Biden right to let H-1B visa ban expire

Some of his campaign promises, and some of his newer grand plans, President Biden announces with some fanfare. A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon he’s spending some real taxpayer money.

But one such promise, and actually one of his better proposals, which won’t cost you a thing, he delivered last week very quietly.

He simply allowed a ban on H-1B and other kinds of foreign work visas to expire.

The happy and economically significant move puts into reverse some of the antilegal immigration policies of the Trump administration.

This particular ban was only put in place last June, ostensibly as an anti-coronavirus measure. But its strictures fit all too well with the beliefs of so many Trump advisors who railed not just against supposed immigrant hordes coming in across the southern border, but against immigrants with engineering and computer science degrees from UCLA and USC coming in from all around the world.

It was in particular Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to the last administration, who made his bones on travel bans, on backstabbing Trump cabinet members he felt were soft on immigration and on separating migrant children from their parents. Miller never let economic logic stand in the way of his nativism: He stopped the publication of administration studies that showed foreign workers have a net positive effect on government revenue.

The now-lapsed ban centered on the H-1B visas that allow skilled pros, often coders and engineers in California’s tech industry, to work here. Silicon Valley and Silicon Beach have nothing against hiring American workers — the plain fact is there are currently not enough Americans with the precise kinds of skills needed at a Google or a Facebook.

But the bans also affected a larger group of foreign workers, NPR reports, including “executives who work for large corporations in the U.S. through the L-1 visa program, seasonal workers in the hospitality industry, students on work-study programs and au pairs.”

Although the ban-expiration was quietly announced in a press release on the State Department website, Biden had foreshadowed the move in February: The ban “harms the United States, including by preventing certain family members of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents from joining their families here,” he said.

In February, the White House also revoked policies that blocked entry for family members of U.S. citizens, winners of the diversity lottery program and some immigrants with employmentbased green cards, NPR reported.

The ban never did what its merely xenophobic backers claimed that it would — increase American employment. Instead, a Wall Street Journal study found, American businesses employing people from other countries “struggled to fill jobs” despite very high domestic unemployment during the pandemic.

That’s why — as The Hindu, an Indian news site, reports — the American Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers sought preliminary injunction against the ban for their members from a federal court.

Yes, as the grand cliche goes, we are a nation of immigrants. And, yes, that does and always has made us stronger culturally, not weaker. It is one of the several great strengths that sets us apart from any nation on Earth. But immigration also makes us stronger economically. The most highly skilled workers in the world want to come here. When they do, it lifts all our boats.

The nowlapsed ban centered on the H-1B visas that allow skilled pros, often coders and engineers in California’s tech industry, to work here.