Trump Executive Order Significantly Limits Work Visas Through 2020

Ban on most new green cards extended through the year as well

Today, President Trump signed an executive order placing significant restrictions on the issuance of new work visas through 2020. The ban covers:

(a)  an H-1B or H-2B visa, and any alien accompanying or following to join such alien;

(b)  a J visa, to the extent the alien is participating in an intern, trainee, teacher, camp counselor, au pair, or summer work travel program, and any alien accompanying or following to join such alien; and

(c)  an L visa, and any alien accompanying or following to join such alien.

The executive order also extends the prohibition on issuing most new green cards that was originally supposed to last 60 days and expire today. Many commentators saw it coming from the start that this extension would happen.

The restrictions were made known under the sinister headline of a "Proclamation Suspending Entry of Aliens Who Present a Risk to the U.S. Labor Market Following the Coronavirus Outbreak". The trope of scary foreigners coming and "taking away" jobs from Americans reigns supreme. When it comes to immigration law, the Trump administration has certainly not let any good crisis go to waste.

Comments

[Sam Haysom]

Rofl John Roberts in tears.

[Sam Gompers]

Nothing wrong with putting Americans first.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Which Americans? The ones favored by this bigoted XO. How about all the Americans who want to hire said foreigners? Do they not have rights?

At its core, answer me this: no one has yet. Where do you or Trump or anyone else get the moral authority to decide how to mind my business when I do not harm you? Where do you get the moral authority to tell me who I can hire?

Don't trundle out national security unless you want to admit you have no such moral authority. Don't trundle out some nonsense about my hiring a foreigner puts you out of work. So would my hiring anybody other than you. Those are nonsense.

Show me the real core moral authority which allows you to mind my business.

[Dr. Ed]

" How about all the Americans who want to hire said foreigners?"

How about employers who wish to hire waitresses who will sleep with them? Do they not have rights?

And do not the morally flexible young "ladies" willing to sleep with the boss in exchange for a paycheck have the right to agree to that?

We're right back to Lockner -- and immigrants deflate wages.....

[Sam Gompers]

the same place where you get the moral authority to force Christian artists to participate in your gay commitment ceremonies and pay for your private sexual choices such as the selfish choice to have bareback sex without consequence.

[Bruce Hayden]

The moral authority is via our transgenerational compact, our Constitution, that provides the President the power to control entry into this country. If you don’t like that, you can try to amend the Constitution. Your other choice is leaving. Otherwise, you impliedly consent to this Presidential power.

[TheAmazingEmu]

The Constitution absolutely doesn't give the President the power to control entry into the country. The closest the Constitution says on the subject would be the International Slave Trade Clause (which obviously isn't really on point). To the extent it is on the subject, it points to Congressional legislation. The courts have generally assumed it's an inherent power of sovereignty. However, even then, it's Congress that passes the legislation that controls the gate.

With that preface out of the way, Congressional legislation has given the power to the President (generally speaking) to control entry into the country. The point worth keeping in mind, though, is that can change through legislative change if we realize it's a bad policy. That's why it's a debate worth having.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

I said "moral", not constitutional, and you're wrong about that anyway.

Moral authority, dimwit slaver. Fuck off. You have none.

[Sam Haysom]

Dude just get pussy.

[Krayt]

Hey buddy. In case you haven't been paying attention, the democrats are running big, scary ads about 40 million unemployed, followed by Trump declared responsible.

Everybody agrees! It's important for politicians to put Americans back to work first.

This is the idiotic worldview you built, not me. Again, look in the mirror. Your rhetorical world.

[Sarcastr0]

This does nothing for employment. It does wreck our research infrastructure though.

[Krayt]

And if he lets them in, CNN has to decide if they cheer, or realize their Trump contrarianism will force them to create an evening panel of talking heads to discuss how many will die because he allowed them in, while shaking their heads and lamenting the state of America.

[Sarcastr0]

Krayt, I know you have a narrative here - you're posting on it a bunch. No one is buying it, though.

COVID restrictions are separate from this; this is not justified by health, but by economics.

[Krayt]

By the way, I'm not defending Trump's actions. I'm just pointing out the idiocy of the usual arguments against it being trotted out in the current context, as if now is the same as four months ago.

[Sarcastr0]

Our borders are not sealed; never have been.

The usual COVID-based travel restrictions still apply.

[Dr. Ed]

The research infrastructure can hire Americans.
That's how the Swiss do it.

[Sarcastr0]

We can, but we wouldn't do as well. Lots more really smart people if you allow yourself to look worldwide than just in your country - even if your country is pretty smart.

And those smart immigrants? They tend to stay here and become US Citizens! Another win for the allure of liberty.

[Armchair Lawyer]

I think you meant

"We can, but it would be more expensive to hire Americans than cheap foreigners".

[Sarcastr0]

Researchers are all cheap as hell. They’re students ffs.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Researchers are all students?

[Sarcastr0]

Researchers on J1 Visas are. Or postdocs.

[Armchair Lawyer]

So, the "Cheap as hell researchers" are all on J1 Visas....

Remind me how this doesn't suppress wages?

[Sarcastr0]

No, dude. Read like two comments up.

The positions are cheap as hell *regardless* of where they come from, here or overseas.

The only variation is how large a set our schools get to pick from; A larger set means a better cream-of-the-crop.

Price is largely invariant for national origin at the student-posdoc level. And eve if it is not (e.g. fellowships) that does not matter as much much, since students aren't considered fully employed yet.

[Bob from Ohio]

"moral authority"

You need to go to church for that. Government is about authority.

[ducksalad]

We'll see how you feel about pure authority, divorced from any considerations of morals or even simple prudence, when someone in the AOC mold gets authority and starts using it.

It should be an obvious point, but the debate is on how to use government power. It's perfectly reasonable for alphabet guy to ask where you get moral authority to interfere between two consenting adults.

[Bob from Ohio]

"someone in the AOC mold gets authority and starts using it"

I will hate it but I won't blather on about "moral authority" like a toddler looking at politics.

Government is about power.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Moral authority from a church?

The Catholic Church? Jimmy Swaggart's church? Franklin Graham's church? Jerry Falwell's church? Tammy Faye's church? Donald Trump's church.

Try to lose with dignity, Bob.

[NormanStansfield]

But you do harm me. You reduce or eliminate my wages because a foreigner will do the same work for less pay. See Uber.

[Dr. Ed]

'"Proclamation Suspending Entry of Aliens Who Present a Risk to the U.S. Labor Market Following the Coronavirus Outbreak"

The unemployment rate of recent college graduates is somewhere in the range of 50-70% -- they are not eligible for unemployment because they were in college, instead of working, in 2018 & 2019.

This is the lesser of two evils -- the other is what happened in the 1920's, on steroids. *I* fear that, and my family has been in this country since 1644 -- and you don't want it either.

[Flatulus]

Yeah, that "trope." What could go wrong with letting tons of third-worlders in with record unemployment? Those ignorant hicks and their tropes.

[Krayt]

The democrats are running the most vile, insidious ads imaginable. First showing the number dead, as if Trump were responsible. But that's only partially dishonest at best. They then immediately follow up with "40 million unemployed", leaving it hanging as if he was responsible, when it is due to the nation doing exactly what they want, lockdown.

Trump may deserve to lose. I didn't vote for him. But to what? This kind of fraudulent lie on a galactic scale?

All this crap, so a handful of power brokers at the top can get more power, and their relatives a little mysteriously richer, slinging trillions around.

[jb]

Other countries essentially guaranteed employment through the lockdowns, so they haven't seen huge spikes in unemployment as a result.

Trump's offered no real ideas on how to navigate this crisis, and contradicts his own administrations adopted policies. The blame for the the US having the worst outbreak with no real plan to deal with the economic ramifications other than re-opening all businesses as soon as possible is on him, and completely fairly in my opinion.

[Brett Bellmore]

For all that Trump often claims more authority at the federal level than he really ought to, he usually demonstrates an understanding that most of this stuff actually IS a state responsibility.

"The blame for the the US having the worst outbreak"

Either you're delusional, or just haven't looked at the numbers.

We have the highest number of cases for any country, but that's not because we're getting hit bad, it's because we have a much larger population than most countries, and China is lying through their teeth about how many have died. On a deaths per 100K population basis, we're nowhere near the worst, indeed, slightly below the world average.

And that's with us listing basically everybody who dies while testing positive as killed by the virus, even if something that would have killed them anyway actually did it. Our number are more "died WITH" Covid-19, than "died FROM" Covid-19.

[jb]

Yeah, the guy that said he had "total authority" over state reopening is definitely the one who understands the role of federal vs. state authority. If you're going to go the route of blaming the US response on the states, you can do a lot better than by basing it on Trump's deep concern for federalism.

[santamonica811]

Krayt,
I think the ads are based on, "Trump, if not incompetent, would have listened to his own experts in early Jan, or late Jan at the latest. He would have imposed sweeping federal guidelines, would have stopped travel from *Europe* at the same time as he slowed travel from Asia. And, as a result, our infection and death rate would have been tens of thousands lower. Our economy would have taken a huge initial hit. But, with a vastly smaller infection rate, it would have been easier to return to safely return to work more quickly than will now happen. So, Trump (equating Trump with his entire administration, which happens--for good and for bad--with every single president we've ever had) is directly responsible for countless deaths, and countless billions of dollars pissed away."

That seems like a very fair argument for one of the two political parties to make. And I look forward to Trump's defense of his own record...so far, "It's going away, like magic, when the weather gets warmer." and "If we didn't test so much, fewer people would be sick/dead." are not going so well for him.

[Brett Bellmore]

It would be a fair argument to make for a party that hadn't criticized him at the time for acting TOO aggressively.

[Sarcastr0]

Except that never happened. As you know because you posted this before and your one example was immediately debunked.

[Miss Greenparker]

One does not have to support the current Administration to see that our economy is currently imploding and, likely, by Deep State design. Meanwhile, the implicit suggestion is put forward, here, that our ham-strung weak economy should still welcome all foreign workers, lest we be considered sinister and xenophobic.

Ok, lawyers, economists, and esotericists, please square this circle.

[santamonica811]

Great, another batshit-crazy new commentator here. Greenparker, meet Ed. Ed, meet Greenparker.

[bernard11]

First, check the "lump of labor" fallacy.

Second, ask yourself whether these immigrants buy groceries, rent apartments, etc. They not only supply labor, they create demand.

[Bob from Ohio]

They reduce demand from native Americans who don't get the good job that goes to the immigrant.

[ducksalad]

Sorry Bob, we don't have full-up socialism here (yet), so good jobs need to earned through qualifications.

I don't think native birth is an important job qualification.

[Dr. Ed]

I do.

[ducksalad]

And so, I'd favor a libertarian solution: we would tolerate your Blood & Soil Nationalist Data Services, Inc., and in return you'd stop worrying about Programmer's Sweatshop, Inc. trying to get the best coders at the lowest prices.

The other options are that the government force everyone to give preferences to the native born, or that the government prohibit anyone from giving such a preference. Just warning you that if it's one of those two I'm picking the second.

[Armchair Lawyer]

They create may demand, but they generally supply far more labor than the the demand created, while suppressing wages.

[Jimmy the Dane]

Big Tech is mad their cheap labor is drying up.

[KevinP]

The executive order also extends the prohibition on issuing most new green cards that was originally supposed to last 60 days and expire today.

Wrong. The new EO prohibits issuing most immigrant visas. An immigrant visa is one path to Lawful Permanent Residence (informally known as a green card), but it is not the only one. Another common path is the I-485 Adjustment of Status for those aliens already living and working in the US, and it is not affected by the EO. In a way, these folks will get to move up in the line because their competition outside the country are temporarily blocked.

I wish law professors understood the laws.

[Voize of Reazon]

I believe it also extended the suspension of green cards issued through consulates, though I would be surprised if that accounted for "most new green cards".

The part that makes the least sense though is the moratorium on L-1 visas. Trump claims to want to get foreign companies to establish plants in the US and create American jobs, activities L-1 was created in the '70s to facilitate. By allowing a company to send experienced senior employees and executives to the US on temporary assignment, they can have people they know and trust overseeing their new investment. Shutting that down may appeal to the anti-immigration audience but will work against the goal of job creation.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Well...who actually uses L1 Visas?

#1: Tata Consultancy Services, which has been subject to lawsuits for...get this...not hiring US workers in the US, but preferentially bringing over non-US workers instead to work.

Oh, Tata also apparently made their workers sign over their tax refunds to the company.

[Life of Brian]

Oh, Tata also apparently made their workers sign over their tax refunds to the company.

What boobs.

[Voize of Reazon]

Armchair, I don't understand your point.
Tata is the #1 user of L-1 visas, and most of them are L-1A visas for managers and executives. They have also been accused of abusing the H1-B program. My comment was about L-1 visas, I didn't claim that H1-B restrictions were contrary to the administration's goals.

[Armchair Lawyer]

1. You've linked to L1B visas, not L1A.
2. Here's an OIG report (a little dated, but still holds).

https://www.oig.dhs.gov/assets/Mgmt/OIG_06-22_Jan06.pdf

Here's a nice section.

"DOS consular officers who responded to our survey expressed similar concerns when L-1 applicants apply for visas. One southeast Asian consular section reported: “We suspect, but find it very difficult to prove, that some employees are actually doing different work than claimed in the application once they get to the
United States, and that the employer-employee relationship with the U.S. subsidiary of the sending firm may not be as clear cut as the applicant claims.”

As for Tata, which is an outsourcing labor firm, why does it need so many of its own executives brought over for US operations? Unless, perhaps, it's outsourcing its managers and executives to other firms...? To do...what exactly...

[Voize of Reazon]

Yes, that was the wrong link. It should have been this one, that gives the breakdown of Tata's L-1 visas for 2018.

[Armchair Lawyer]

So, why exactly does Tata have so many L1A visas? What's your hypothesis?

[Commenter_XY]

The trope of scary foreigners coming and "taking away" jobs from Americans reigns supreme.

With over 30MM unemployed due to a global pandemic, this is a common sense move by POTUS Trump. Professor Manta may know law, but she doesn't know shit about economics or business. Or how ordinary Americans think and feel, for that matter.

[Krayt]

It's 40 million. So say the ads democrats are running, blaming Trump, even as they are the rest of doing what they want, lockdown.

There's a particularly satanish ad running where they are quicj to point out the unemployment for black americans is even worse now, boo Trump! This after record employment. Of course, all it is due more to overspending, but no democrat was ever dragged kicking and screaming to spend.

I've never seen such hellbound fraudsters.

[Sarcastr0]

Commenter, most economists don't believe this will help unemployment. Demand does not stay constant when fewer people are here.
Plus people are not interchangeable. If you want the best and brightest (e.g . J-1 visa holders) you don't want to forbid international students from coming over here. Part of our research has relied on bringing really top international students here, letting them do research, and then letting them stay.

It's common sense that is wrong.

[Commenter_XY]

Sarcastr0....I think perhaps you do not grasp the severity of the economic crisis that we find ourselves in. Understandable perhaps, given the disconnect between the S&P 500 and the broader economy. Here is what I see.

We have anywhere between 25MM to 30MM Americans unemployed right now, who were gainfully employed just a short three (yes 3, ancient history right?) months ago. Our priorities must first be to unemployed American citizens and get them re-employed ASAP. That is also true of the newly minted STEM college graduates. We have quite the employment crisis on our hands here. Your contention simply lacks grounding in logic, and just how many are 'most' economists, Sarcastr0? Plenty of economists, maybe even most, disagree with you.

A six month delay in new visas won't do shit to discourage immigration to this country. It will however, help reduce unemployment on the margins. The FAANG guys will simply have to make due with Americans taking those coveted jobs. How tragic for them. One weeps for their difficulty.

[Sarcastr0]

First, I am wrong about the regulation - it has an exception for researchers over on a J-1 Visa.

Second, the common sense idea that less immigration means more jobs for Americans is not generally accepted by experts in labor economics,

Third, the issue with unemployment is that we've shut down the economy on purpose. Current dire numbers bespeak some damage, but should not be taken as the state once this has passed.

[Commenter_XY]

Sarcastr0...How many furloughed people do you interact with daily? Do you really understand 'bespeak some damage' because I have to wonder. You're probably a upper-middle class white collar professional (or government worker) who has retained (for now) your employment. My point is nothing in your experience puts you in touch with the reality being experienced right now by lower middle class workers, and P/T workers. Let me fill you in: There has been substantial damage to the economy, and unemployment is now a huge problem.

We can and must re-employ American citizens before taking in more foreign workers. This should not be controversial in the slightest.

[Sarcastr0]

This won't help anything during the shutdown - that's a demand-driven issue. Narrowing the future supply won't do jack to help people out of work now.

It's signaling, not usefulness. And the nationalism it's signaling hurts America and helps China, who has not been too happy at how many of their smartest come here and stay. Now that's a less appealing option.

[Life of Brian]

the common sense idea that less immigration means more jobs for Americans is not generally accepted by experts in labor economics

As the saying goes, if you ask 10 different economists the same question, you'll get 11 different answers. Not really a good place to play the "experts say" card.

Beyond that, you seem to be conflating some abstract notion of "more jobs" with a set of already-existing jobs (or, in this case, a set that recently existed and is clawing its way back into existence). It takes a fairly special worldview to pretend immigration doesn't affect the distribution of the latter.

[Sarcastr0]

Which makes the consensus all the more convincing, right?

Discarding experts so you can justify hostility to immigrants...

[Bob from Ohio]

"best and brightest "

No Americans fit that description?

The US dominated research before the immigration explosion.

[Sarcastr0]

Bob, you cast a wider net your best and brightest get bester and brighter.

The US dominated research due to immigrant refugees from Europe.

[Bob from Ohio]

You can't credit Americans for anything.

You act like we will be like the Flinstones without all those smart foreigners.

[Sarcastr0]

Oh, stuff it Bob. I'm pretty into America.

I did my thesis on this, actually. We would have been all about applied research - agriculture, materials science, medical research etc. Leave the basic pie-in-the-sky stuff to the Europeans.

Then the Europeans came here, explained that they were tracking a pretty good potential application, and the Manhattan Project proved how basic research can transition quite powerfully sometimes.

And then the Cold War happened, and the USSR chose to challenge us to a proxy war on the basic research battlefield (in addition to the Space Race), so we kept on keeping on with the basic for nationalistic reasons.

[Bob from Ohio]

Oppenheimer, Lawrence and Seaborg, all US born, were pretty important to the Manhattan Project too.

Klaus Fuchs was a "refugee" and a soviet spy though. So you got that going for you

[Sarcastr0]

Great list of 3 scientists. Most of the heavy-hitters were foreign, and I suspect you know that.

The important thing they did was change the culture of US research towards a more basic direction.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Most of the heavy-hitters were foreign"

Most? Some.

But its not Teller and Szillard we are importing now in any event.

[Sarcastr0]

Says you.

[Craig Johnston]

It’s not the “best and brightest”, it’s the cheapest. When I worked in Silicon Valley, we could hire one American engineer or three Indian engineers (that was literally the guidance from upper management) and so we hired more Indian engineers. Some were fine but many wouldn’t have come close to getting the job with a level playing field. Once we hired them, we would bring them over on H1Bs (unique skills) or L1s (if H1Bs we’re maxed out). Averaged out (and taking into account that 9 women can’t produce a baby in one month) I wish I’d hired more fully-qualified locals.

[Sarcastr0]

We're talking about 2 different things. You're talking about H1-B, I'm talking about J-1 researchers at universities.

I don't know much about Silicon Valley labor policy.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Ah yes, the J-1 used to bring over the brightest and best...au pairs and summer camp counselors.... so that upper class and rich white people can safely have their kids cared for by non-Americans, at cut rates.

[Sarcastr0]

J-1 is not just au pairs. Which I expect you know, so why post this nonsense?

[Armchair Lawyer]

Oh no, it's also summer camp counselers. And "summer work travel programs". And "interns"

Let's just look at New York in 2018.

2518 Au Pairs. Cheap foreign labor replacing Americans
4749 Camp Counselers. Very important "research"
4270 Interns....
6950 "Summer work Travel"

All very, very important, I'm sure...

[Sarcastr0]

Are you denying J1 includes student researchers?

If not, what are you trying to argue?

[Armchair Lawyer]

The unemployment rate is the highest it's been in 50 years. Just maybe...maybe... with unemployment rates higher than any time since the Great Depression, bringing in new immigrants for scarce jobs isn't the best policy.

[Brett Bellmore]

But don't you realize that, if we bring more people in, the total number of jobs will increase?

Granted, it won't increase by as many as the number of people we bring in, and we'll get poorer on average even as the total size of the economy gets bigger, but that's a detail they've been sweeping under the rug for years now, you're supposed to ignore that.

[Sarcastr0]

Actually, the facts in your second paragraph don't turn out to be true. Which makes sense since you pulled them from what appears to be your base intuition.

Just about every labor economist except one agrees that lowering immigration does not increase job opportunities nor wages for citizens.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/03/us/politics/legal-immigration-jobs-economy.html

[Armchair Lawyer]

"Both low- and high-skilled natives are affected by the influx of immigrants. But because a disproportionate percentage of immigrants have few skills, it is low-skilled American workers, including many blacks and Hispanics, who have suffered most from this wage dip. The monetary loss is sizable. The typical high school dropout earns about $25,000 annually. According to census data, immigrants admitted in the past two decades lacking a high school diploma have increased the size of the low-skilled workforce by roughly 25 percent. As a result, the earnings of this particularly vulnerable group dropped by between $800 and $1,500 each year."

-George Borjas.

AKA... "Sanctuary cities" are a way to keep poor black people poor, by suppressing their wages.

[Armchair Lawyer]

But wait, there's more...

But that’s only one side of the story. Somebody’s lower wage is always somebody else’s higher profit. In this case, immigration redistributes wealth from those who compete with immigrants to those who use immigrants—from the employee to the employer.... ...The total wealth redistribution from the native losers to the native winners is enormous, roughly a half-trillion dollars a year. Immigrants, too, gain substantially; their total earnings far exceed what their income would have been had they not migrated."

Half a Trillion Dollars, every year, from America's poor workers, to the upper class liberal elites. No wonder they love sanctuary cities. It's a modern day version of slavery for them, siphoning off wealth from America's poor to make themselves rich.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah Borjas is the one exception. Just about all his peers disagree with him.

Hewing to the outlier to support your choice means you dint really care about the truth at all.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Sorry, did you want more, instead of your liberal elite newspaper article, designed to continue exploiting America's poor for its own benefit?

Here's "A Briefing Before The United States Commission on Civil Rights Held in Washington, DC"

https://www.usccr.gov/pubs/docs/IllegImmig_10-14-10_430pm.pdf

Key point

"Illegal immigration to the United States in recent decades has tended to depress both wages and employment rates for low-skilled American citizens, a disproportionate number of whom are black men. Expert economic opinions concerning the negative
effects range from modest to significant. Those panelists that found modest effects overall nonetheless found significant effects in industry sectors such as meatpacking and construction. "

AKA. "Sanctuary Cities" are racist and designed to suppress the wages of poor minority American Citizens, and end up transferring their wealth to rich, elite, American Whites.

[Sarcastr0]

That’s not remotely like what you were arguing before.

Which shows you couldn’t find much supporting your initial thesis so you dug up another commonly cited anti immigration decade old report about another thesis and call it good.

Ask yourself why you are working so hard? If the science doesn’t agree with you, why are you putting in this effort? Why is this thesis so important to you that countervailing sources don’t matter?

[Armchair Lawyer]

That's exactly what I was arguing before.

As for the thesis and why I care?

Perhaps because I care about poor minority citizens in the US, and their well being, and their wages being suppressed. Don't you?

[Sarcastr0]

You were arguing that minority communities are hurt by illegal immigration before? Because that's what your latest link says is *possibly* true, which to me doesn't actually have a lot to say about the effect on the population generally of closing borders to legal immigration.

[Amazing Propagandist]

Tens of millions of Americans are unemployed, Irina. Let's help ourselves before trying to help others.

[Bob from Ohio]

The Open Borders crowd never skipped a beat. No fact can change their ideology.

[apedad]

I wish a law blog would talk about law.

Is Trump authorized to suspend these programs via Executive Order?

The visa program is federal law: 9 FAM 402.10.

I did a quick scan and I didn't see any provisions that the President may suspend visa processing for whatever reason.

[Commenter_XY]

Si El Puede! (Yes, he can). Congress delegated the authority. Petition Congress to change the law.

[apedad]

Can you provide a link to that?

I couldn't find it (maybe I'm looking at an older version.)

[ThePublius]

"The restrictions were made known under the sinister headline of a "Proclamation Suspending Entry of Aliens Who Present a Risk to the U.S. Labor Market Following the Coronavirus Outbreak". The trope of scary foreigners coming and "taking away" jobs from Americans reigns supreme. When it comes to immigration law, the Trump administration has certainly not let any good crisis go to waste."

What a cynical conclusion. First, the headline is exactly correct: entry of aliens for work DOES present a risk to the US labor market. Millions already here are out of work, what are the excess laborers, immigrant or otherwise, supposed to do? They will at minimum drive down wages, and in certain fields, like seasonal workers, drive down living conditions and increase the opportunity for them to be abused and otherwise exploited.

It's not a trope. Increased labor supply leaves people out of work.

[jb]

The H-1 restriction is particularly dumb and counterproductive. Tech companies are working almost entirely from home at the moment, and that's likely to persist for some time. So those employees can work basically anywhere and be equally productive, although with some consideration for keeping people in proximate time zones. By excluding those workers from the US, you're not going to prevent the tech companies from hiring the exact same people, but you are going to prohibit them from earning and spending their money here. So instead of paying a foreigner a good salary in the US, the tech companies will pay the exact same worker to do the exact same job in another country. That doesn't help preserve American jobs, it just makes our economy and our society poorer.

[Commenter_XY]

Pity the poor FAANG multi-national corporations. They'll simply have to make due with American citizens doing the work. One weeps for their difficulty. Are you friends with OBL, the parody poster? 🙂

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

The restriction doesn't force corporations to hire American citizens. As jb said, they will hire the exact same people no matter where they reside. But our economy will not benefit from their spending.

[Dr. Ed]

Our economy does not benefit NOW.

[jb]

But that's the whole point--they won't make do with American citizens. There's no reason to. When literally everyone is working remotely, it makes no difference whatsoever what country the worker happens to be sitting in. Unlike in the past, where there was some expense incurred by moving a factory or an office to a different country, they can simply start adding new employees to payroll in Canada or Mexico or anywhere else with a decent Internet connection and the employee will be identically productive. A lot of those workers would probably prefer to move to the US and spend their salaries here, but if there's no H-1 visas I'm sure they'll be very happy to spend the money wherever they happen to live.

Historically, the tech companies have had large hubs of people in the US (particularly in the Bay Area, Seattle and to a lesser extent New York) because they saw value in in-person collaboration and employment network effects. And it's possible that once we're less worried about Coronavirus that they'll want more in-person collaboration again. But if in the meantime we've made it substantially harder for those workers to be based in the US, it's also possible that the trend to remote (and therefore less US-centric) work will persist and/or that the hubs will simply move to countries where the workers congregated while the US was busy keeping them out.

[ThePublius]

"When literally everyone is working remotely, it makes no difference whatsoever what country the worker happens to be sitting in. "

What an elitist attitude! Many foreign workers are seasonal restaurant and resort workers. That's impossible to do over the internet, in case you haven't noticed.

[jb]

Those people are on H-2 visas, not H-1.

[ThePublius]

Yea, and the order covers H1B, H2B, H4, J1, J2, L1, and L2 visas..

[jb]

And my original comment here said "The H-1 restriction is particularly dumb and counterproductive". There's some other analysis of L1 visas upthread. Feel free to opine about H2s or other visa types, but it really has nothing to do with my point.

[Commenter_XY]

jb....Do you know how 'BigCorp' and 'MegaCorp' HR departments work? I think perhaps, not so much. Having worked for BigCorps and MegaCorps, and having hiring/firing authority, I am not unfamiliar with how this goes. Here is what will happen.

HR departments will go for the path of least resistance. Job requisitions will be withdrawn, and rewritten. The word will go out, and it will be a version of....it is not worth the paperwork hassle to try and get an exception. Here are 10 people (all American citizens) to review for an initial phone interview.

Companies will not want to take on the paperwork and regulatory hassle.

[jb]

Commenter_XY, I have no idea what "paperwork" and "regulatory hassle" you are talking about. The tech companies that are the primary users of the H-1B visa systems already employ people all over the world, and have engineering payrolls in dozens of other countries. There's no "hassle" in telling someone who would otherwise have been interested in moving to the US that it's not an option this year and they'll have to get paid, get taxed, and spend their money in another country instead. In the past, these companies would have preferred to have a large chunk of the employees in the US since there's value to face-to-face collaboration, but since essentially all of them have announced that they'll be primarily working from home through 2020 anyway, there's no disadvantage to hiring the exact same people as they would have otherwise, but just not put them on US payroll.

[Commenter_XY]

Sigh, I was right. You don't know how HR departments work.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

"Pity the poor FAANG multi-national corporations. They’ll simply have to make due with American citizens doing the work. One weeps for their difficulty."

Why couldn't they send part of the work offshore if they prefer to avoid hiring anti-social, bigoted, disaffected, on-the-spectrum clingers?

[Sam Haysom]

I just made your wife absolutely spasm in delight with a nice deep dicking. Come pick her up I’m not paying for a cab.

[ThePublius]

"Tech companies are working almost entirely from home at the moment, and that’s likely to persist for some time."

Your definition of tech companies must be very narrow, and arguments you make from this basis are invalid.

Many tech workers can work from home, yes, primarily in software engineering, parts of IT, and similar and related industries.

But many can't: biotechnology workers (think labs), semiconductor fab workers, industrial automation engineers, process control engineers; people running data centers have to often go to the data center, to swap out hardware, reconfigure physical networks, etc. Need I go on?

[jb]

My definition of tech company matches the companies that account for the vast majority of H1B visas. In 2016, companies categorized as "Computer Systems Design and Related Services" accounted for 10x as many H1B visa applications as the next largest industry:

https://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2016-H1B-Visa-Category.aspx?T=IN#LCA

Even outside software development, the roles actually touching hardware have largely moved offshore already. Biotech is definitely an exception, but is not a large part of the H1B pool.

[Techowiki.com]

This is very nice content keep it up

[Miss Greenparker]

I like immigrants coming to this country for many reasons, but not for how they spend their dollar here. Many live quite frugally, because they have to; their wages tend to be lower than those of their American counterparts, and they often send significant portions of their earned monies back home.

Meanwhile, we probably shouldn't be counting on returning to business as usual and pretend we can afford not to prioritize jobs and benefits for those already in the country. Our current economy has sustained some stunning blows, a fact that isn't at all evident to some here, because they've kept their employment, haven't missed mortgage or credit card payments, yet, and the stock market roller coaster is still paying off, for now. They need to look around and see the escalating numbers of people here who are out of work and close to giving up their homes.

The international political scene also appears to be destabilizing, as the blame game plays out over the virus, global trade, travel, banking, and military flexing. The President enacted the Defense Producton Act in April, ostensibly about making more respirators , but military watchers believe it to be in response to the war drums they hear being beaten quietly and deliberately by different leaders.

[Miss Greenparker]

The comment above was intended for Barnard way upthread.

[Sarcastr0]

Unsurprising perhaps but many of the posters that in the past insisted they were pro immigrant just anti-illegal think this is great.

Not all, I am happy to see.

[jb]

Why wouldn't they? You've made a decision to hire person X because they are the most qualified. That person is going to do 100% of their work remotely. Suddenly that person isn't allowed to work in the US, but can do the job from some other country. What possible reason would you have for not still hiring them and letting them work from another country, possibly even with a lower cost of living so you can justify paying them less money for the same job.

[jb]

For H-1Bs in particular, all of the slots for 2020 were allocated to specific workers at specific companies back in April. So the only thing this does is prevent companies from bringing workers that they've already decided to hire into the US.

Some of the dynamics you are describing may apply to future years (although as you acknowledge, I think the trend will be towards more offshoring as a result), but for 2020 the effect of this move on H-1 visas in particular is going to be to have US employers paying more salaries in countries other than the US.

[Sarcastr0]

I’m aware.

So what? Unless you think all immigrants are Nazis, this does not seem to be an argument against looking worldwide for top talent.