other challenges that exist in the global market."
Greensill was a key part of what Son dubbed his "Cluster of No. 1's" strategy, taking non-controlling stakes in the world's leading tech companies and encouraging them to cooperate. In theory, startups would tap WeWork's network of co-working spaces or use Uber Technologies Inc. drivers for deliveries. Greensill's role was to offer struggling SoftBank startups easy access to financing without having to pledge onerous collateral.
A former Morgan Stanley banker, Greensill, 44, founded his firm in 2011, focusing on extending short-term loans secured against invoices. But some of the financing provided to SoftBank companies was based on predicted future sales, not on actual invoices, people with knowledge of the practice said.
The loans, securitized and turned into bond-like instruments known as notes, were presented to some investors as backed by transactions, according to marketing documents and people familiar with the matter. Investors thought they were getting short-term debt, the people said.
Many of the loans were made through supply-chain funds at Credit Suisse Group AG that attracted $10 billion from investors. Among the borrowers were SoftBank portfolio companies Oyo, mobile software firm Fair Financial Corp. and modular construction startup Katerra Inc.
SoftBank was also an investor in the Credit Suisse funds, leading to conflict-of-interest accusations against the Japanese firm. That sparked an internal review at the Swiss bank, and SoftBank pulled $700 million out of the funds.
"Having a company within Vision Fund that makes it easy for startups to get liquidity may not be a good idea," Kirk Boodry, an analyst at Redex Research in Tokyo, told Bloomberg News. "Easy money can confuse things because the feedback gets muddled, and you don't know if you are doing things right." He called the Greensill loans an example of negative synergies.
"At the end, whatever positive synergies they get are probably going to be irrelevant," he said. "But the negative one will come back to haunt them."
It was in search of such synergies that Son had offered to invest in Indonesia's new capital on the island of Borneo and a new city Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is building on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast. It was Son's dream that portfolio companies such as Katerra, Oyo, ride-haling startups Ola and Grab and facial-recognition firm SenseTime Group, would win contracts. Greensill would help provide financing.
Greensill's name kept cropping up in Vision Fund meetings and presentations, according to people familiar with the matter. When managing partners challenged investment ideas presented by deal teams, the questions would often focus on liquidity, a common problem for startups. Those discussions often led to Greensill, the people said.
But by March 2020, a month after the trip to Indonesia, the relationship between Son and Greensill began to sour. The pandemic was squeezing supply chains, and investors pulled billions of dollars from the Credit Suisse funds, Greensill's largest source of funding.
Greensill turned to Son for capital, saying he might have to call in the financing he had provided to SoftBank portfolio companies, according to people with knowledge of the conversations. Suddenly, the weekly phone calls came to an end.
Colin Fan, the former Deutsche Bank AG executive who managed the investment for the Vision Fund, stopped attending Greensill board meetings at the Savoy Hotel across the street from its London office.
Fan needed to focus on other investments, according to a person familiar with the matter, and a spokesperson for the Vision Fund said other SoftBank representatives remained active and shared their concerns with Greensill management. But the two fund executives who continued to attend Greensill board meetings as observers mostly took notes and didn't ask many questions, according to two people familiar with the matter.
That was the case even as Greensill's troubles escalated and one of its insurers, an Australian unit of Tokio Marine Holdings Inc., told the firm it wouldn't renew coverage on notes sold to investors including Credit Suisse.
In December 2020, with Greensill increasingly desperate for cash, SoftBank invested an additional $400 million in the finance company, in exchange for canceling Katerra's debt, so Greensill could redeem notes in the Credit Suisse funds. It also put $200 million more into the construction company.
"After WeWork, SoftBank promised not to throw good money after the bad, but here we are again," said Boodry, the analyst. "They knew there were problems with Greensill, and they still put more money in. It's almost like they take the failure of these companies personally."
SoftBank owned about 25% of Greensill at the end of last year, according to people familiar with the matter. It is now seeking $1.15 billion as a creditor of Greensill, which filed for insolvency in the U.K. on March 8.
Fan, who also managed Vision Fund investments in Flexport Inc. and Fair, both of which received financing from Greensill, stepped away from his role as a managing partner at the Vision Fund in January to become a senior adviser. The company didn't give a reason.
Meanwhile, Credit Suisse is examining the role of executive board members including CEO Thomas Gottstein as part of its probe into dealings with the defunct lender. And, in Germany, regulators have asked prosecutors to examine how Greensill's Bremen-based bank booked assets tied to British industrialist Sanjeev Gupta. Greensill has said it sought the advice of law firms before classifying its assets and has complied with requests from German regulators.
As for Indonesia, Son has yet to follow through on his promise to invest in the new capital. He has backed the merger of e-commerce provider Tokopedia, a SoftBank portfolio company, with another Indonesian startup, ride-hailing giant Gojek, potentially booking a healthy profit.
--With assistance from Melissa Karsh.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
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news world How SoftBank Chief Masayoshi Son's "Money Guy" Went From Hero to Zero

SoftBank lost money again in its Vision Fund, a quarter after the company posted a record quarterly loss. In February 2020, SoftBank Gro...

"We Will Lose Control If We Don't Move Now": Macron Orders Third Lockdown

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="'We Will Lose Control If We Don't Move Now': Macron Orders Third Lockdown" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-04/11394ivo_emmanuel-macron-reuters_625x300_01_April_21.jpg" title="'We Will Lose Control If We Don't Move Now': Macron Orders Third Lockdown" /></div>
Emmanuel Macron had sought to avoid a third large-scale lockdown since the start of the year.
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Paris:
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday ordered France into its third national lockdown and said schools would close for three weeks as he sought to push back a third wave of COVID-19 infections that threatens to overwhelm hospitals.
With the death toll nearing 100,000, intensive care units in the hardest-hit regions at breaking point and a slower-than-planned vaccine rollout, Macron was forced to abandon his goal of keeping the country open to protect the economy.
"We will lose control if we do not move now," the president said in a televised address to the nation.
His announcement means that movement restrictions already in place for more than a week in Paris, and some northern and southern regions, will now apply to the whole country for at least a month, from Saturday.
Departing from his pledge to safeguard education from the pandemic, Macron said schools will close for three weeks after this weekend.
Macron, 43, had sought to avoid a third large-scale lockdown since the start of the year, betting that if he could steer France out of the pandemic without locking the country down again he would give the economy a chance to recover from last year's slump.
But the former investment banker's options narrowed as more contagious strains of the coronavirus swept across France and much of Europe.
For school-children after this weekend, learning will be done remotely for a week, after which schools go on a two-week holiday, which for most of the country will be earlier than scheduled.
Thereafter, nursery and primary pupils will return to school while middle and high school pupils continue distance learning for an extra week.
"It is the best solution to slow down the virus," Macron said, adding that France had succeeded in keeping its schools open for longer during the pandemic than many neighbours.
Faster Vaccinations
Daily new infections in France have doubled since February to average nearly 40,000. The number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care has breached 5,000, exceeding the peak hit during a six-week-long lockdown late last year.
Bed capacity in critical care units will be increased to 10,000, Macron said.
The new lockdown risks slowing the pace of France's economic recovery from last year's slump. It will force the temporary closure of 150,000 businesses at a cost of 11 billion euros ($12.89 billion) per month, the finance ministry said
The set-back for France, the euro zone's second-largest economy, may also dampen Europe's hopes of bouncing back swiftly from the pandemic, in the way that the U.S. and Chinese economies are doing.
France's new lockdown underlines the cost of the European Union's slow rollout of anti-COVID vaccines.
Neighbouring Britain, which finalised its divorce with the bloc on Jan. 1., has inoculated nearly half its population against the coronavirus and is re-opening its economy just as France hunkers down once again.
Macron said the vaccine campaign needed to be accelerated. Mired early on in red tape and slowed by supply shortages, it is only now finding its stride three months in, with just 12% of the population inoculated.
Bringing the calendar forward, Macron said people in their sixties would be eligible for a shot from mid-April and those in their fifties a month later. A goal of 30 million adults inoculated by mid-June remained the target, he said.
Seeking to offer hope, Macron said the April lockdown and a swifter vaccination campaign would allow the slow re-opening of the country from mid-May, starting with museums and the outdoor terraces of bars and restaurants, albeit under strict rules.
"We can see a way out of this crisis," Macron said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
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news world "We Will Lose Control If We Don't Move Now": Macron Orders Third Lockdown

Emmanuel Macron had sought to avoid a third large-scale lockdown since the start of the year. Paris: President Emmanuel Macron on Wedne...

"Got To Control Him": Cop Defends Restraint Of George Flyod In New Video

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="'Got To Control Him': Cop Defends Restraint Of George Flyod In New Video" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2020-05/n4jh6a2g_george-floyd_625x300_27_May_20.jpg" title="'Got To Control Him': Cop Defends Restraint Of George Flyod In New Video" /></div>
Derek Chauvin defends his treatment of George Floyd to a bystander.
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In newly released body-camera footage, Derek Chauvin defends his treatment of George Floyd to a bystander, saying Floyd "was probably on something" and needed to be under "control."
Chauvin's comments, to witness Charles McMillian, are the first time the former Minneapolis police officer is known to have offered any hint of what he was thinking as he kept his knee on the Black man's neck for over nine minutes on Memorial Day 2020. The footage, played by the prosecution during Chauvin's murder trial Wednesday, came from the body camera he was wearing as he and two other officers restrained Floyd.
Chauvin's body camera was knocked off during a struggle to place Floyd in a police car, capturing only audio of the incident. But the jury was shown a conversation between Chauvin and McMillian, a witness who confronted the White officer about his treatment of Floyd, that was captured as he was putting his camera back on.
The video showed McMillian, a 61-year-old Black man who had urged Floyd to cooperate with the police, telling Chauvin he didn't "respect" how the officer had treated Floyd, who had just been taken from the scene by ambulance. "That's one person's opinion," Chauvin replied, as the video showed him getting back into the passenger seat of his squad car.
"We've got to control this guy because he's a sizable guy," Chauvin added, as McMillian stood outside the car window speaking to the officer. "It looks like he's probably on something."
The video was presented along with hard-to-watch footage captured by body cameras worn by the other officers at the scene, as they confronted and then knelt on Floyd's body, while he moaned and begged for his life before going limp. "You're going to kill me!" Floyd declared at one point.
The footage, released last summer but played for the first time in court, showed another officer at the scene - Thomas K. Lane - asking whether they should roll Floyd's body over after he stops moving - a suggestion Chauvin rebuffed. A short time later, officer J. Alexander Kueng tells Chauvin he can no longer detect Floyd's pulse. "Huh?" Chauvin replied, his knee still on Floyd's neck, where it remained for at least two more minutes.
The footage prompted some of the most intense testimony yet - including from McMillian, who was captured in the videos urging Floyd to cooperate with officers as they tried to push the panicked man into a squad car, and he broke down as the first images were played on a monitor at the witness stand.
McMillian clutched his head and began sobbing. "Oh my god," he said, resting his head on the witness stand, his body shaking.
As Floyd was being detained by police, McMillian said, he told him: "Get on in the car because you can't win."
McMillian said he was trying to make the situation with Floyd easier based on his own interactions with police.
He said he understood that once placed in a police car, "You're done."
Floyd can be heard on the video saying he wasn't trying to win. He repeatedly tells the officers that he is claustrophobic and "I'm not a bad guy."
Asked by a prosecutor what he felt, McMillian struggled to speak. "Helpless," he finally said, tears running down his face.
Hennepin County District Judge Peter A. Cahill called a brief recess to allow McMillian regain his composure.
McMillian testified that he had had previous interaction with Chauvin - the first witness on the stand to do so. He said he met Chauvin days before, running into him while the officer was on patrol in South Minneapolis, and recognized him as he watched him kneel on Floyd's neck.
After Floyd's body was taken away by ambulance, McMillian approached Chauvin, reminding him of their previous encounter - audio that was not immediately clear from the officer's body camera. But McMillian recounted in court the conversation: "I told you that day, 'Go home to your family safe,' " the man said he told Chauvin. "But today, I look at you as a maggot."
Chauvin, who sat with his defense attorney at a nearby table, did not visibly react.
The former officer, who was fired in May, is charged with second- and third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in Floyd's death.
The other officers at the scene - Kueng, Lane and Tou Thao - are charged with aiding and abetting murder and manslaughter. Those officers, who were also fired, are scheduled to stand trial in August.
In other emotional testimony, prosecutors for the first time detailed the incident that led to Floyd's arrest and eventually his death - including security video from inside Cup Foods, the market where an employee called 911 to report the passing of a counterfeit $20 bill that resulted in officers responding to the scene.
Christopher Martin, 19, a cashier at the time, recalled how Floyd had come into the store and appeared to be "high" but functional. The surveillance video presented in court showed Floyd, dressed in a black tank top and pants, casually walking around the store with a banana.
Floyd is shown fiddling with his pockets and shifting back and forth in stretch-like movements as he interacts with two people in the store, including Morries Lester Hall - a friend who was a passenger in the car he was driving that day.
Martin testified that Floyd purchased a pack of cigarettes with a $20 bill that he believed to be fake because of its blue tint. Under store policy, employees who are found to have accepted counterfeit bills have their pay docked for the amount, Martin said, but he testified that he initially considered putting the cost on his "tab" as a favor to Floyd.
He said a previous customer had tried to pass a fake $20 bill in an effort to "get over," but he didn't think that was Floyd's intention.
"I thought that George didn't really know that it was a fake bill," Martin testified. "I thought I'd be doing him a favor."
But Martin said he raised the issue with a manager who ordered him to go outside to where Floyd was sitting in a parked car and ask him to come back inside the store. When Floyd did not do so, another employee called 911 to report the counterfeit bill - a fateful call that would lead to the 46-year-old's death.
Martin, who quit his job after Floyd's death because he said he didn't feel "safe," recalled returning to work and noticing a commotion outside. Leaving the market to investigate, he found Floyd restrained, "motionless, limp" with Chauvin's knee "resting" on the man's neck.
Martin, who lived upstairs from Cup Foods, said he called his mother and told her not to come outside, and then he began filming the scene - a video he said he later deleted after watching Floyd's body loaded into the ambulance that drove the opposite direction from the closest hospital, leading him to realize Floyd was probably dead.
Martin told the jury he felt "guilt" over Floyd's death. "If I would have just not taken the bill, this could have been avoided," he said.
The jury also heard from Christopher Belfrey, who had come to Cup Foods to pick up food and was sitting in a car directly behind the one Floyd was driving. He saw officers approach and point a gun into the window of Floyd's vehicle, and he began filming as they pulled the man from the car and handcuffed him.
Belfrey testified he later moved to the opposite side of the street and filmed as the officers sat a handcuffed Floyd on the sidewalk. He said he dropped his phone after one of the officers noticed him filming and soon left the scene because he didn't "want any problems."
"We went to turn to go back home. We've seen them placing them in the police car. . . . And I kept on driving," Belfrey testified. "I thought he was detained. I thought it was over."
The day ended with the playing of body-camera footage captured by cameras worn by Kueng, Lane and Thao.
It was the third day in a row jurors were presented with graphic footage of the events surrounding Floyd's death, and they sat staring into television screens that showed the intense encounter - which began with Lane pulling a gun on Floyd within 15 seconds of encountering the man in a parked car and ended with Floyd's lifeless body being rolled onto a gurney.
At the back of the courtroom, Rodney Floyd, the man's brother, looked away in anguish at the footage, at one point seeming to glare at Chauvin. A few feet away, the former officer sat riveted, appearing to watch every second of the footage.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
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news world "Got To Control Him": Cop Defends Restraint Of George Flyod In New Video

Derek Chauvin defends his treatment of George Floyd to a bystander. In newly released body-camera footage, Derek Chauvin defends his tre...

Biden Lets Trump Era H-1B Visa Bans Expire, Indian Techies To Benefit

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Biden Lets Trump Era H-1B Visa Bans Expire, Indian Techies To Benefit" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-03/6vtk6ubg_joe-biden-reuters_625x300_31_March_21.jpg" title="Biden Lets Trump Era H-1B Visa Bans Expire, Indian Techies To Benefit" /></div>
Joe Biden did not issue a fresh proclamation for the ban on H-1B visas to continue after March 31.
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Washington:
US President Joe Biden on Thursday let the ban on foreign workers visa, in particular H-1B, lapse as the notification issued by his predecessor Donald Trump expired, a move which is likely to benefit thousands of Indian IT professionals.
Amid a national lockdown and the COVID-19 crisis, Trump in June last year issued a proclamation that suspended entry to the US of applicants for several temporary or "non-immigrant" visa categories, including H-1B, arguing that these visas presented a risk to the US labour market during the economic recovery.
On December 31, Trump extended the order to March 31, 2021, noting that an extension was warranted as the pandemic continued to disrupt American's lives, and high levels of unemployment and job loss were still presenting serious economic challenges to workers across the US.
Biden did not issue a fresh proclamation for the ban on H-1B visas to continue after March 31.
He had promised to lift the suspension on H-1B visas, saying Trump's immigration policies were cruel.
The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. Technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.
The expiry of the Trump's proclamation would now result in the issuing of H-1B visas by American diplomatic missions overseas that would result in US companies bringing in talented technology professionals inside the country.
No new proclamation was issued by Biden till Wednesday mid-night, resulting in the automatic end to the ban on issuing of fresh H-1B visas.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the White House will not renew a ban on H-1B and other work-based visas imposed last year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that is set to expire on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, a Republican Senator from Missouri on Wednesday urged Biden to issue a fresh proclamation to continue with the H-1B visa ban.
"I write today to urge you to extend the freeze on temporary foreign worker entries into the United States that, without intervention, will expire today," Senator Josh Hawley wrote in a letter to Biden.
"The presidential proclamation suspending entry of certain temporary workers into the US has protected Americans suffering from the pandemic-induced economic crisis. With millions of struggling Americans out of work - and millions more desperate to make ends meet - now is not the time to open the floodgates to thousands of foreign workers competing with American workers for scarce jobs and resources," he wrote.
In his letter, Hawley wrote that the unemployment rate remains at 6.2 per cent - with nearly 10 million Americans out of work and looking for a job. The pandemic has been especially devastating for low-income and working class Americans, many of whom have borne the brunt of the crisis - and stand to lose the most from misguided policy decisions, he said.
In periods of high unemployment, it makes no sense to allow a struggling labour market to be flooded with a wave of foreign competition, he said.
"What makes even less sense is to willingly introduce further competition for the US workers at the same time that a disastrous illegal immigration crisis grows on our southern border. As at the border, failure to take meaningful action is, in itself, a policy decision with detrimental impacts for American workers.
"I urge you to extend the temporary foreign worker entry suspension until the national unemployment rate has meaningfully declined, and until your administration has conducted a thorough review of non-immigrant visa programmes to ensure that American workers are fully and effectively protected from harm," Hawley added.
 
 
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news world Biden Lets Trump Era H-1B Visa Bans Expire, Indian Techies To Benefit

Joe Biden did not issue a fresh proclamation for the ban on H-1B visas to continue after March 31. Washington: US President Joe Biden o...