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WASHINGTON: The administration of US President Donald Trump is rushing to toughen the process for US companies to hire skilled foreign workers before the end of the year – changes that senior Trump officials say will preserve jobs for Americans amid high unemployment and will be politically difficult to reverse.
With only a few weeks to go until the November 3 election, the White House budget office is reviewing a fast-track regulation that would lower the definition of a “specialty occupation” eligible for a skilled worker visa under the H-1B program. , according to the website of the budget office and administration officials.
A second fast-track regulation would increase the wages employers must pay to show that foreign workers will not displace Americans in the same occupation and geographic area.
Trump faces reelection on November 3 and has made immigration a focus of his campaign against Democratic challenger Joe Biden. The measures, along with a planned regulation to clamp down on visas for international students and journalists, could be some of Trump’s last immigration measures before the election.
The last-minute bombing could make the new rules vulnerable to legal challenges or, if Biden wins, a possible reversal, experts say. But senior White House adviser Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration agenda, argues the policies will have popular support.
“There will be no market for someone to cut H-1B wages to displace American workers,” Miller said in an interview, calling the measures “completely transformative.”
Trump issued a broad proclamation in June that blocked the entry of many temporary foreign workers, saying it was necessary to preserve jobs for Americans. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest business association, sued the administration over that ban, saying the planned regulations could create unnecessary obstacles for employers.
“Businesses across multiple industries are very concerned about the potential disruption these proposals will cause to their operations,” Jon Baselice, executive director of immigration policy for the US Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement.
Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia told Reuters that his department planned to increase H-1B wage requirements in light of Trump’s June proclamation.
“There has long been concern that the wages H-1B workers are allowed into the country are too low and are undermining the wages of American workers,” Scalia said in an interview. “That is never acceptable, but totally intolerable when millions of Americans are still out of work due to the pandemic.”
Outsourcing companies generally make up the bulk of the main users of the program and most of the workers approved for visas come from India.
Senator Dick Durbin, the second-highest-ranking Senate Democrat, co-sponsored a bipartisan bill in May that proposed reforms similar to Trump’s plans. But he rejected Trump’s measures in a statement to Reuters, calling it “an obvious political ploy.”
Some proponents of H-1B reform are also skeptical.
“If they had really prioritized this and cared about it, they would have done it months ago, if not years ago,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration policy and research at the left-leaning Institute for Economic Policy.
