President Donald Trump Signs An Executive Order To Suspend Immigration For 60 Days
Recently, President Donald Trump of the United States announced his intention to suspend immigration activities during the Coronavirus pandemic in the United States.
This announcement was made at 10:06 pm on Monday in a tweet, saying the move would suspend immigration by looking to accelerate American employment and shield the country from imported cases of Coronavirus pandemic.
“In light of the attack from the invisible enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our great America citizens, I will be signing an executive order to temporarily suspend immigration into the united states”
This is supposed to protect Americans and job structures especially as employers have recently been reaching out for workers at home or abroad. More than 22 million Americans have lost their economic stance and jobs due to the virus and continued efforts to contain it.
President Trump says that his order will be in effect for 60 days, which might lead to an extension based on “economic conditions at the time”.
According to the Times, American citizens will still be able to apply for Green cards on behalf of their families and children, But green card application through employee routine will not be possible for a period of 60 days.
In his statement, During the Whitehouse briefing given on Tuesday, Trump had said;
” I will be issuing a temporary suspension of immigration into the United States. We’ll help put unemployed Americans first in line for jobs. It would be wrong to be replacing them with new immigrant labor flown in from abroad”.
Trump’s recent tweet on Green card restriction and immigration ban has sparked a lot of controversies in the state, although an officially signed statement has not been released yet. This is not the first time that the president is first making verbal statements that will be signed and approved eventually. Trump has proposed to sign it on Wednesday 22nd of April noting that lawyers were still surfing through the final details . ” it’s being written now, we’ll most likely sign it tomorrow “.
This 60-day ban plan of immigration into the state is aimed at protecting the country from the threat of imported Coronavirus tendencies, especially during the pandemic. The threat of foreigners bringing the virus into the country could be curtailed greatly if this is implemented. This has sparked a lot of questions amongst economic experts and immigration agencies. The United States has long begun restricting movements from foreign countries in a bid to contain the outbreak including routine visa services overseas.
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However, in spite of this, the novel virus is still vastly spread and well established within the state for over a month. The U.S Coronavirus charts are higher than any other country with approximately 800,000 infected persons and nearly 45,000 deaths- By far the highest recorded amidst the Coronavirus breakout after Spain and Italy.
The details of the temporary suspension are not clearly defined, yet. According to the Washington Post, other aides had said that the president has announced a sweeping policy that was not yet ready for implementation and his decision was trying to piece together an executive order for him to sign that would catch up to his whim.
Although a 60-day ban might not seem like a lot from the trump point of view, various economic experts are quite appalled at the prospect, as immigrants represent more than a quarter of the U.S entrepreneurs and a quarter of inventors.
In an interview with the Washington Post, William Kerr, a high-skilled immigrant labor professor of the Harvard Business School, had said this halt although temporary could create a barrier to economic success. His argument states that unemployed Americans versus immigrants might even help boost healthy competition to fuel relevant economic mainstreams.
” To think that shutting down all immigrants into the country is the right strategy is economically sound and certainly not motivated by containing the crisis itself.”
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The goal of the restriction order is to fully curtail legal immigration even if, in March, the state department had already suspended routine visa processing at its consulates and embassies abroad. This has significantly slowed immigration processing as opposed to 9.2 million visas that were issued at consulates and embassies abroad in 2019.
The Southern border is also not excluded from these migrant restrictions as the executive order has before now implemented a system to turn away nonessential travel migrants arriving, including Mexico and Canada migrants.
On the issue of essential industries, all restrictions given in the executive order by Trump will not be strict on intending immigrant workers in the U.S.
Workers in essential fields will still be able to obtain visas under the executive order with the aid of the H-2A visas.
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The U.S Health system and agricultural economy rely heavily on immigrants to help thrive their services, especially during these times. More than 25 percent of doctors and health workers present in the U.S are migrants, and some states have attempted to waive licensing requirements for foreign medical school graduates so that they can contribute to the Coronavirus response.
With the threat of labor and food supply shortages amidst the pandemic, foreign workers are still given and encouraged into the country with or without the executive ban order especially with the help of H-2A visas.
The H-2A is a temporary agricultural program that promotes and encourages migration of foreign workers into the United States for temporary agricultural work.
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Although the ban might suspend the issuance of permanent residency visas and restrict green cards to immigrants for the next two months, the order will still allow the government to continue processing visas for hundreds of thousands of temporary employees, essential workers -the largest source of immigration including farmworkers, landscapers, and crab pickers.
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