By next year, Donald Trump will have reduced legal immigration by 49% since taking office. This will have a significant effect on the country’s economic growth, according to a new analysis. The cuts in legal immigration fall into several categories, and it turns out that the Trump administration has not finished restricting immigration.
Reducing legal immigration hurts refugees, employers, and Americans who need to live with their spouses, parents, or children, but it also hurts the country’s workforce and economic expansion in the long run. “The average annual expansion of the hard labor force, a key component of the nation’s economic expansion, will slow about 59% due to the administration’s immigration policies, if those policies continue,” according to research by the National Foundation for American Policy. “Economic expansion is about achieving better standards of living, which means that declining degrees of legal immigration have significant consequences for Americans. “
The decline in immigration will most likely kill the U. S. economic recovery from Covid-19. Economists from Oxford University and Citi concluded that without immigrants’ contribution to the quantity and quality of the supply of hard labor, most of the U. S. economic expansion would increase between 2011. and 2016 after the last recession had occurred.
Economists Pia Orrenius and Chloe Smith of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that without immigration, the U. S. economy would struggle to grow. “The slowdown in the expansion of the hard labor force is the product of a number of factors: the aging of the U. S. population, retirement and retirement. “Immigrants and their youth have contributed more than a portion of the labor force expansion over the past two decades. The economy is developing with the expansion of the labor force and its productivity. With the retirement of baby boomers and the aging of the population in general, immigration will play an even more vital role in expanding the workforce than in the future. Without a compensatory increase in productivity expansion, reduced immigration will directly translate into a slowdown in gross domestic product expansion.
The National Foundation for American Policy projects that the number of legal immigrants will drop by 49% (or 581,845) between fiscal years 2016 and 2021 due to the Trump administration’s policies. (From a total of 1,183,505 in FY 2016 to 601,660 in FY 2021. ) How did the Trump administration manage to reduce legal immigration by 49% without overturning U. S. immigration law?The reaction is to turn to the executive and administrative authorities, some of which are being challenged in court.
Below is a review of the impact of administration policies on legal immigration categories since Donald Trump became president.
Immediate Relatives of U.S. Citizens: The Immediate Relatives of U.S. Citizens category is projected to decline by over 50% between FY 2016 and FY 2021, meaning about 300,000 more spouses, children and parents of U.S. citizens would have been reunited in FY 2021 absent Trump administration policies.
The three policies most to blame for this decline are the ban against Muslim-majority countries, the presidential proclamation of April 22, 2020 banning access by family members of U. S. citizens (and others), and the public fee rule designed primarily to bridge the family immigration circle. “The new public rate rule will likely have two distinct effects on the numbers, primarily on the immediate family and family preference categories,” according to Jeffrey Gorsky, senior counsel at Berry Appleman.
Refugees (including the Cuban Adjustment Act): The number of refugees granted permanent residency (a green card) is expected to be minimized, particularly between FY 2016 and FY 2021. Refugees regularly apply and are granted permanent residency (a green card) once. one year after their arrival in the U. S. , meaning the number of permanent citizens is delayed by a year or more. Annual refugee admissions are decided through the president, according to press reports, in fact, White House senior adviser Stephen Miller has personally decided the number of refugees admitted each year.
For fiscal year 2020, the Trump administration set an annual cap on refugees 84% lower than in the last year of the Obama administration (from 110,000 to 18,000), and as of July 17, 2020, they had only arrived in the U. S. 7,848 refugees in 2020. Fiscal year 2020.
Many refugees who “fled violent regimes” have resettled in Maine, reports Maria Sacchetti of the Washington Post. “Workers at a red-brick factory called American Roots had to decide, in the middle of a pandemic, whether to go back to work. Instead of the same knitted sweatshirts and caps, they would “produce masks for frontline staff against the novel coronavirus,” according to Sacchetti. “Or they would just take the safer route: stay home and get unemployment. Almost all were immigrants [including refugees] from Africa or the Middle East, and staff said none of them flinched when they piled up at the factory that March morning. They all voted to continue sewing.
In its statistics, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) includes Cubans paroled into the United States who after waiting a year (or more) applied for and received permanent residence under the Cuban Adjustment Act. New Trump administration policies that affect Cubans and the continuation of certain Obama-era practices have reduced Cuban numbers.
Asylum seekers: Like refugees, asylum seekers get a permanent apartment a year or more after approval. The Trump administration has barred Central Americans from seeking asylum at the border and made many other adjustments that are expected to reduce the number of approved asylum seekers. year.
Family preferences: The April 22, 2020, presidential proclamation to “suspend” immigrant access seemed designed to prevent adult children and siblings of U. S. citizens, as well as spouses, minor children, and unmarried adult children of lawful permanent citizens from immigrating to the United States. About 94% of sponsored Americans in the family circle preference categories will have to enter the U. S. It is important for the U. S. to immigrate (rather than adjust its prestige nationally). While the April proclamation virtually barrs new immigrants from accessing the preference classes of the family circle, the public workplace rule, if enforced, would also prevent many other people from obtaining permanent residency.
The suspension will most likely continue indefinitely if Trump is re-elected, unless a ruling declares the proclamation illegal. The American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Justice Action Center, and the Innovation Law Lab recently filed a lawsuit opposing the proclamation on behalf of 23 Americans and organizations. Among the plaintiffs is Nazif Alam, a lawful permanent resident of the United States, who is unable to bring his wife from Bangladesh because of the proclamation. Alam works in the food retail industry in New York City, a task that has become high-risk but imperative due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Employment-Based Preferences: “A spillover of unused numbers from FY 2020 family-based preferences will be used for the employment-based category in FY 2021 up to the highest recent level of adjustments of status, which was approximately 220,000 in FY 2005,” according to the National Foundation for American Policy analysis. “However, it is possible U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will not achieve that level of processing and legal immigration in FY 2021 will be lower, particularly given the financial difficulties experienced by USCIS.”
Diversity Visas: The Diversity Visa category, a target of the Trump administration, will be zeroed out so long as the suspension on new immigrants continues. WBUR highlighted the stories of Diversity immigrants unable to come to America because of the April 22, 2020, proclamation, including Katia Karslidi, a writer and LGBTQ activist from Russia, and Mahmoud, an Egyptian accountant, who said, “The reason I’m chasing this dream, I don’t think it’s just me, it’s like everybody around the world is applying for the program because they believe the U.S. is the greatest nation.”
As the election approaches, the Trump administration, under the guise of “merit-based” immigration, appears poised to take additional steps to reduce immigration. Currently, H-1B visa holders and many close family members of U. S. citizens come to the United States. In addition to damaged dreams, if sustained, those policies will slow U. S. economic growth, meaning Americans will be far poorer than if those policies had never been implemented.