The United States has immediately paused the issuance of all worker visas for commercial truck drivers, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Thursday, citing public safety concerns and the need to protect American jobs.
“The increasing number of foreign drivers operating large tractor-trailer trucks on US roads is endangering American lives and undercutting the livelihoods of American truckers,” Rubio said in a post on X.
The move follows a series of steps by President Donald Trump’s administration to tighten enforcement of rules governing foreign truck drivers. In April, Trump signed an executive order directing authorities to enforce a long-standing requirement that commercial drivers in the US meet English-proficiency standards. That order reversed a 2016 directive that had allowed inspectors to overlook English violations as the sole reason to remove a driver from service.
Concerns over the issue escalated this week after a deadly crash in Florida involving a foreign truck driver. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has opened an investigation into the incident, which killed three people.
Authorities said the driver, Harjinder Singh, an Indian national, did not speak English and lacked legal authorization to work in the United States. Singh was accused of attempting an illegal U-turn through an “Official Use Only” access point, triggering a collision that killed three occupants of a minivan. He has been charged with three counts of vehicular homicide and has been returned to Florida from California to face prosecution.
Duffy warned that the failure to enforce driver qualification standards “poses serious safety concerns and increases the likelihood of crashes.”
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