President Trump unleashed American workers to begin the coronavirus recovery Monday, announcing a series of immigration moves that will block hundreds of thousands of new foreign workers the rest of this year and push businesses to offer better pay to those that do come in the future.
Defying the Washington consensus that has long supported higher immigration, the White House said Mr. Trump is instead betting on American workers.
Mr. Trump will issue a proclamation tripling the size of his immigration pause, blocking what aides said is more than 525,000 foreign workers who otherwise would have entered over the next six months, and preserving those spaces for Americans.
His administration also announced a new regulation that will block most of those who come to the U.S. illegally from getting work permits while they apply for asylum or make other pleas for special treatment. Currently they can apply for work permits while cases are pending, which Trump aides said creates an incentive to game the system.
The president also directed his administration to pursue new regulations to raise salaries for H-1B workers and to tighten the rules so Americans can’t be replaced with cheaper foreigners doing the same job.
“The point here is to put American workers first when businesses are rehiring,” Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary at Homeland Security, told The Washington Times.
Activists called it a historic moment, saying no president in modern times has so closely linked an economic recovery to immigration policy.
“This is a bold move and it’s an absolutely necessary move,” said Rosemary Jenks, vice president at NumbersUSA. “No matter where you are on the skill level, you’re going to have a better opportunity to find your next job — whether you are lower-skilled and looking for a job in landscaping or construction, or whether you have some kind of STEM degree or are looking for a white-collar job.”
Mr. Trump announced his original coronavirus immigration pause two months ago, blocking some new permanent legal immigrants from coming from overseas. That amounted to about 25,000 fewer people per month, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
But Mr. Trump didn’t touch any of the temporary worker programs.
Instead he ordered Homeland Security and the Labor Department to examine more options, and report back. Monday’s announcement was the result.
For the rest of the year, the administration will curtail issuance of H-1B visas, supposed to be used by high-skilled workers; H-2B visas, meant for seasonal non-agriculture work such as landscaping or resort workers; H-4 visas, that allow family of H-1B employees to also work; J visas for exchange programs, such as au pairs; and L visas that facilitate intra-company transfers.
That’s in addition to continuing the pause on most green cards through the end of the year.
As momentous as those changes are, they are short-term, meant to create openings during the coronavirus recovery.
The long-term changes, meanwhile, could reshape the way tech companies operate, forcing them to look first to American workers and to raise wages for those foreigns they do still hire, creating an upward push on pay overall.
To do that, Homeland Security will propose a rewrite of how H-1B visas are doled out. Currently they are issued by lottery, and 225,000 applications were submitted for 85,000 slots last year. Under the new proposal, the highest-paying 85,000 jobs will get visas.
The administration will also issue new regulations requiring that the minimum pay be at least 50% of the local prevailing wage, which could tamp down on businesses trying to use the visas to cut costs by avoiding American workers.
And officials said the Labor Department will begin investigating complaints of companies that abuse the H-1B program.
Homeland Security on Monday will also be issuing new rules to block many illegal immigrants from gaming the system by claiming asylum then applying for work permits while their cases proceed. Those who win asylum will get work permits, but the vast majority fail to win their cases — yet have been granted years of work permission in the interim.
The EB-5 visa, also known as the “golden visa” because it allows wealthy foreigns to buy into the pathway to citizenship for a minimum investment of $900,000, will continue. The Chinese are the biggest users of that program, which is rife with fraud.
But Mr. Cuccinelli said as an investor program, EB-5 can create jobs in the U.S., so it makes sense to keep it going to help fuel the recovery.
For years, academics have debated the actual effects of foreign migrant competition. They’re about to get a very real-world test.
The Seasonal Employment Alliance, a trade group for businesses that use H-2B workers, says it’s already been conducting its own tests.
During coronavirus the SEA has been running online ads in major markets linking to a jobs bank with thousands of openings, at an average wage of $15 an hour. The SEA says it gets hundreds of thousands of eyeballs each week, but the applications just aren’t rolling in.
Mr. Cuccinelli, though, said those companies need to pay better.
“There are workers out there,” he said. “The pay isn’t meeting the demand. Given the unemployment rate, I would think those two would come together.”
