Trump to suspend immigrant work visas
“Trump’s imminent suspension of H1B and other visas will cast a pall on U.S. employment as companies start to export hundreds of jobs.”
Julie Pearl, CEO, Pearl Law in S.F.
The United States is poised to clamp down on several types of immigrant work visas, including H1Bs, the skilledwork visas heavily used by tech companies, according to multiple press reports. While President Trump has long sought to limit immigration, the latest moves come against a background of unprecedented layoffs caused by the pandemic and shelterinplace orders.
Trump wants to issue an executive order as soon as this week to suspend new visas for skilled and seasonal workers from overseas, the New York Times and others reported. The prospective order, which could start Oct. 1 and last into the next fiscal year, would not affect people already in the country.
The ban could affect Optional Practical Training, a program that allows international students to work in the U.S. for up to three years after graduation. The program, which is heavily tilted toward graduates with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math, often serves as a gateway to H1B visas.
Also potentially on the chopping block are H2B visas for seasonal workers, often in landscaping and hospitality; L1s, for executives who are transferred within a company; and J1s for au pairs and workstudy summer students.
The prospective ban would not affect workers in two crucial areas: agriculture and health care.
Companies that depend on overseas talent are already lobbying heavily, hoping to forestall the order. Similar corporate efforts averted a White House attempt in April to suspend foreign worker
visas. Instead, an April 22 executive order froze the issuance of green cards to applicants outside the U.S. for 60 days.
The U.S. grants 85,000 new H1B visas a year to forprofit employers. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Intel, Oracle, Cisco and Uber are among the Bay Area tech companies using the most H1B workers. The Trump administration was already making it harder to get the visas, with higher rates of denials.
Four Republican senators wrote to Trump in May seeking the suspensions, citing the nation’s soaring unemployment rate.
“Given the extreme lack of available jobs for American jobseekers as portions of our economy begin to reopen, it defies common sense to admit additional foreign guest workers to compete for such limited employment,” said the letter from Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri.
In contrast, Doug Rand, who worked on immigration policy in the Obama administration and is cofounder of Boundless Immigration, a technology company that helps immigrants obtain green cards and citizenship, said the economy just provided a convenient excuse.
The “Trump administration has been ratcheting up work visa restrictions from the beginning, when unemployment was low,” he said in an email. “The pandemic is just a pretext to continue pursuing an extreme restrictionist agenda that most
Americans oppose.”
But Ira Mehlman of Federation for American Immigration Reform, which seeks to reduce immigration, said restricting work visas make sense given the magnitude of unemployment.
“With 40 million people laid off, there’s no demonstrable shortage of labor or talent here,” he said. “These are optional programs that are supposed to fill needs that can’t be met in the U.S.”
Echoing complaints from other critics of H1B visas, he said that the program has devolved from its original intent.
“It was supposed to provide companies with the kind of skills not easily replicated,” he said. “Instead it has turned into a program where you get averageskilled people who have nothing exceptional compared to” American workers.
Some immigration lawyers said the issues are more complex and could hurt the economy if multinational companies react by hiring employees abroad to work in other countries, rather than in the U.S.
“Pres. Trump’s imminent suspension of H1B and other visas will cast a pall on U.S. employment as companies start to export hundreds of jobs to follow expulsed foreignborn talent — and entirely rethink their hiring plans to avoid the risk and disruption of keeping them in the U.S.,” Julie Pearl, CEO of San Francisco’s Pearl Law, said in an email.
“These suspensions are having the opposite of their intended effect of saving jobs,” Pearl said. “Instead companies are already moving their most valued foreignborn talent abroad — sacrificing the jobs, tax revenues and employment fees that surround them.”