India, April 2 -- American companies hire foreign students due to skills shortage and not because they are a source of cheap labour, according to a new working paper by the Center for Growth and Opportunity, a university-based academic research centre in Utah. The previous administration had introduced a series of changes in visa policy, including a temporary ban on employment-based nonimmigrant visas, intended to prevent US employers from hiring low-cost foreign workers and push the so-called protectionist policy.

During the last days of the Trump administration, the then secretary of labour Eugene Scalia had said that the administration was taking those steps to strengthen "wage protections, address abuses in visa programs, and protect...