Trump cuts legal immigrants in half and is not done yet

By next year, Donald Trump will have reduced legal immigration by 49% since he became president. According to a new analysis, that will have significant repercussions for the nation’s economic growth. Cuts to legal immigration have come in several categories, and it appears that the Trump administration has not finished restricting immigration.

Reducing legal immigration hurts more refugees, employers, and Americans who want to live with their spouses, parents, or children, but it also affects the country’s future workforce and economic growth. “Average annual growth in the workforce, a key component of the nation’s economic growth, will be approximately 59% lower as a result of the administration’s immigration policies, if the policies continue,” according to an analysis by the National Foundation. for American Politics. “Economic growth is crucial to improving living standards, which means that lower levels of legal immigration have significant consequences for Americans.”

Less immigration is likely to slow Covid-19’s US economic recovery. Economists from Oxford University and Citi concluded that without immigrants contributing to the quantity and quality of the job offer, most of the gains in economic growth that America saw between 2011 and 2016 after the last recession would not have happened .

Economists Pia Orrenius and Chloe Smith of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas discovered that without immigration, the United States economy would have a hard time growing. “The slowdown in workforce growth is the product of a number of factors: the aging of the US population, the retirement of baby boomers and declining birth rates,” the economists wrote. “But another element is immigration. Immigrants and their children contributed more than half of the growth of the labor force in the last two decades. The economy expands with the growth of the labor force and its productivity. Due to the retirement of baby boomers and the aging of the general population, immigration will play an even greater role in the growth of the workforce in the future than in the past. In the absence of compensatory increases in productivity growth, less immigration will therefore directly translate into slower growth in gross domestic product. “

The National Foundation for American Policy projects that the number of legal immigrants will decrease by 49% (or 581,845) between fiscal year 2016 and fiscal year 2021 due to the policies of the Trump administration. (From fiscal year 2016 total of 1,183,505 to 601,660 in fiscal year 2021). How did the Trump administration reduce legal immigration by 49% without changing the immigration law of the United States? The answer is through the use of executive and administrative authorities, some of which are being challenged in court.

Below is a review of the impact of administrative policies on the legal immigration categories since Donald Trump became president.

Immediate Relatives of US Citizens: The Immediate Relatives of US Citizens category is projected to decrease by more than 50% between Fiscal Year 2016 and Fiscal Year 2021, meaning About 300,000 spouses, children, and parents of U.S. citizens plus It would have met in fiscal year 2021 without the Trump administration’s policies.

The three policies most responsible for the decline are the ban on travel primarily to Muslim countries, the presidential proclamation of April 22, 2020 to prevent the entry of parents of US citizens (and others), and the public charge rule designed primarily to prevent family immigration. “The new public charge rule will likely have two separate impacts on the numbers, primarily on immediate family members and family preference categories,” according to Jeffrey Gorsky, lead attorney for Berry Appleman & Leiden and a former State Department attorney. Gorsky said in an interview that the most direct impact will be the increase in denials on public charge grounds. But he believes that the complicated rules and the huge amount of new documentation will delay processing. “That would result in fewer cases getting through the pipeline,” he said.

Refugees (including the Cuban Adjustment Law): The number of refugees obtaining permanent residence (a green card) is expected to decrease significantly from fiscal year 2016 to fiscal year 2021. Refugees apply for and generally receive permanent residence (a green card) one year after arriving in the United States, meaning the number those who become permanent residents are delayed a year or more. The president determines annual refugee admissions, although according to press reports, White House chief adviser Stephen Miller has personally determined the number of refugees admitted each year.

For fiscal year 2020, the Trump administration set an annual cap for refugees 84% ​​lower than the final year of the Obama administration (from 110,000 to 18,000), and as of July 17, 2020, only 7,848 refugees have arrived in the United States in FY 2020.

Many refugees who “fled violent regimes” have been resettled in Maine, reports Maria Sacchetti of the Washington Post. “Workers at a red brick factory called American Roots had to decide in the middle of a pandemic whether they would return to work. Instead of the usual sweatshirts and knitted caps, they would create masks to protect frontline workers from the new coronavirus, “according to Sacchetti.” Or they could take the safest route: stay home and collect unemployment. Almost all were immigrants. . [including refugees] from Africa or the Middle East, and workers said none of them flinched when they gathered on the factory floor that March morning. Everyone voted to continue sewing. “

In its statistics, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) includes Cubans on probation in the United States who after waiting a year (or more) applied for and received permanent residence under the Cuban Adjustment Act. New Trump administration policies affecting Cubans and the continuation of certain Obama-era practices have reduced the number of Cubans.

Asylees Like refugees, asylees receive permanent residence one year or more after approval. The Trump administration has prevented Central Americans from applying for asylum at the border and made many other changes that are expected to reduce the number of approved asylum seekers each year.

Family-sponsored preferences: The April 22, 2020 presidential proclamation to “suspend” the entry of immigrants seemed designed to prevent the adult children and siblings of US citizens and the spouses, minor children, and unmarried adults of lawful permanent residents from residing in the United States. . About 94% of people sponsored in family preference categories must enter the United States to immigrate (rather than adjust status within the country). Although the April proclamation acts as a virtual barrier to new immigrants entering family preference categories, the public charge rule, if applied, would also prevent many people from obtaining permanent residence.

The suspension will likely continue indefinitely if Donald Trump wins reelection unless a judge rules that the proclamation is illegal. The American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Justice Action Center and the Innovation Law Laboratory recently filed a lawsuit against the proclamation on behalf of 23 individuals and organizations. Among the plaintiffs is Nazif Alam, a lawful permanent resident of the United States, who is unable to bring his wife from Bangladesh due to the proclamation. Alam works in the food service distribution industry in New York, which has become a high-risk but essential job during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Employment-based preferences: “An overflow of unused numbers from fiscal year 2020 family preferences will be used for the employment-based category in fiscal year 2021 to the highest level of recent adjustment of status, which was approximately 220,000 in fiscal year 2005, “according to the National Foundation for Analysis of American Policy. “However, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) may not achieve a lower level of legal immigration and prosecution in fiscal year 2021, particularly given the financial difficulties experienced by USCIS.”

Diversity visas: The Diversity Visa category, a target of the Trump administration, will be zeroed as long as the suspension of new immigrants continues. WBUR highlighted the stories of Diversity immigrants who were unable to come to the United States due to the April 22, 2020 proclamation, including Katia Karslidi, a Russian LGBTQ writer and activist, and Mahmoud, an Egyptian accountant, who said: “The reason I’m chasing this dream, I don’t think it’s just me, it’s as if everyone is applying for the program because they believe the United States is the best nation. “

As the election draws near, the Trump administration, under the guise of “merit-based” immigration, appears ready to enact other measures to reduce immigration. Currently, H-1B visa holders and many close relatives of US citizens cannot come to the United States. In addition to broken dreams, if they remain in place, the policies will reduce the economic growth of the US, which means that the Americans will be much poorer than if the policies had never been enacted.