Three years ago, 14-year-old Julius left his family near the lakeside city of Mwanza, Tanzania, to try his luck mining gold.

Today, Julius is in no hurry to leave, despite having one of the riskiest jobs on a chaotic mine site — handling mercury each day with his bare hands.

“It’s good work. I’m paid well,” Julius, who wanted to use only his first name, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, wearing an orange T-shirt and skinny jeans coated with red dirt.

Julius, now 17, said he has been working with mercury for three years, but no one had ever told him it was dangerous.

There are more than 4 million child laborers in Tanzania aged between 5 and 17, according to a government survey released last year in conjunction with the International Labor Organization. That’s roughly a third of the country’s children.

More than 3 million are doing hazardous jobs, including at illegal mines like the one near Nyaligongo in northern Tanzania, where they are exposed to mercury, heavy dust and work long shifts without safety gear.

Many unaware of laws

The Tanzanian government is aware of the problem but has struggled to keep children out of small, unlicensed mines. Its laws do not allow children under 14 to work, and hazardous work is not permitted for children over 14. Tanzania has signed all major international conventions on child labor and introduced its own laws to prevent the worst child labor.

But not everyone knows of the child labor laws, including families and local officials.

Government workers tasked with enforcing the laws lack the staff and funds for inspections, let alone prosecutions.

“In Tanzania we have a good law and strategy to eliminate all kinds of child labor, but the problem here is who is going to implement this at the local level,” said Gerald Ng’ong’a, executive director of Rafiki Social Development Organization (SDO), an NGO that works on child labor in northern Tanzania.

“Local officials don’t have enough information about the law and how to protect children.”

Lure of gold

The problem is especially hard to tackle in the informal sector, said Emma Gordon, senior Africa analyst at global risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, which ranks Tanzania as the 55th-most “at risk” country in its 2017 Child Labor Index, due to be published Wednesday.

“The government’s focus is very much centered around large industrial projects, particularly foreign-owned businesses that would be able to pay fines if violations were discovered,” Gordon wrote in an email to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

 

In Lake Victoria’s gold belt, where gold has been extracted since the 1890s, licensed and unlicensed small mines operate with major mining firms close by. The scrappy “artisanal” mines provide a crucial source of income to people outside Tanzania’s cities, but like the mining site at Nyaligongo, many operate without government licences.

The majority of children working in gold mines are employed by individuals running these unlicensed mines, observers say. They are among the worst exploited of the mines’ workers, typically earning the equivalent of about 1 euro ($1) a day.

“Pit owners employ children because they’re cheap labor,” said Ng’ong’a.

Legal or not, the lure of the mines — and the harsh poverty of the farming communities around them — keep children coming.

Brothers Petromos and Mayalamos, 12 and 16, left their village outside Mwanza because they heard there was good money to be made at this mine.

“The work is difficult,” said Mayalamos. “But I can only leave this place once I’ve earned enough.”

Nyaligongo village relies on gold to survive.

On the village’s main street, cramped shops sell vegetables, SIM cards and lunch to off-duty miners. Middlemen purchase gold from miners to sell in the closest town, Kahama, where it is resold in bigger cities like Mwanza and Dar es Salaam.

Students leave to work

More than 8,000 people live in Nyaligongo, says Faustine Masasila, the village’s secretary and a mine site owner, and more are still arriving.

“There are people here who used to have very miserable lives,” Masasila said, walking through the buzzing market. “If you work hard, you are guaranteed prosperity.”

At the primary school down the road, teachers are less impressed with mining’s promise of a good future.

A poster on the school office wall is a testament to the number of children who leave to work when they are old enough.

This year, in Class 1, there are 236 students aged 6 and 7, while in Class 7 there are only 40 students aged 13 and 14.

“I feel very frustrated when children leave and go to the mines instead of going on to secondary school,” said Mabula Kafuku, the education officer for the ward. “They don’t even have enough knowledge to mine safely.”

Children dropping out of school is a nationwide problem in Tanzania and a major impediment to the government’s aspiration to become a middle-income nation by 2025. A recent Human Rights Watch report found that in 2016, more than 5 million children aged between 7 and 17 were out of school across the country.

For government workers tasked with inspecting mines for health, safety and labor violations, enforcing the law at the far-flung informal mines sprinkled around the Lake Victoria region is an onerous task.

Masasila, the village secretary, cannot recall ever seeing inspectors at the mining site near Nyaligongo.

“If you have children working in remote areas, you need a budget to visit. We don’t have such things,” said Hadija Hersi, a regional labor officer in Mwanza. “That’s why you have NGOs stepping in to intervene.”

Some success

Several nongovernmental organizations, including Terre des Hommes Netherlands, have been trying to get child workers back in school and help families develop alternate income sources to wean them off their wages.

Since 2014, Terre des Hommes Netherlands, working with Rafiki SDO, has managed to help more than 725 children leave the mines. In Geita, another nearby gold-mining area, U.K.-based Plan International has helped 12,000 children withdraw from small-scale mining work and is trying to reach another 11,600.

But as long as people are struggling to find work outside Tanzania’s cities, there is only so much NGOs can do.

At the mine, Nyanjige Mwendesha looks on as her three children, ages 10, 12, and 15, sit on the red, dusty ground, smashing up rocks with small metal hammers in the midday sun.

Mwendesha brought her family to work here after there wasn’t enough rain on her farm this year. The family needed the money.

“When it starts to rain, I’ll go back to the farm,” she said.
…

Some big American coal companies have advised President Donald Trump’s administration to break his promise to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement — arguing that the accord could provide their best forum for protecting their global interests.

Remaining in the global deal to combat climate change will give U.S. negotiators a chance to advocate for coal in the future of the global energy mix, coal companies like Cloud Peak Energy and Peabody Energy told White House officials over the past few weeks, according to executives and a U.S. official familiar with the discussions.

“The future is foreign markets, so the last thing you want to do if you are a coal company is to give up a U.S. seat in the international climate discussions and let the Europeans control the agenda,” said the official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

“They can’t afford for the most powerful advocate for fossil fuels to be away from the table,” the official said.

Cloud Peak and Peabody officials confirmed the discussions.

‘Path forward’

In Cloud Peak’s view, staying in the agreement and trying to encourage “a more balanced, reasonable and appropriate path forward” on fossil fuel technologies among signatories to the accord seems like a reasonable stance, said Richard Reavey, Cloud Peak’s vice president of government affairs.

The coal industry was interested in ensuring that the Paris deal provides a role for low-emission coal-fired power plants and financial support for carbon capture and storage technology, the officials said. They also want the pact to protect multilateral funding for international coal projects through bodies like the World Bank.

The Paris accord, agreed by nearly 200 countries in 2015, would seek to limit global warming by slashing carbon dioxide and other emissions from burning fossil fuels. As part of the deal, the United States committed to reducing its emissions by between 26 percent and 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump vowed to pull the United States out of the pact, tapping into a well of concern among his fellow Republicans that the United States’ energy habits would be policed by the United Nations.

Seeking companies’ advice

But since being elected, he has been mostly quiet on the issue, and administration officials have recently been asking energy companies for advice.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said last week that the administration expected to make a decision on whether to remain a party to the deal by the time leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy nations meet in late May.

The prospect of the United States remaining in the Paris deal has irritated some smaller miners, including Murray Energy Corp, whose chief executive, Robert Murray helped fund Trump’s presidential bid.

Staying in the Paris accord could also face resistance from within Trump’s party. Republican Congressman Kevin Cramer of North Dakota has been circulating a letter among Republican lawmakers calling on the president to stay in the deal but has gathered only seven signatures so far.
…

Michael Evangelista-Ysasaga wants to build a humane wall on the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

That is one reason the Mexican-American answered a call from U.S. Customs and Border Protection for proposals on sections of the wall to be built on the Southwestern border.

Evangelista-Ysasaga said his company, the Penna Group, has experience managing large projects for the government like runways and prisons.

He told VOA that his Texas company has worked for years in the difficult desert environment where mountains, sand, rivers, steep slopes and unusual rock formations complicate the job.  

Evangelista-Ysasaga said if his proposal is one of those accepted, the next step would be to build brief portions of the wall to demonstrate its quality and costs. He said winning a large part of this project could mean work for 150 people for several years.

The Penna Group chief said, however, the job is about more than money. He said he has been concerned about reports that rival companies are offering electric fences or razor wire that he calls “inhumane.”

Evangelista-Ysasaga also said he hoped the controversy over the wall eventually leads to a reformed immigration system that allows people to come to the U.S. who obey the law, pay taxes, and perhaps serve in the military to eventually earn the right to stay here.

High-security

Another company offering proposals is a small manufacturing firm near Boston that is partnering with companies that design and build projects, as well as other firms with experience managing major government contracts.

Riverdale Mills would supply a high-security fence product that CEO Jim Knott said is nearly impossible to climb or cut. He says it also allows border security officers to see through it, so they will not surprised by activity on the other side of the border.

Riverdale already protects nearly 50 kilometers of the border with this product.

It was developed with technology first used to make tough, inexpensive lobster traps, and refined over many years in projects around the world that protect airports, borders, utilities, embassies and industrial facilities.

In a VOA interview, Knott said if the proposal is accepted, its impact on his company will depend on the size of the order for fencing. His company has the capacity to make fencing now, but a really large order might prompt him to hire and train more people or even invest in additional equipment.

The unusual high-security fencing is built inside a factory the size of a small house on a complex manufacturing system that preforms hundreds of welds at a time.
…

With legislation overhauling taxes and health care on an uncertain path, President Donald Trump returned to the familiar. Trump brought 52 business leaders from New York City to the White House Tuesday to talk about another favorite campaign issue — infrastructure and economic growth.

 

The U.S. economy has so far proven to be a point of pride for a presidency that has otherwise gotten off to a rocky start. Trump inherited a stable economy from former President Barack Obama, an economic recovery that’s heading toward its eighth year. But Trump believes he can do more for business.

 

Trump and several of his top aides emphasized plans to cut red tape and jumpstart infrastructure projects at Tuesday’s meeting, while also previewing for the CEOs other priorities that include shortening flight times for airplanes, increasing the power grid’s efficiency and targeting programs to improve job training.

 

At one point the president had an aide come on stage to hold up a long scroll of the government’s approval process for building a highway. The president then pledged to eliminate more than 90 percent of the regulations involved and “still have safety.” He provided no details.

 

The administration has committed to directing as much as $1 trillion for infrastructure over the next decade, although it has yet to release policy specifics. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao recently said she expects a plan will be unveiled later this year.

 

But getting a measure through Congress could be difficult given the Republican majority in both chambers and their desire to reduce tax rates as much as possible. An infrastructure plan that relies on direct funding could possibly raise the budget deficit more than one that uses tax credits.

 

Trump touted the plan he says is in the works, telling the room, “We’re talking about a very major infrastructure bill of a trillion dollars, perhaps even more.”

 

Administration officials stressed that it can take more than 8 years between funding and the start of project construction, a timeline White House officials say is too slow given the commitment of hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

 

Trump wanted the CEOs gathered at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building — many of them involved in real estate — to start building roadways, airports, railways, bridges and other infrastructure as quickly as possible.

 

“If you have a job that you can’t start within 90 days, we’re not going to give you money for it,” Trump said.

 

The president followed up his remarks at the town hall by giving an afternoon speech to the Building Trades Union, pledging to “rebuild our nation.”

 

At the CEO town hall, Gary Cohn, director of the White House National Economic Council, noted that infrastructure upgrades could help growth.

 

A new air traffic control system that relied on GPS instead of radar would shorten flights and save on jet fuel, helping consumers, he said. Cohn also suggested updates to the power grid to avoid the loss of 20 percent of electricity in transmission. Trump’s daughter Ivanka spoke to the CEOs about the value of job training.

 

The sales pitch with its technocratic angle seemed perfectly targeted for the assembled business leaders.

 

“It’s terrific in terms of the stuff you’re trying to do to modernize the government, educate and so forth,” said Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group, an investment firm, and chairman of the president’s policy forum.

 

“The outside world doesn’t always get the message that that’s really what is going on,” he said.
…

Turkish gold imports rose 17-fold to 28.2 tons in March, as Turks looking to hedge currency risk ahead of a referendum in two weeks time followed President Tayyip Erdogan’s calls to buy gold instead of dollars.

After the sharpest falls in the Turkish lira since the 2008 financial crisis last November, Erdogan called on Turks to sell dollars and buy lira or gold to prop up the local currency. Gold imports have been rising year-on-year ever since.

“People have started opting for gold rather than foreign currencies,” said Mehmet Ali Yildirimturk, a gold specialist in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, adding that a moderate recovery in the lira had also made gold more affordable again.

Gold imports to Turkey rose almost eightfold to 36.7 tons in December after Erdogan’s calls, their highest monthly level in just over two years, according to data from the Precious Mines and Metals Markets of the Istanbul bourse.

Prices in Turkey surged from 132 lira ($36) for 24-carat gold in January to 153 lira in February. On Tuesday, gold prices were around 148 liras.

Gold is seen as a safe place to park assets during times of uncertainty. Turkey holds a referendum on April 16 on constitutional changes which would significantly boost Erdogan’s powers, with polls suggesting a tight race.

($1 = 3.6664 liras)
…

Large numbers of job seekers from around the world are filing applications at U.S. federal offices as the season opened Monday for H1-B visas for foreign workers.

 

H1-Bs allow employers – mostly high-tech firms – to hire skilled foreign workers for jobs in the United States for three years. Eighty-five thousand slots are available – 65,000 for applicants with bachelor’s degrees and 20,000 for those with master’s or more advanced degrees.

In recent years, there have been so many applications that the U.S. government stopped accepting them within a week. Visa winners are chosen by a computer-generated lottery.

This year, there is additional pressure because the program’s future is not clear.

President Donald Trump has vowed that he will not allow American workers to be displaced by foreigners holding H1-B visas.

On Monday, as the application process opened, the Department of Justice warned U.S. companies not to discriminate against American workers.

“U.S. workers should not be placed in a disfavored status, and the department is wholeheartedly committed to investigating and vigorously prosecuting these claims,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Tom Wheeler of the Civil Rights Division.

At the same time, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) warned it will take a “more targeted approach” as it makes site inspections across the country.  What it will be targeting includes an inability to find an employer’s basic business information through commercially available data, employers who have a high ratio of H1-B employees to U.S. workers, and employers who petition for H1-B workers to work off-site.

Outsourcing

Overwhelmingly, India has been the biggest recipient of H1-B visas. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reports that 71 percent of H1-Bs went to Indians in 2015. China was a distant second with 10 percent of the visas.

India’s success is attributed to its huge outsourcing firms that submit thousands of applications every year, increasing their chances of winning the lottery. Outsourcing firms, which supply services to other companies, are controversial because they are not subject to a federal requirement that they not displace American workers if they pay the H1-Bs at least $60,000 a year.

The H1-B visa program has proponents who argue that there are not enough Americans to fill all the slots for which skilled workers are needed. A research brief filed Monday by the bipartisan group New American Economy said that there are “persistent and dramatic” worker shortages in science, technology, engineering and math.

The group of mayors and business leaders who support immigration reform said that in 2016, there were more than a dozen jobs posted in those fields for every one unemployed eligible U.S. worker.

Competing bills in the U.S. Congress both expand and curtail the H1-B visa program.

H1-B spouses

In the meantime, spouses of H1-B holders, who are allowed to work under a 2015 rule, are still in limbo regarding their eventual employment status.  

The Department of Justice, acting on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security, has asked for additional time to review the rule that allows spouses of H1-B visa holders to work.

Implemented under the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, the rule has been challenged in court by Save Jobs USA, an organization of information technology workers who claim to have lost their jobs to H1-B visa holders. The group maintains that the rule threatens American jobs.

Before the rule, spouses, who hold H-4 visas, were not allowed to work.

In February, the DHS had asked for 60 days to review the rule. On Monday, that 60-day period closed and the Department of Justice requested a 180-day extension, promising to update the federal appeals court at 60 days.

Save Jobs USA filed a cross motion Monday asking that the additional time be denied.
…

An innovator at Kenya’s Lake Victoria has turned an invasion of water hyacinth into a business opportunity, making paper from the weed that he sells in local shops. The initiative is creating jobs and supporting environmental sustainability.

Michael Otieno began making paper from water hyacinth ten years ago. The flowering weed is a nuisance to fishermen. It depletes fish stocks, affecting thousands of livelihoods.

 

Known as the ‘paper man’ by locals, Otieno has perfected his daily routine. Every morning, he goes into Lake Victoria to search for raw material. Once the hyacinth is harvested, it is cut into small pieces before being boiled to soften it.

 

Otieno started his Takawiri Initiative to provide income and jobs for locals.

 

According to the World Bank, Lake Victoria supports around 40 million people in East Africa, with nearly half of those residents living on less than $1.25 a day.

 

Otieno now employs up to 30 people, though the business has its challenges.

“One – is technology; the machines we are using are locally fabricated, and, two, we also, it’s a capital-intensive project, therefore it needs a lot of resources,” Otieno says.

Edward Orato, a local artists, runs a curio shop in Kisumu city on the banks of Lake Victoria. Since he started using the hyacinth paper, he hasn’t looked back.

“I like the paper since it’s not expensive. It’s also easily available. As an artist, I think it has a unique texture. The fibers give my paintings an edge. ”

The Takawiri Initiative got a start-up $60,000 grant from a Kenyan government agency tasked with environmental research and sustainability promotion. Joshua M’Anampiu, a top official with the National Environment Trust Fund (NETFUND), says assistance on the ground-level is important.

 

“Definitely, we understand the scarcity of finance or the inability of finance to trickle down to the people who really need it and that is why NETFUND is there, to ensure that even though there’s a lot of funding that is there for climate change, it must trickle down to the grassroots, to the people who really need it,” M’Anampiu says.

For Otieno and his staff, the water hyacinth is proving to be a blessing in disguise.
…

Recent political turmoil in South Africa has come at a cost, with ratings agency S&P Global saying a controversial Cabinet reshuffle and growing pressure on the president to resign have lowered the country’s sovereign credit rating to “junk” status. Economists predict that will result in higher interest rates and higher prices on imported goods. It could, however, also give the South African leaders the opportunity to finally carry out their promise of radically transforming the economy away from minority ownership and toward a more equitable model.

 

The ratings agency did not mince words in its downgrade announcement, pinning the blame for South Africa’s poor credit rating squarely on controversial political decisions made by President Jacob Zuma.

 

On Tuesday, new Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba reassured the nation that under his leadership, South Africa’s economy would remain steady.

“We acknowledge that yesterday’s announcement was a setback. Despite our current challenges, now is not a time for despondency. We have many strengths that we can leverage to grow our economy inclusively,” said Gigaba.

 

News of the downgrade has sent the currency, the rand, tumbling. Top ratings agency Moody’s has also said it is considering downgrading South Africa, a move which will likely scare away international investors over fears that the nation won’t be able to honor its debts.

 

The latest dustup began last week, when the president suddenly announced sweeping changes to his Cabinet. The reshuffle included the dismissal of a well-regarded finance minister who had challenged the president, as well as several other ministers who openly called for Zuma to resign as he sank deeper in public opinion amid long-simmering corruption scandals.

 

The Cabinet changes were met with widespread disapproval — and not just from the usual suspects. In a rare break of party unity, Zuma’s own deputy president and the secretary-general of the party Zuma leads, the African National Congress, publicly criticized the reshuffle.

But, says associate economics professor Christopher Malikane of the University of the Witwatersrand, this downgrade could take pressure off South Africa to strive for the same financial policy goals as developed nations. South Africa’s history of oppression has left it with high levels of inequality, largely along racial lines, which is something the ANC has long vowed to address through a program of “radical economic transformation.”

 

This downgrade, Malikane said, could free up the government to do just that.

 

“The silver lining aspect of it, in my view, has to do with the fact that that this thing is now behind us. The leadership now has to be serious about articulating a clear program of transformation. If they had implemented this program anyway, they would have been downgraded because they would have tampered with the ownership structures that exist in the economy. Now that the downgrade has happened, I think it’s a green light for them to proceed and transform the economy in a radical way, but in a transparent and a well-articulated way so that investors know what concretely is going to happen going forward,” he said.

 

Political analyst Ralph Mathekga said he thinks Zuma and his supporters will dodge the fallout from this downgrade by simply reframing the argument.

 

“The ratings agencies are working on the paradigm that the ANC is beginning to reject openly, or at least some within the ANC. And by the end of the week you’re going to have to discuss, whether we like it or not, the discussion will be whether we should even worry about the ratings agencies,” he said.

 

The political turmoil is sure to continue. Zuma is facing growing clamor from the opposition for a no-confidence vote in parliament, which gained more momentum after the country’s top trade union coalition — a longtime ally of the ANC — said Tuesday that they, too, want him to resign.
…

The U.S. plane maker Boeing said Tuesday it agreed to sell 30 of its 737 MAX jets to Iran’s Aseman Airlines, a deal worth $3 billion.

The sale marks the second such Boeing deal made possible by the 2015 nuclear agreement signed by former U.S. president Barack Obama to relieve sanctions on the Middle Eastern country.  IranAir struck a $16.6 billion deal with the company in December for 80 planes.

“Boeing confirms the signing of a Memorandum of Agreement with Iran Aseman Airlines, expressing the airline’s intent to purchase 30 Boeing 737 MAX airplanes with a list price value of $3 billion,” the plane maker said in a statement. “The agreement also provides the airline with purchase rights for 30 additional 737 MAXs.”

Aseman Airlines is scheduled to start receiving the aircraft in 2022, though the deal is still contingent on approval from the U.S. government.

The nuclear agreement limited Iran’s nuclear capabilities in exchange for the lifting of international economic sanctions. U.S. President Donald Trump heavily criticized the deal during his election campaign and has said he would like to see in renegotiated.

Aseman Airlines flies both domestic and international flights from Iran. The European Union banned the airline in December, citing safety concerns.

The deal is expected to create or sustain 18,000 jobs, Boeing said.

 
…

South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia Motors Corp. have slashed vehicle production in China, sources said, as diplomatic tensions and competition from Chinese brands play havoc on sales and threaten earnings.

China, the world’s biggest auto market, accounted for over a quarter of the pair’s 2016 overseas sales but their March sales there were smashed by anti-Korean sentiment and competition from the likes of Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd.

Hyundai and Kia saw their combined China sales slump by 52 percent in March from a year earlier, Yonhap news agency reported on Tuesday, endangering not only the automakers’ earnings but those of South Korean suppliers.

Political tensions have soared since late February when South Korea’s Lotte Group agreed to provide land for a U.S.

missile defense system outside Seoul. The move angered Beijing, although Seoul says the system is a response to North Korea’s nuclear threat and is not aimed at China.

South Korean firms including Lotte Group have been targeted in a Chinese backlash involving boycott calls in state media, protests and suspensions of operations.

But analysts and sources said the row was just another headache for the South Korean carmakers, whose long-term challenge has been how to compete in China and the United States where their mainstay sedans have lost market share to sport utility vehicles.

“China is not the goose that lays the golden egg for Hyundai anymore,” said Lee Hang-koo, a senior research fellow at Korea Institute for Industrial Economics & Trade.

Hyundai’s problems were a result of its “failed global strategy,” he added.

 SHIFT CUTS Kia Motors has cut production shifts at its China factories, two of the sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Hyundai also had eliminated a second shift from its three factories in Beijing starting mid-March, one of the people said.

The sources declined to be identified because the matter was not public. The automakers declined to comment on Tuesday.

Hyundai had already suspended output at its factory in Hebei from March 24 to April 4. It was unclear how the shift cuts would affect employment.

Hyundai Motor has four passenger car factories in China, with one more plant scheduled to commence production later this year. Kia, Hyundai’s smaller affiliate, has three.

Poor consumer sentiment towards South Korean products in China had likely dragged down overseas sales in March, the companies said on Monday without putting a number on the falls.

One source said Kia Motors’ China sales likely more than halved in March from the year prior.

In the United States, Hyundai Motor posted a sales fall of 8 percent and Kia Motors slumped 15 percent in March from a year earlier. The U.S. market declined 2 percent in March.

Hyundai Motor shares fell 2.6 percent and Kia Motors declined 0.8 percent in the wider market, which was down 0.1 percent as of 0310 GMT.
…

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced steps on Monday to prevent the fraudulent use of H1B visas, used by employers to bring in specialized foreign workers temporarily, which appeared to fall short of President Donald Trump’s campaign promises to overhaul the program.

Trump had promised to end the lottery system for H1B visas, which gives each applicant an equal chance at 65,000 positions each year.

Lobbyists for businesses who rely on H1B visas, commonly used by the tech sector, had expected Trump to upend the lottery in favor of a system that prioritized workers who are highly skilled and would be highly paid in the United States.

The lottery for fiscal year 2018 opened on Monday without changes.

The start of the lottery was seen by those watching the issue as the unofficial deadline for the Trump administration to enact H1B visa reform, and the failure to meet that deadline signals that Trump’s promised overhaul of the system may be off the table or long delayed.

“More oversight is a good start, but employers can still use the program legally to depress wages and replace American workers. That falls short of the promises President Trump made to protect American workers,” said Peter Robbio, a spokesman for Numbers USA, a Washington-based group that advocates for limiting immigration into the United States.

The White House could not immediately be reached for comment.

In keeping with the practice of former President Barack Obama’s administration, employers and foreign workers will enter a lottery system where 65,000 workers are permitted to enter the United States to work. An extra 20,000 H1B visas are reserved for workers with advanced degrees.

Last year, the lottery remained open less than a week before the program reached its cap.

Tech companies rely on the program to bring in workers with special skills and have lobbied for an expansion of the number of H1B visas awarded.

Proponents of limiting legal immigration, including Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller, have argued the program gives jobs that Americans could fill to foreign workers at a less expensive cost.

The measures announced by DHS on Monday focus on site visits by U.S. authorities to employers who use H1B visas.

In future site visits, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agents will investigate incidents where an employer’s basic business information cannot be validated; businesses that have a high ratio of H1B employees compared with U.S. workers; and employers petitioning for H1B workers who work off-site.
…