WASHINGTON — The White House announced Monday that President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order that will freeze new visas for foreign workers through the end of the year, citing the need to preserve jobs amid the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Senior administration officials told reporters that H1B visas for tech workers, H2B visas for low-skill jobs, H4 visas for spouses of certain visa holders and J visas for those participating in work and student exchanges, as well as L visas for intracompany transfers, will all be suspended through Dec. 31.
Download the NBC News app for breaking news and politics
The suspension of those categories is in addition to the halting of visas on April 22 for certain family members of green card holders.
Au pairs, university professors and people working in food processing, such as agriculture or seafood, are exempt from the visa suspensions.
The officials said Trump has also asked the Departments of Homeland Security, State and Labor to work on regulations that will have a permanent impact, such as ending work permits for many asylum seekers and ending the lottery system for H-1B visas.
The sweeping new policy is a win for immigration hard-liners in the administration who have pushed to bring down the overall numbers of immigrants admitted into the country for years, even before the pandemic.
It is likely to meet backlash from the business community, which has lobbied against restricting the hiring pool for U.S. companies.
In all, the White House projects that 525,000 American jobs will be saved or created by the executive order.
Immigration advocacy groups began pushing back on the order quickly after news of its contents was released.
“We are extremely concerned that such a broad prohibition on legal immigration, whether an individual is coming permanently or temporarily, will negatively impact our country’s ability to recover from a global health and economic crisis,” said Sharvari Dalal-Dheini, director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “While the government claims that limiting these individuals’ entry into the U.S. will create hundreds of thousands of jobs for Americans, the reality is that the jobs that these foreign nationals would have held are ones that U.S. workers can’t or won’t fill.”
"news" - Google News
June 23, 2020 at 03:47AM
https://ift.tt/37Pz4eY
Trump to sign order freezing visas for foreign workers through Dec. 31 - NBC News
"news" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2DACPId
https://ift.tt/2Wh3f9n
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Trump to sign order freezing visas for foreign workers through Dec. 31 - NBC News"
Post a Comment