Executive order on immigration moratorium fails to protect American jobs

Can President Trump and the GOP salvage something from the wreck of his immigration moratorium proposal? Though the details were a bitter disappointment, it may be yet turn out to be a milestone rather than a millstone. Trump officials now say that what’s in place now is only the beginning. A growing number of Republican lawmakers demand that he expand it. And Trump’s base, including the conservative commentariat, is angry. But none of this guarantees Trump will beef his Executive Order up, so immigration patriots on and off Capitol Hill must deliver a strong message.

Trump’s immigration ban excludes ‘temporary workers’ , New York Post, March 22, 2020:

President Trump appears to have backed down from his vow to temporarily suspend all immigration into the US amid the coronavirus pandemic, opting instead to temporarily halt the issuing of green cards and keep guest worker programs in place.

The revised move comes in the form of an executive order being drafted by the Department of Homeland Security, Politico reports.

How Many Immigrants Would Be Impacted by the Trump Executive Order?, FAIR, April, 2020:

The contours of this program are not yet fully known. Predictably, the mainstream media coverage has focused on potential inconvenience to foreign nationals who wish to immigrate here....

The contours of this program are not yet fully known. Predictably, the mainstream media coverage has focused on potential inconvenience to foreign nationals who wish to immigrate here. That commentary has been accompanied by wildly divergent estimates regarding how many foreign nationals might be affected.

Depending on how the moratorium is implemented the number of green card applications that are ultimately impacted could range any where from roughly 5,000-80,000. However, even using the high-end estimate that's less than ten percent of the one million people granted lawful permanent residence in the U.S. each year. And this is only a temporary delay in the review and adjudication of those applications. In the near future, the U.S. will again begin issuing green cards.

There is a larger number of temporary visa applicants who could be nominally affected by any pause in the review and adjudication of immigration applications. However, since air, land and marine travel across U.S. borders is virtually shut down anyway, it's difficult to say whether these folks will even notice a temporary pause in the processing of their visa applications....

Piercing Illusion of Trump's 'Immigration Ban', Michelle Malkin, Unz Review, April 23, 2020.

President Trump’s Go-Kart Executive Order on Immigration - President Trump’s Immigration executive order falls woefully short, but he has 30 days to make things right. American Greatness, April 28, 2020: "American workers are counting on administration officials and the president himself to quit placating business interests and make things right. The clock is ticking."

America Has a Jared Kushner Problem, by Pedro Gonzalez, American Greatness, April 24, 2020:

If President Donald Trump is serious about draining the swamp, he ought to start with his son-in-law, Jared Kushner....

Sources familiar with the situation told the Spectator that Kushner “is one of the loudest voices pushing back on a full ban and is seeking to carve out exemptions for refugees, temporary workers under the H1B visa program, and farmworkers under the H-2A visa program.”

If that’s true, then Kushner achieved a total victory.

The ban applies only to those seeking legal residency. It therefore misses the mark because, as Jessica Vaughn of the Center for Immigration Studies explains, “there will be only a modest impact since 60% of green card applicants are already here (80% of employment category is already here).” In other words, the ban applies to the only group of foreign nationals who are not coming to the United States specifically to take a job, while making exemptions for H1B, H2A, and H2B visas. Trump’s immigration proclamation actually exempts some of the largest sources of immigration and specifically economic categories which negatively affect jobs and wages for American workers.

The ban actually hurts American job prospects and wages, while putting on a cheap labor parade for big business. Worse yet, as Vaughn notes, the ban declares EB-5 entries “essential,” effectively pulling out the brakes on the already thoroughly bad program.

The president’s supporters may rightly wonder if they voted for Kushner or Trump at this point.

“In every republic,” wrote Machiavelli, “there are two parties, that of the nobles and that of the people.” The former “have a great desire to dominate, whilst the latter have only the wish to not be dominated, and consequently a greater desire to live in the enjoyment of liberty.”

For many Americans, President Trump appeared to have broken rank with the “nobles” and descended his golden escalator to lend a hand to the people. Whether that is entirely true or not is up for debate. What is certain, however, is that his son-in-law remains aligned with the acquisitive, globe-trotting class whose schemes dominate the course of American political life and the lives of the little people who swab the floors of their high-rises.

Trump’s greatest weakness now is his inability to recognize that Kushner is the leader of a faction within the White House whose interests come at the expense of the very people who voted for him.

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Executive order on immigration moratorium fails to protect American jobs