In an executive order to be signed on Tuesday, April 18, 2017, the President aims to make it more difficult for companies to hire foreign technology workers in an attempt to keep those jobs for American workers.
Expectations from the industry, however, suggest that this will badly damage the American technology sector. According to Robert Atkinson of the Information Technology Innovation Foundation:
The administration sent instructions last week to American embassies to increase scrutiny of visa applicants seeking to travel to the U.S. This "exteme vetting" was a promise of Trump's on the campaign trail in connection with his desire to restrict Muslims from entering the country.
As a candidate, Mr. Trump vowed to ban all incoming Muslims until leaders could “figure out what the hell is going on.” Later, he backed away from a total ban on Muslims but promised “extreme vetting” of those trying to come to the United States.
While federal judges in Maryland and Washington handle cases challenging what has been termed "Muslim Ban 2," a federal judge in Hawaii has issued a nationwide temporary restraining order. The ban was set to take effect at midnight on Thursday March 16th (the evening of the 15th).
The White House has signed a new executive order intending to achieve the same effects as the first one but with nuissances it hopes will prevent courts from blocking implentation. Rather than attempt to summarize the enormous issues, both legal and ethical, with this action, please review and share the New York Times piece below detailing in bullet point format what's changed and what it all means.
In their continued efforts to curb immigration of all varieties, the Trump administration suspended a program that allows high-skill industries to more easily hire the best talent from around the world.
The US is temporarily suspending expedited processing of H-1B visas, eliminating the option of shorter wait times for the program that helps highly skilled foreigners work at US companies.
While reasonable citizens would like to believe that edicts from the White House such as mass deportation are met with skepticism from those charged with enforcement, unfortunately the opposite appears to be true. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been quoted anonymously in various publications expressing excitement and empowerment about the new mandate, often at odds with police officers in larger cities.
A provision of the Trump administration’s plan to increase deportation of undocumented immigrants grants authority for federal agents to deport to Mexico anyone caught crossing the southern border, regardless of where they are from. For example, the United States would push hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans, Hondurans, Salvadorans, Brazilians, Ecuadorans, even Haitians into Mexico. Presently these individuals are detained in the U.S. and allowed to request asylum.
In a significant reversal of previous immigration policy, federal immigration agents are conducting raids in at least 6 states targeting undocumented immigrants regardless criminal record or other status marking them as high priority.
U.S. immigration authorities launched a series of raids, traffic stops and checkpoints in at least half a dozen states across the country on Thursday and Friday, sweeping up an unknown number of undocumented immigrants, immigration lawyers and advocates said.
A San Francisco-based appeals court on Thursday delivered a stinging rebuke of President Trump's executive order on immigration and refugees, rejecting the administration’s request to resume the travel ban and setting up a potential showdown in the Supreme Court.
Jeff Sessions, one of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate and an early supporter of Trump, was confirmed as Attorney General by a 52-47 vote on Wednesday. Sessions shares Trump's anti-immigration views and will play a leading role in defending the immigration and travel ban in the courts. Sessions has called the ACLU "un-American."