Trump’s ‘buy American, hire Americans’ agenda could affect Indians

US President-elect Donald Trump has said he would end the practice wherein laid off American workers are made to train foreigners who have been brought to the country to replace them, a move that could have a drastic impact on Indian technology and outsourcing companies.

“We will fight to protect every last American life,” Trump told supporters during a rally on Friday. Trump was referring to cases involving Disney world and other US companies.

“During the campaign I also spent time with American workers who were laid off and forced to train. The foreign workers brought in to replace them. We won’t let this happen anymore,” Trump vowed amidst a thunderous applause from supporters.

“Can you believe that? You get laid off and then they won’t give you your severance pay unless you train the people that are replacing you.

I mean, that’s actually demeaning maybe more than anything else,” he said

In January 2015 Walt Disney had laid off 250 workers and made many of them train their replacements brought in by Cognizant and HCL in 2016, a case that had sparked public outrage.

Most of the foreign workers brought to the US were from India.

The American workers are now suing Walt Disney, HCL and Cognizant alleging they broke laws against using H-1B workers to replace American employees.

“You know the name of one of the companies that’s doing it. I’m going to be nice because we’re trying to get that company back. Don’t forget much harder when a company announced a year and a half ago – some of these companies, like Carrier, they announced long before I even knew I was going to be running for president,” Trump said.

The President-elect also announced that one of his first tasks would be to issue an executive order for the Labour Department for investigating visa abuses that lead to Americans losing jobs.

Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda could impact India in the form of lesser employment opportunities for skilled Indians in the US and undercut Prime Minister’s export centric ‘Make in India’ program.

“We are building our country with American hands, and American workers,” he said. “My administration will follow two rules, buy American and hire Americans.”

On the subject of immigration, Trump reiterated that he will build the wall along the Mexico border.

“We will put an end to illegal immigration and stop the drugs from pouring into our country, the drugs are pouring into our country, poisoning our youth and plenty of other people,” he said.

Trump, however, opened his arms to legal immigrants. “We are going to have hundreds of thousands of people, we want them to come in,” he said. “But they are going to come in legally.”