GOP aims to not issue new work visas for the next couple of years

President Donald Trump should further restrict employment-based immigration to the United States until the unemployment caused by the coronavirus pandemic returns to "normal levels", a group of four Republican senators has said.

"While economic shutdowns in states and localities across the country have been necessary to reduce the spread of this pandemic, the results have been devastating for businesses and workers alike," Senators Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Chuck Grassley and Josh Hawley wrote in a public letter to the president on Thursday.

President Trump issued an order on April 22 suspending most immigrant visas for 60 days but exempted guest worker programmes. The US admits about one million guest workers a year, the senators said, and should now curtail most of those permits with an exception for seasonal agricultural workers.

Trump should add guest workers to his 60-day visa ban and should extend the restriction for four specific categories for up to a year or until the US employment recovers, the senators said in their letter. The categories include:

• H-2B visas for non-agricultural seasonal workers, such as summer pool lifeguards.
• H-1B visas for skilled speciality and tech positions.
• Optional Practical Training extensions for international students.
• EB-5 investor visas.

"As we work toward recovery, we urge you to keep the American worker in mind and limit the importation of unnecessary guest workers while American families and businesses get back on their feet," the senators said in their letter.

The number of unemployed workers in the US surged more than 33 million in the seven weeks since the US outbreak began, pushing the unemployment rate to 15 percent, according to Labor Department data released on Thursday.

"There are millions of high school and college students who, if not for the coronavirus pandemic, would be walking across a graduation stage in front of their families and friends over the next few weeks," the senators said in their letter.

"Instead of celebrating their hard work, most will be receiving their diplomas in the mail while worrying about whether they will be able to find a job in this market."

The four senators, who represent agricultural states of Arkansas, Texas, Iowa and Missouri, called on Trump to continue to provide exemptions for seasonal agricultural guest workers who pick crops and perform other food industry tasks. They urged exemptions be available for other critical industries on a case-by-case basis.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/...145156444.html

GOP got the reforms they wanted without passing anything in congress LOL

Big L for dems

Not news though

Making room for us!

It's an opinion and lol at the source "aljazeera"

Happy?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-a...ts-11588935603

So much fucking room for all of us

brb sending renewal

H1Bs are about 275K new slots opening up.

EB5 should actually be kept because they create jobs, and bring in a lot of wealth. We ALWAYS want rich people moving here through the easy EB5 path.

We NEVER want to import unskilled low wage jobless individuals.

Skilled Labor immigration was what unleashed the American economic powerhouse. You always want skilled labor, talented people, educated people moving in. They almost always are a net gain and have low amounts of criminality, plus they probably pay more in taxes than they consume.

Around 200K OPTs could be cleared out.

Honestly H-1Bs make it harder to get a job within US as a fresh grad, employers give too much of a shit about experience even if they are importing people who write "Indian code".

That being said, I think the system should remain roughly as it is, but I think the "We found no qualified US workers" requirement should be a little bit tighter. It should be "We found nobody qualified and nobody we can train for the role in a reasonable timeframe", and OPTs should be given priority to whoever is abroad both for EB-2/3 and H-1B.

EB-5s should be left as they are. These guys pump a lot of money into existing businesses and they're freaking loaded and really don't need a job. My former boss owned both an immigration law practice and an EB-5 regional center. First thing we did as they were getting their visas and coming to US was helping them find houses to buy for cash, generally on Long Island, which isn't as expensive as inside NYC but still expensive.

Not sure how they plan to have this in place for the next couple of years when they're out of power in January