Two months before the 2016 election, Donald Trump gave his first major speech on immigration in Phoenix. In it, he used the words “illegal” or “illegally” 40 times and pledged to “build a great wall along the southern border.”
What he didn’t say was, at the time, the number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. was declining. Indeed, according to the Pew Research Center, between 2007 and 2017, the number in the U.S. declined by 14%.
Nevertheless, President Trump has made good on his promise to clamp down on undocumented people with a series of rule changes and executive orders, including the 2017-18 zero-tolerance policy of separating children from their parents at the border.
That policy, as we wrote recently, “predictably produced a cruelty that may never be set right” by separating more than 5,500 asylum-seeking families at the U.S. border. Tragically, although the policy ended after public outcry in June 2018, 545 children remain separated from their deported parents.
What’s received less attention is this administration’s ongoing assault on legal immigration, including slashing the number of refugees relocated to the U.S. each year and rewriting the longstanding “public charge” rule making it far more difficult for low-income immigrants to gain legal admission to the U.S.
More recently, on Oct. 8, the administration announced sweeping changes to the H-1B1 visa program for highly skilled workers, narrowing the types of degrees that qualify, raising the wages employers must pay and shortening the length of the visas. This followed the administration’s ban on H-1B1 visa holders entering the country until the end of the year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Universities, hospitals, tech companies and engineering firms are understandably up in arms over the ban and the rule changes that make it harder, they say, to fill jobs that will not only help grow the economy, but in turn create more jobs for U.S. workers at a time of near record high unemployment.
A federal judge earlier in October blocked the administration from enforcing its ban on H-1B1 workers following a suit filed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Retail Federation, TechNet and the National Association of Manufacturers, arguing that it was not only economically unsound but also unlawful.
”Our lawsuit seeks to overturn these sweeping and unlawful immigration restrictions that are an unequivocal ‘not welcome’ sign to the engineers, executives, IT experts, doctors, nurses and other critical workers who help drive the American economy,” said U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Thomas Donohue. “Left in place, these restrictions will push investment abroad, inhibit economic growth and reduce job creation.”
We agree. And wonder why our president doesn’t see the damage this will cause to economic recovery during an unprecedented public health crisis.
In light of other immigration changes, this revision underscores that the strategy is to reduce legal immigration as well as illegal immigration.
This will be to our detriment.
— Tribune News Service
