Trump crafts visa restrictions on immigrant workers but exempts agriculture, food service, health
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is set to expand a measure restricting visas to the United States to target many temporary foreign workers, limiting immigrants from coming to the country for employment in industries including technology, academia, hotels and construction.
The order would primarily impact H1-B visas, broadly set out for high-skilled workers; H2-B visas, for seasonal employees; H-4 visas, for spouses; L-1 visas, for corporate executives; and J1 visas, for professors and exchange programs, restricting new authorizations through Dec. 31 “in light of expanding unemployment,” according to senior administration officials who described the plans Monday.
Yet it also comes with broad exemptions, such as for many agricultural, health care and food industry workers — even au pairs, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“The president’s priority is getting Americans back to work,” said one senior official, who estimated the move would “protect” more than 500,000 jobs.
Amid his administration’s struggle to respond to the coronavirus, Trump has cited high unemployment as the primary motivation for moves to restrict immigration, such as a bar on most new green card applicants that will also be extended.
Yet neither the president nor the senior officials on the Monday press call provided evidence to back the claim that immigrants have taken the jobs of Americans out of work in those fields due to the virus, and the latest measure would mostly target “nonimmigrant” visa categories.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the nonpartisan American Immigration Council, estimated based on fiscal 2019 data that the proposed measure — if kept in place for a year — could impact more than 550,000 potential immigrant workers.
At the end of April, Trump signed a proclamation that restricted some new entrants from entering the country for 60 days who did not already have visas or other travel documents but included carve-outs for several categories of foreign workers and employers, as well as their spouses and children.
That order did not change the status of immigrants already in the U.S., and neither would the expanded version as described Monday.
After coming under pressure from business interests, who argued work authorizations for immigrants in fields like agriculture and health were critical to the coronavirus response, the president instead issued in April a dramatically scaledback memorandum than what he initially described as an executive order to “temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!”
But after announcing the restrictions, which primarily targeted potential green card applicants, Trump also faced criticism from immigration restrictionists, including in his own White House, who motivate his political base.
“Amending it or extending it, that we can do at the appropriate time,” Trump said in April, previewing Monday’s changes. “But it’s now signed.”
Research shows immigrants strengthen the economy and typically don’t compete with U.S.-born workers for jobs, or lower their wages. Most employmentbased immigration to the U.S. already requires a labor market test to demonstrate there’s no available U.S. citizen to fill the position, and many of the impacted industries, as well as Trump officials themselves, have advocated for more immigration, not less.