Thread: Trump says will unveil overhaul 'soon' of visa rules for skilled workers 'including a

Trump says will unveil overhaul 'soon' of visa rules for skilled workers 'including a path to citizenship'

David Jackson, USA TODAY
Published 8:15 a.m. ET Jan. 11, 2019
Updated 8:18 a.m. ET Jan. 11, 2019

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump said Friday that his administration was planning an overhaul of U.S. policies for specialty visa holders from other countries working in the United States.

"H1-B holders in the United States can rest assured that changes are soon coming which will bring both simplicity and certainty to your stay, including a potential path to citizenship," Trump tweeted.

He did not supply specifics.

While Trump said "we want to encourage talented and highly skilled people to pursue career options in the U.S.," critics have been concerned that he might try to crack down on the number of highly skilled workers coming into the U.S. However, his Friday tweets suggested he was weighing policies that might be more favorable to such workers.

Administration officials have been working at overhauling a number of immigration rules, including the H-1B work-visa program that technology companies and others use to bring top foreign engineering talent into the United States.

Trump brought up changes to the H1-B system in the midst of a partial government shutdown triggered by his demands for a security wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...-s/2545970002/

He's working on a way to fold all these visa programs into his merit-based immigration system, seems to me, so they can quickly grab and use up as many green cards as possible. With that available to them, they will not be the "bargain" they are now over US workers so less will be sought and less come in. That's my guess, looking forward to seeing the new rules.

NO PUBLIC CHARGE...THEY MUST BE CUT OFF THE BENEFITS AND LEAVE!

JOBS FOR AMERICAN'S FIRST AND GET PEOPLE OFF THE WELFARE ROLLS FIRST...CREATE THAT POLICY!

A special path to citizenship for H1-B visa holders would require approval of Congress! This isn't about a merit-based system, this is about providing 'cheaper' labor for the corporations and businesses that are screaming for them! No, it's not about Americans first. There is no reason to give these visa workers citizenship.

It's bad enough that our colleges and universities are giving a lot of their seats to foreign students for increased profit, now Trump wants to give our kid's futures away too!

From Trump's campaign:

Trump: Foreigners Who Attend U.S. Schools And Want To Stay Should Be Allowed To

ALLAHPUNDITPosted at 6:01 pm on August 18, 2015

In case you think Trump’s just making up his immigration platform as he goes along … yeah, that seems quite possible, actually.

Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump

When foreigners attend our great colleges & want to stay in the U.S., they should not be thrown out of our country.


3,732
12:42 PM - Aug 18, 2015
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• 
  

Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump

I want talented people to come into this country—to work hard and to become citizens. Silicon Valley needs engineers, etc.


4,101
12:42 PM - Aug 18, 2015
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Strange but true: For all the headlines yesterday about him calling for mass deportation of illegals, that demand doesn’t appear anywhere in the immigration white paper posted to his website. Deportations are mentioned only once, in a reference to illegals who join gangs. Mass deportations was simply something he dropped into his chat on Sunday with Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press.” This new bit about letting foreign students stay indefinitely in the U.S. after graduation is in that same “oh, by the way” afterthought vein. As a policy, there’s a strong argument for it: The students are here legally and many of them will have graduated with valuable STEM skills. (According to one analysis last year, fully two-thirds of foreign students study STEM.) Why force them to take that expertise back to China or Mexico or wherever else when it could be used to create wealth here? There’s no contradiction between Trump’s crackdown on illegals and his red carpet for students enrolled in American schools legally.

Or is there? From his immigration white paper:

We graduate two times more Americans with STEM degrees each year than find STEM jobs, yet as much as two-thirds of entry-level hiring for IT jobs is accomplished through the H-1B program. More than half of H-1B visas are issued for the program’s lowest allowable wage level, and more than eighty percent for its bottom two. Raising the prevailing wage paid to H-1Bs will force companies to give these coveted entry-level jobs to the existing domestic pool of unemployed native and immigrant workers in the U.S., instead of flying in cheaper workers from overseas. This will improve the number of black, Hispanic and female workers in Silicon Valley who have been passed over in favor of the H-1B program. Mark Zuckerberg’s personal Senator, Marco Rubio, has a bill to triple H-1Bs that would decimate women and minorities.

That’s not inconsistent with his tweets; he specifically says he wants unemployed native “and immigrant” workers who are already here to have a better shot at getting STEM jobs. It is, though, an odd exception to his “America first” philosophy generally. If we already have a labor glut of STEM-trained Americans who can’t find jobs in their fields, why encourage foreign students — again, most of whom study STEM disciplines — to stay and make the glut worse by competing with citizens for those jobs? How does he reconcile “Silicon Valley needs engineers” in a tweet about letting foreign students stay with the crack about Mark Zuckerberg using Rubio to favor foreign-educated techies over American ones? Both groups, the students and the H1-B recipients, will be creating wealth in the U.S. once they’re here, right? So why have a strong preference for one over the other? This is no small matter: As of 2013, there were more than 800,000 foreign studentsenrolled in American colleges and universities. This is a lot of workers potentially affected by this policy.

While you mull that, here’s Jeb Bush dumping on the idea of a border wall and Trump’s plan to stop remittances to Mexico. He’s on firm ground with the last part of that, at least. According to one analyst at Fortune, because many remittances are now transferred via digital currencies like Bitcoin, it’d be much harder for the feds to intercept them than Trump fans think.

https://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/...be-allowed-to/

FEDS GIVE $2 BILLION TAX BREAK TO COMPANIES HIRING FOREIGN GRADS RATHER THAN AMERICANS

9:55 PM 02/28/2018 | POLITICSWill Racke | Immigration and Foreign Policy Reporter


The federal government gave billions in tax subsidies to U.S. companies that hired foreign college graduates rather than American job seekers in 2017, according to analysis from an immigration policy think tank.

The tax break comes through the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program — a George W. Bush administration regulation allowing foreign graduates to work in the U.S. for up to 12 months after graduation — with a 24-month extension if the graduate works in a STEM field.

Under U.S. tax law, neither the participants in OPT nor their U.S. employers owe payroll taxes for the foreign hires. These payroll taxes — Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance contributions — amount to 8.25 percent for percent for both the employer and the worker.

Center for Immigration Studies labor policy expert David North has put a total dollar figure on the annual tax subsidy for OPT participants and their employers.

North used U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data to project roughly 240,000 OPT employment authorizations and STEM extensions were granted in 2017. He then multiplied that number by an average salary estimate of $50,000 to arrive at total wages of about $12 billion.

Multiplying that payroll tax-exempt total by 16.5 percent — 8.25 percent for the OPT recipient and 8.25 percent for the employer — works out to a total tax subsidy of $1.98 billion. This is a largely hidden incentive for U.S. companies to hire foreign college graduates over their American counterparts with similar education and experience, North said.

“The employers benefiting from the subsidies directly, and universities benefiting indirectly, know all about the program, which is all but unknown to the older Americans subsidizing it, and is similarly unknown to the young U.S. college grads who are hurt by it,” he wrote Tuesday in a CIS website blog post. “Given this twisted political dynamic, inertia, and the total silence of the media on this point, the program persists and grows each year.”

Universities in the U.S. generally support the OPT program because it helps in recruiting foreign students, who pay full tuition costs. Rising participation in OPT has driven the overall, foreign student population to a record high of 1.08 million — even as first-time, international-student enrollment declined by about 10,000 in the 2016-2017 school year — according to a November report from the Institute for International Education.
The IIE considers OPT participants to be students even if they have already completed their degree requirements.

“Much of the increase reported for the past couple of years can be attributed to more students pursuing Optional Practical Training (OPT) related to their academic fields after their degree studies, and thus remaining longer in the U.S. higher education system,” the IIE report showed.

Though George W. Bush’s administration initiated it, OPT grew significantly under Barack Obama’s administration, which created the 36-month framework for work authorization.
Far from paring back the growth of OPT authorizations, President Donald Trump’s administration defended the program against American tech workers’ lawsuit — they said it exceeds the Department of Homeland Security’s statutory authority.

https://dailycaller.com/2018/02/28/president-donald-trump-center-for-immigration-studies-george-w-bush/

TWO BILLION THAT SHOULD PAY FOR THE WALL.

VETO THIS SCAM THROWING AMERICANS UNDER THE BUS TAKING OUR JOBS!

OPT FOR AMERICANS AND PUT THE TRADES BACK INTO SCHOOLS GRADE 9-12!

Justice Department lawyers Feb. 20 defended a 2016 regulation allowing foreign students with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics degrees to work in the U.S. for up to three years post-graduation.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement regulation is being challenged by a group of U.S.-born technology sector workers who argue that it’s creating additional job competition and lowering wages.

https://www.bna.com/foreign-stem-worker-n57982089019/

I told you the US DOJ is corrupt and Sessions didn't do a thing to fix it.

Getting rid of this OPT crap was one of Trump's 70 legislative actions in his DACA Deal we opposed.

So without the votes in Congress to repeal the law, and a DOJ who "defends it", Trump is going to fix it by re-writing the regulation.

Originally Posted by Judy

https://www.bna.com/foreign-stem-worker-n57982089019/

I told you the US DOJ is corrupt and Sessions didn't do a thing to fix it.

Getting rid of this OPT crap was one of Trump's 70 legislative actions in his DACA Deal we opposed.

So without the votes in Congress to repeal the law, and a DOJ who "defends it", Trump is going to fix it by re-writing the regulation.

I can't believe you're still dogging Sessions. Heck, he wasn't even there in 2016. Furthermore, you don't know what he did or didn't try during his time in the DOJ. The buck stops with President Trump and we haven't heard a word from him on it.

Sessions was there on February 20, 2018 when DOJ lawyers defended the Obama rule. Maybe he thought it involved some Russians and recused himself.

Originally Posted by Judy

Sessions was there on February 20, 2018 when DOJ lawyers defended the Obama rule. Maybe he thought it involved some Russians and recused himself.

Trump wanted to keep the program.