The Trump administration, having temporarily closed borders and curtailed immigration in response to the coronavirus pandemic, is moving to expand those restrictions while the president’s advisers push to leave them in place for months or even years to come, according to several people familiar with the matter.
Senior administration officials are operating on the assumption that the public, during the pandemic, will be willing to accept new limits on immigration, the people said. That, in turn, presents the administration with an opportunity to pursue long-held goals to overhaul the immigration system in the name of public health and job protection for Americans.
The president’s immigration advisers are drawing up plans for a coming executive order, expected this month, that would ban the issuance of some new temporary, work-based visas. The order is expected to focus on visa categories including H-1B, designed for highly skilled workers, and H-2B, for seasonal migrant workers, as well as student visas and the work authorization that accompanies them.
Though the scope of the order hasn’t yet been decided, administration officials said it could range from suspensions of entire visa categories to the creation of incentives to hire Americans in industries hardest-hit by layoffs.
The discussions follow a series of moves by President Trump to curtail the flow of migrants at the nation’s borders and entry points. In January, facing reports of a spreading epidemic, the White House announced travel restrictions on China. In March, the government shut down the Mexican and Canadian borders to nonessential travel and enacted a policy of expelling any migrant crossing the border illegally or asking for asylum.
In April, the president signed an executive order temporarily barring new immigrants for 60 days, including family members of U.S. citizens. The coming changes, the administration has suggested, will build on this April action.
The moves, so far, are billed as temporary. But some administration officials argue the restraints on immigration may need to be in place at least until a vaccine is widely deployed in the U.S. and Latin America, which could take more than a year.
“If we are taking actions on immigration that help improve public health, help improve the economy, help improve jobs, it’s a vindication or validation that the president was right since day one,” a senior Department of Homeland Security official said.
Even without further changes, the measures so far would amount to a significant rewrite of immigration laws without the involvement of Congress. The president’s April order focuses on immigration based on family ties—which he calls “chain migration”—as well as a program known as the diversity visa lottery, which awards 50,000 green cards a year to applicants from countries underrepresented in the U.S. population, primarily from Africa and Asia.
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White House plans to extend new immigration restrictions
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