Cuts to Skilled Immigration Degrade a U.S. Strength

The battle over tariffs may indicate that President Donald Trump has moved on from the immigration issue. When Democrats stymied Trump’s plans to curtail family-reunification immigration, the chances of major legislation dropped substantially. But that doesn’t mean that Trump is having no effect on immigration. Through a combination of executive actions and rhetoric, the president is deterring exactly the kind of immigrants that the U.S. most critically needs to keep its economy running.

Since coming into office, Trump has been making life harder for skilled foreigners working in the U.S. Trump temporarily suspended premium processing of H-1B visas, one of the main visas skilled workers use to enter the country. The only possible reason for that move was to harass visa applicants. Trump’s administration has also made it harder to give the visas to entry-level computer programmers, and increased its scrutiny of companies that hire workers on H-1Bs. As a result, the pace of H-1B approvals showed signs of slowing last year.