Trump creates new hurdles for skilled migrants

It may be a while before President Donald Trump gets another chance at creating a new, “meritbased” immigration system, a keystone of his four-part plan that Congress rejected last month. In the meantime, his administration is busy making it harder, not easier, for skilled migrants to come work in the United States.

The State Department has ended an Obama-era program to grant visas to foreign entrepreneurs who want to start companies in the United States. It is more aggressively scrutinizing visas to skilled workers from other countries. And it is contemplating ending a provision that allows spouses of those skilled workers to be employed in the U.S.

The administration and its backers contend it’s trying to fix flaws in the existing, employer centric skilled immigration system while advocating for a complete overhaul of America’s immigration system.

“The stuff that they’re actually doing is not so much restricting skilled immigration as enforcing the law,” said Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports reducing immigration. “They’re rolling back some of the extralegal measures that other administrations have taken.”

A primary avenue for skilled immigrants to enter the United States is the H1B visa for specialty workers, which is heavily used by the technology industry. About 85,000 visas are issued annually in a lottery system. Some critics argue they are a way for companies to avoid hiring U.S. citizens; Trump himself has said H1B recipients shouldn’t even be considered skilled.