President Trump
Donald Trump Trump to shorten the trip to Florida, returns to Washington on Thursday Intel vice president says government agency cyber attack “may have started earlier” Secret Service making changes to presidential details amid concerns over members current aligned with Trump on Thursday he extended an order suspending the issuance of certain types of work visas for another three months, citing the continuing effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
The White House issued a proclamation hours before Trump’s original order expired. As a result, entry of immigrants with multiple visas will be banned until March 31, unless the new Biden government rescinds it earlier.
“The New Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) continues to significantly disrupt Americans’ livelihoods,” says the proclamation. “While the overall November unemployment rate in the United States of 6.7 percent reflects a sharp drop since the April high, there were still 9,834,000 non-agricultural jobs seasonally adjusted in November than in February 2020.”
The suspension applies to H-1B visas, H-2B visas, H-4 visas, L-1 visas and certain J-1 visas.
The largest program affected by the application are H-1B visas, whose recipients are generally skilled workers in the technology industry who can stay in the United States for several years.
H-2B visas apply to seasonal workers and H-4 visas are granted to spouses of H-1B visa holders.
J-1 visas are granted to researchers, academics and other specialist categories, such as au pair, while L-1 visas are for executives transferred to the United States from overseas positions with the same employer.
Trump faced pressure from some quarters to extend the order until 2021, with some allies noting that the economy has not yet fully recovered from the pandemic. These allies also believe that the extension of visa restrictions will place the president-elect Joe Biden
Joe BidenTrump to shorten the trip to Florida, returns to Washington on Thursday Intel vice president says government agency cyber attack “may have started earlier”. in a difficult position when he took office on January 20.
“If that proclamation lapsed, companies could easily exploit cheap foreign labor again,” said RJ Hauman, head of government relations at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, who advocated extending the restrictions. “If President-elect Biden rescinds quickly, the country should take note – he does not agree with American workers.”
The Biden transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The president-elect has promised to undo many of Trump’s immigration policies, but if the economy continues to struggle, he may be less inclined to allow more foreign workers to join the U.S. workforce when millions of Americans are still unemployed.
The Trump administration initially justified the suspension on the grounds that it would free jobs for Americans who were unemployed due to the pandemic. But immigration had already been closed due to travel restrictions, and many companies said that certain jobs that existed before the pandemic will not be filled again.
The position of the proclamation that the effects of the pandemic on the U.S. labor market is a continuing national concern is at odds in many respects with Trump’s own rhetoric about the economy. He released a video earlier in the day publicizing the low unemployment rate and boasted that “our economy is growing at the fastest rate on record”.
Updated at 18h47