President Trump on Thursday extended a pandemic-era suspension of certain immigrant and work visas, ensuring that his general limits on legal immigration will be maintained when Joe Biden takes the oath.
By a proclamation issued 20 days before the day of the inauguration, Trump ordered a three-month extension of visa restrictions, which were first enacted in April as a ban on some potential immigrants and extended in June to also stop several temporary work programs.
Trump has said the limits – which he invokes broad presidential power to ban the entry of foreigners who are considered “harmful to US interests” – are needed to prevent new immigrants and temporary workers from competing with the North. Americans to get jobs during the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
“The effects of COVID-19 on the U.S. labor market and on the health of U.S. communities are a matter of ongoing national concern,” Trump wrote in Thursday’s proclamation, which mentioned the unemployment rate. pandemic-related restrictions on state-issued companies and rising coronavirus infections since June.
Although he has pledged to repeal some of the central axes of Trump’s immigration agenda, Biden has yet to say whether he intends to rescind visa restrictions. A representative of Mr. Biden’s transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s proclamation prohibits the issuance of certain immigrant visas to people abroad who want to move permanently to the U.S. through green card applications filed by their relatives or potential U.S. employers.
Spouses and children 21 years of age or younger are not subject to restrictions, which also exempt some health care workers who intend to fight coronavirus and immigrant investors who agree to invest more than $ 1 million in the United States. Units.
Trump’s order also continues with the suspension of the diversity visa lottery, a program he has often criticized that allows people from under-represented countries, many of them in Africa, to move to the U.S. In September, a federal judge in Washington, DC, ordered the government to issue visas to more than 9,000 potential immigrants who won the lottery in 2020, but are barred from entering the U.S. under the proclamation.
The restrictions also stop several temporary visas used by people abroad to work in the United States, including the popular H-1B program in the technology sector and H-2B visas for non-agricultural seasonal workers. Cultural exchange of J-1 visas for au pair and other short-term workers; visas for spouses of H-1B and H-2B holders; and L visas for companies to relocate employees to the United States will also be suspended.
In early October, San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White banned the Trump administration from enforcing temporary work visa restrictions on foreign workers hired by several large northern companies. -American.
Immigrant advocates called on the Biden administration to revoke Trump’s visa limits immediately in January.
“Too many separated families and too many dreams have been crushed by this illegal ban,” said Karen Tumlin, the founder of the Justice Action Center and a lawyer challenging visa restrictions. “We will continue to challenge this judicial ban and urge the Biden-Harris administration to revoke all of President Trump’s xenophobic presidential proclamations, including this ban, on the first day of his administration.”