Hyderabad: On Wednesday (local time), a US federal judge rejected Trump-era modifications to H-1B visa restrictions, which were meant to prohibit US companies from replacing American workers with cheaper foreign labour.

The rules restricting H-1B visas were found to be invalid because they were issued under a Department of Homeland Security acting secretary who was unlawfully appointed to the position, according to Nicholas Iovino, writing in Courthouse News Service, a nationwide news service for lawyers and the news media.

According to Courthouse News Service, businesses and universities have complained that the Trump administration's change to the H-1B visa system from a lottery that selects applicants at random to one that prioritises higher-wage jobs will make it more difficult to hire and recruit highly skilled foreign workers and students.

Workers in the IT industry, as well as physicians, accountants, academics, scientists, and architects, were all subject to the restrictions.

According to Courthouse News Service, Senior US District Judge Jeffery White temporarily halted the restrictions in December of last year after a coalition of business organisations and academic institutions led by the US Chamber of Commerce filed a lawsuit to suspend them.

Last year, Judge White blocked former President Donald Trump's effort to ban some types of non-immigrant work visas, ruling that he had the power to make such broad changes in a presidential proclamation.

According to Iovino, the Chamber of Commerce and its co-plaintiffs contended that the regulations violated the Immigration and Nationality Act, which says that noncitizens should be granted H-1B visas "in the order in which petitions for such visas are filed."

The plaintiffs argued that a system that ranks and chooses visa applications based on pay levels violates the statute's language.