Perspective: Trump says he wants skilled immigrants. He’s about to stop 70,000 from working.
President Trump signs an executive order that he said would bring back jobs for American workers now held by visa holders, during a 2017 visit to the headquarters of tool manufacturer Snap-On in Kenosha, Wisc. By Ike Brannon and Kevin McGee March 27 at 12:16 PM President Trump insists he wants to attract high-skilled legal immigrants, even while pushing for a wall on the southern border – but his administration is moving to deprive thousands of highly trained immigrants of the right to work.
Congress created the H-1B visa program in 1990 to attract more high-skilled immigrants into the country. Companies were having trouble filling jobs in technical occupations like systems engineers and software developers, occupation that then had low unemployment rates. Turning to foreign-born workers is an effective way to plug this hole. Trained, experienced foreign workers are also much more likely to start new businesses, creating new jobs in the process.
Almost five out of six of our respondents had already obtained employment authorization documents , and three-fourths of these currently hold jobs. Unsurprisingly, most work in occupations tied to technology or engineering in some way. Almost half are employed in IT-math-stats occupations, which have chronic worker shortages. These occupations’ 2018 unemployment rate of only 2.13 percent indicates that the only unemployed workers in these areas are the ones in the process of changing jobs.
Interviews we did after our survey revealed that a significant number of families with an H-4 visa have made life-altering decisions predicated upon the ability of the visa holder to join their H-1B visa-holding spouse in obtaining work authorization, such as purchasing a house, beginning a business or having a child.
Priya Chandrasekaran married her H-1B spouse -- a software engineer for Microsoft -- in 2010 and came to the United States soon after to be with him. Although Priya had a Bachelors in business management, graduate training, and six years of work experience in India, she was initially unable to pursue her career because of the H-4 work ban in place at the time.
Besides being harmful to their families, rescinding the work authorization for the H-4 visa would impose costs both on our economy and tax coffers. Executive Order 12866 requires that any new rule issued by an administration -- or the rescission of an existing rule -- must be able to pass a cost-benefit analysis. The data show that this doesn’t come close to passing.
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