Trump slams the door on visas
Order extends block on immigrant workers
President Trump on Monday signed an executive order suspending several popular work visas until the end of the year, extending an action introduced at the start of the coronavirus crisis.
The administration estimates the move will free up as many as 525,000 jobs for Americans between now and the end of 2020, a senior White House official said.
There are currently more than 21 million people out of work, according to May data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The ban applies to H-1B visas, which are used by major American
technology companies, H-2B visas for nonagricultural seasonal workers, J-1 visas for exchange students and L-1 visas for managers of multinational corporations.
The extended ban also affects J-1 visas for short-term workers including nannies and young people in gap years from college.
There will be exemptions for food-processing workers, who account for about 15 percent of H-2B visas, the official said.
Health-care workers assisting with the coronavirus fight will continue to be spared from the green-card freeze, although that exemption will become more narrow.
“In the administration of our Nation’s immigration system, we must remain mindful of the impact of foreign workers on the United States labor market, particularly in the current extraordinary environment of high domestic unemployment and depressed demand for labor,” Trump wrote in his proclamation.
The measures, described by the administration official as an “American-first recovery,” will not apply to people already in the United States. and had been anticipated for several weeks.
But Thomas J. Donohue, the US Chamber of Commerce’s chief executive officer, said the measures will harm, not help, the American economy.
“Putting up a ‘not welcome’ sign for engineers, executives, IT experts, doctors, nurses and other workers won’t help our country, it will hold us back,” he said.
“Restrictive changes to our nation’s immigration system will push investment and economic activity abroad, slow growth, and reduce job creation.”
Trump previously vowed to suspend all immigration to the United States but left guestworker programs in place. Those apply to immigrants who work on the nation’s farms and in meat processing plants, providing crucial labor.