Immigration Under the Trump Administration: Five Things to Expect in the First 90 Days

2024/11/23 Leave a comment

Good solid analysis:

The first Trump administration brought significant changes to U.S. immigration policies, which had profound impacts on businesses and individuals alike. Donald Trump has shared plans for closing the U.S. borders and enforcing mass deportations for undocumented immigrants almost immediately after taking office in January. Below are five major impacts to immigration policy we saw as a result of Trump’s first term, and what we can expect for his second term.

  1. Extreme Vetting: The administration introduced stringent vetting processes for visa applicants, with the stated aim of enhancing national security. This led to longer processing times and increased scrutiny of applicants’ backgrounds. The U.S. Department of State, whose Bureau of Consular Affairs oversees the issuance of U.S. visas, has yet to recover from staffing shortages resulting from the first Trump administration, while geopolitical conflicts continue to grow in size and severity, drawing limited resources away from visa processing. Like under the first Trump administration, visa applicants – and the U.S. companies that employ them – can expect extremely long wait times for visa interview appointments, more frequent administrative processing delays, and much higher visa refusal rates. Foreign workers may be less able to travel internationally for work due to the risk of being unable to return to the U.S.
     
  2. Hiring and Onboarding Delays: Slow adjudication and consular operations, coupled with heavy scrutiny, caused significant delays in hiring and onboarding international employees. Businesses faced challenges in maintaining their high-skilled workforces due to these prolonged processes since such (legal) foreign workers are the cohort most affected by delays and increased scrutiny of work visa applications. Only the H-2 visa category for seasonal and temporary workers seems to have been unaffected by these delays. In fact, the number of available H-2 visas doubled under Trump, and applications maintained an average approval rate of over 98 percent. Given this history, employers should plan for delays in onboarding high-skilled foreign workers as well as decreased ability to recruit such candidates to the U.S., though the ability to recruit short-term and seasonal labor should remain steady.
     
  3. Business Disruption: Border closures, visa bans, skyrocketing processing times, and denial rates under the first Trump administration exacerbated the staffing issues faced by companies during the pandemic and recovery. Year-plus processing times caused foreign nationals working legally in the U.S. to lose their work authorization and, in some cases, their jobs as employers struggled to navigate the changing adjudication standards. Employers in highly scrutinized industries like construction, manufacturing, food service, hospitality, and agriculture can expect increased immigration enforcement activity, including raids. Raids, in particular, have a chilling impact on recruitment and hiring even of authorized workers, including workers permanently authorized to work in the U.S. – like U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and asylees. In 2022, a federal court ordered ICE to pay more than $1 million to victims of the agency’s raid of a meatpacking plant in Tennessee, after determining ICE agents used racial profiling and excessive force to illegally detain workers without regard to their actual status – lawful or unlawful – in the U.S.
     
  4. Increased Costs: The cost of sponsoring employees for visas and green cards increased due to additional documentary requirements and higher denial rates. Businesses had to allocate more resources to manage immigration-related expenses. Under the incoming administration, employers can expect a return to those high immigration costs and then some. Since Biden took office, denial rates for H-1B visa applications have hovered between 2 – 3 percent; under Trump, H-1B denial rates were more than triple that, ranging from 8 – 15 percent.
     
  5. Uncertainty: In the first Trump administration, sudden policy changes, reduced service levels, and uncertain decisions created concern among employees and businesses. Companies had to adjust their expectations and factor in events that created disruptions impacting all levels of their business, including employee onboarding, production, and service delivery. We expect the impacts of the areas outlined above will lead to a significant number of additional uncertainties for both employers and employees that could impact workforce morale and productivity in anticipation of what could come….

Meredith C. Doll, of counsel in Baker Donelson’s Houston office, helps clients with business immigration matters, including strategy planning, worksite compliance and enforcement, and immigrant and nonimmigrant petitions.  Melanie C. Walker, a shareholder in the Baker Donelson’s Global Immigration Group in Chattanooga. Tennessee, provides strategic guidance and immigration counseling services to companies and their employees.

Source: Immigration Under the Trump Administration: Five Things to Expect in the First 90 Days

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CAQ’s immigration plan blasted for favouring European white francophones

2019/08/14 Leave a comment

I think this critique may be overblown if we look at the impact of the federal Express Entry system, where an offer from an employer is given considerable weighting: In 2008, immigration from Europe/UK was 17 percent of economic class, in 2017, it declined to 13.7 percent, from the USA, it declined from 3.1 percent to 2.4 percent:

Immigration hearings got off to a rocky start Monday when a group said the government is ignoring the issue of systemic racism faced by new arrivals even with a series of reforms that have been put in place.

And if you add into the mix the requirements of a Quebec values test and plans to give more power to employers to pick their own workers, the future is shaping up to mean most new arrivals will be white francophones from Europe, the group said.

The comments were made by representatives of the Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes (TCRI), which represents 150 groups across Quebec who aid immigrants and refugees.

Refugees and families from diverse countries will be overlooked because they are seen as a burden to society, while others with the right skills won’t stand a chance because of “unconscious ethnic profiling” by employers, they said.

With the Quebec business lobby exerting enormous pressure on the government to boost immigration levels to as high as 60,000 a year, the TCRI warned Quebec must not overlook the human side of the equation.

As it stands, the Coalition Avenir Québec government’s immigration plan is “simplistic and utilitarian,” light years from the dreams of diversity and so focused on plugging labour shortages it represents a “historic setback” for Quebec’s immigration policies, they said.

The TCRI representatives were presenting a brief on the opening day of legislature committee hearings into Quebec’s immigration plan for the next three years.

After slapping a reduction on the number of immigrants for the year 2019 at 40,000, Immigration, Diversity and Inclusiveness Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette shifted gears and is proposing to gradually increase it to 52,500 a year by 2022.

But he proposes to increase the percentage of qualified workers from 59 per cent to 65 per cent of the total to meet labour shortages, which has upset immigration groups. There are 120,000 vacant jobs in Quebec.

On his way into the hearings, Jolin-Barrette was cautious when asked whether he will boost the numbers as high as Quebec Inc. wants, saying he wants to listen to the views of everyone first.

But the TCRI gave the government an earful, saying cutting the number of refugees and candidates in the family unification category is wrong because they actually settle better into Quebec society while workers often move away.

“Immigration should not be instrumentalized to respond to economic needs,” Veronica Islas, a member of the group, told the committee.

“Immigration needs to be seen in a global sense. Yes, business plays a role. They need workers. But we need to avoid the privatization of immigration access.

“If we give business all the power, we could wind up with very homogeneous immigration. An employer could say it’s easier to integrate someone who is already like me.”

The group said they doubt Quebec’s much vaunted Arrima system — which matches immigrants with open jobs before they arrive — is the miracle solution, either.

It gives more power to employers to select workers, but there is no mention of how Quebec proposes to counter discrimination experienced by candidates with “non-Québécois”-sounding names.

That won’t disappear overnight with the new system, they said.

“Like it or not, there is a problem that can be qualified as systemic racism,” group member Dominique Lachance said during her testimony.

“It’s not so much intended by the employer, but there is a built-in discrimination in the system because people come from foreign countries, don’t know our system and don’t have the network of contacts others do to make their pitch (for work).”

The group said employers are completely unprepared to handle such powers.

“The TCRI fears that the net result is that we will observe a homogenization of permanent immigrant profiles to be more and more European white francophones,” it says in its brief.

“In partially leaving the power of selection of immigrants at the discretion of employers, and the bias of employers in this area is well documented, we can reasonably expect some candidates will never be approached despite their skills due to an unconscious ethnic profiling.”

Speaking to reporters later, group spokeswoman Eva Lopez said such discrimination hits the Maghrebian and black communities the most.

Some new arrivals even try to change their names to get around the problem of getting a job.

Speaking at the committee, Jolin-Barrette countered the comments, saying the Arrima system is based on skills and experience and “not the region of the world they come from,” so everyone has an equal chance of being admitted.

The immigration and refugee group is the first of 31 who will appear this week.

During the next few days, Jolin-Barrette will face an intense business lobby that will argue Quebec has to open the door to more immigrants than ever before.

The minister will present his final plan in November.

Source: CAQ’s immigration plan blasted for favouring European white francophones

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