Former President Donald Trump’s focus on the border and its continuation promised to start the biggest “household deportation”. operation” has dominated the political discourse on immigration this election cycle. But legal immigration is also at play in a potential second Trump term, with some drastic cuts to foreign workers announced.
Trump’s immigration record, as well as his playbook Proposals called Project 2025 — run by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which includes former Trump administration officials — offer a good idea of what to expect for noncitizens coming to the U.S. or trying to come legally.
Trump has achieved this during his administration it is more difficult for foreign-born workers to enter the United States such as visa or refugee. Denial and extension of visas under his supervision threw and refugee reception cut off.
Without renewed visas, some U.S. businesses lost workers who had to leave after their work permits expired. Also, less green card They were issued to people who are no longer in the United States, according to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that advocates for expanding legal immigration.
“You would see what we saw last time again, but probably on steroids next time,” said Stewart Anderson, executive director of the National Endowment for American Policy, a nonpartisan think tank on trade and immigration.
Policy and regulatory changes under Trump have combined with the pandemic to reduce the U.S. foreign workforce, and as a result significantly decrease in growth Gross domestic product, economist Madeline Zavodny wrote in a policy briefing for the fund.
Between 2016 and 2022, GDP growth has slowed, but if the foreign-born working-age population had continued to grow, GDP would have been about $335 billion higher, Zavodny said. The foreign worker slowdown began before Covid, but has been exacerbated by it, he said.
“A slower-growing working-age population means fewer people to produce goods and services and generate new ideas that lead to technological progress and long-term growth. A slower growing or declining working age population also increases the potential for price pressures and shortages,” Zavodny writes.
Trump’s technical changes to legal immigration weren’t the kind to grab headlines, but they did affect people who “follow the rules” to work and live in the US legally.
Writing about Trump’s impact on legal immigration, Anderson He wrote in a January column for Forbes Since Trump took office, the denial rate for H1-B visas for primary employment has risen to 24% for FY 2018 and 21% for FY 2019; meanwhile, denial rates for H1-B visa renewals increased by 12% in 2018 and 2019.
After litigation in 2020, rates fell to 2% in 2022. But if elected, Trump’s team could introduce the rule in 2020 that would reimpose the restrictions, according to Anderson.
Trump also used immigration law to block the entry of other visa holders, such as L1 visas, for transfers within companies, before Anderson ruled that the court overstepped its authority.
Trump has been highly critical of and sworn off of Biden’s humanitarian parole program, which allows Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans, Haitians, as well as Ukrainians and Afghans. turn it off.
“If you listen to him, he’s very consistent in his focus on immigration. His shorthand on how to change legal immigration, he talks about letting in people from nice countries, which is code for white,” said Angela Kelley, senior counsel for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
Jaime Florez, a Trump campaign spokesman, said “we haven’t heard anything” from Trump or received any official word on his plans for legal immigration.
“He understands that no immigration reform will succeed unless we have a controlled border,” Florez said. “He understands that the majority of legal immigrants who arrived legally and are still waiting for USCIS to resolve their immigration status will be seriously jeopardized by the Biden administration’s open border policy.”
Some of the proposals for Trump are contained in Project 2025, which its conservative creators call a “mandate for leadership” if he is re-elected. Florez said any suggestion that Trump would implement those proposals is “speculation.”
Project 2025 calls for immediate regulations affecting temporary work visas and employment authorization, along with several other reversals of Biden’s policies, some of which have reversed Trump’s changes.
“Domestic efforts to limit employment authorization must be coordinated with actions by Congress to narrow statutory eligibility to work in the United States and mitigate unfair employment competition for U.S. citizens,” the document states. “The oft-abused H-1B program must become an elite program through which employers compete to hire only the highest-quality foreign workers at the highest wages so as not to undercut American opportunity.”
Trump’s playbook also calls for halting annual updates to the list of countries whose citizens can issue H-2A and H-2B temporary worker visas, which would affect agriculture, hospitality, forestry and construction employers who rely on them for workers.
This will hit agriculture the hardest, as it could lose up to 10% of its workforce on some farms. Niskanen Center, libertarian think tank is carefully examined Project 2025.
“A refusal to update the list would mean that no country would be eligible to participate in the program after the 2024 list expires, thereby ending it.”
Project 2025 calls for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to become a security agency, requiring steps to vet all employees, require immigrants to apply for work permits more often, and expand background checks on potential employees. All will and will take longer to reap the benefits maxe eexisting backlogs even longer, This was reported by the Niskanen Center.
That would put many people in the country legally at risk, as conservatives want Trump to deport anyone rejected for immigration benefits or status adjudications, including renewing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). permit, student visas, waiting for asylum and a number of other permits, until USCIS has all the cases backlogged.
Kelley of the American Immigration Lawyers Association said the conservatives’ recommendations and Trump’s previous actions on legal immigration “are a road map that tells us this is the path that this candidate is going to take if he’s elected, and it’s a road map that will take us over the cliff.” .”