“I will be issuing a temporary suspension of immigration into the United States,” Trump said during a White House briefing Tuesday. “By pausing, 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.”
Senior White House officials and attorneys met Tuesday to sort out the logistics and legal implications of President Trump’s late-night Twitter proclamation that he would freeze immigration to the United States, a move that came with little indication of who the U.S. government would bar from entry amid the coronavirus outbreak. Trump said the executive order was still being written as of Tuesday night.
“It’s being written now,” Trump said, noting that attorneys were still working through the final details. “We’ll most likely sign it tomorrow.”
After 60 days, the need for modification will be evaluated “based on economic conditions” in the country, Trump said, conditions that he would personally assess.
“We want to protect U.S. workers as we move forward,” Trump said. He noted that “some people will be able to get in. There will be some people coming in. But it’s a strong order. It involves a big circle.”
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The president also said the suspension “will help to conserve vital medical resources.”
Trump will sign the executive order as soon as Wednesday, once legal reviews are complete, according to an administration official with knowledge of the plans.
Other aides said privately that the president had once more announced a sweeping policy that was not yet ready for implementation, and his administration was trying to piece together an executive order for him to sign that would catch up to his whim.
Trump announced the immigration suspension at Tuesday evening’s coronavirus briefing, and the order is expected to exempt some categories of nonimmigrant visas, including temporary workers, according to officials with knowledge of the draft.
The president has broad authority to restrict entry into the United States — a point the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed in upholding his controversial travel ban in 2018 — and that power is perhaps no greater than during a public health emergency. State Department officials said they are still waiting for guidance from the White House regarding what types of immigrant visas will be suspended.
Immigrant visas are issued for those who intend to move permanently to the United States. The majority are family members of U.S. citizens or permanent residents.
Some immigrant visas also are granted to those who have jobs waiting for them, including nurses planning to work at hospitals. A smaller number of special immigrant visas are granted for a variety of foreigners, including religious ministers, and Iraqis and Afghans who worked for the U.S. government.
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The United States already has suspended routine visa services overseas, so very few applicants are likely to be stopped just before they board a plane.
Though the policy move has been presented as a way to protect the United States from foreign instances of the coronavirus, the outbreak is well-established across the country and has been for more than a month. The United States currently has more confirmed coronavirus cases, by far, than any other country, with nearly 800,000 as of Tuesday afternoon. The next highest country is Spain, with 204,000 cases. The United States also has far more confirmed virus-related deaths — nearly 45,000 — than any other nation and about the same number as the next two countries — Spain and Italy — combined.
Immigrants from countries such as England, Ireland, Mexico, South Korea and Canada deluged their lawyers with panicked emails Tuesday, worrying that Trump’s tweet will upend their jobs, college studies or efforts to bring their loved ones to the United States. Some have paid tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to secure their legal papers, and waited years for their approvals.
Juan Ramirez, a 41-year-old restaurant cook in Virginia, said he was planning to visit the U.S. Consulate in his native Mexico soon for a final interview and background checks required to secure his green card. His wife, a U.S. citizen, is sponsoring him. But now the consulates are shuttered and he is afraid that if he leaves the country, the U.S. government will not let him back in.
He has a college degree in information technology from Mexico and dreamed of building a career, buying a house and starting a family this year.
“I’m scared of this,” Ramirez said. “I don’t know how it’s going to affect me.”
Greg Siskind, a Memphis immigration lawyer, said Trump’s plans could derail efforts to restart the economy by alienating foreign students, who often pay full tuition at colleges and universities, as well as foreign investors and seasonal workers who keep farms and tourist attractions humming.
William Kerr, a Harvard Business School professor whose research focuses on how high-skilled immigrant labor has reshaped the U.S. economy, said closing off the pipeline for foreign talent could create barriers to economic success.
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Selee, of the Migration Policy Institute, said governments have good reasons for reducing immigration during times of economic crisis and high unemployment, or easing restrictions during boom times to extend periods of growth.
“Governments typically try to find nuanced solutions to limit or expand immigration,” he said. “What you don’t see is governments doing blanket stops.”
Much of the U.S. immigration system is driven by domestic demand, experts note: U.S. citizens and residents marry foreigners, or they seek to bring parents, children and other relatives into the country. Companies hire employees to staff hard-to-fill and high-skill jobs. Universities bring in students, professors and athletes.
All of those migration categories would be affected by the type of sweeping order the president has teased.
On Tuesday, the president’s reelection campaign sent out a snap poll to supporters asking whether they approved of his executive order, even suggesting that Trump would be influenced by their degree of support as the policy was being crafted. “Your input is crucial to the President’s next steps,” the message read.
Trump has remained focused on immigration, the border with Mexico and his push to build a border wall there, inserting, unprompted, updates on construction into the daily coronavirus task force briefings.
On Monday, as the head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, finished briefing reporters on efforts to build temporary hospital facilities, Trump urged the military commander to tell reporters about his border wall project. When the general finished, reporters resumed asking questions about the pandemic.
The Trump administration is preparing in coming days to debut a “border wall cam,” an initiative of Jared Kushner’s, that will stream images of construction crews building the structure, according to two administration officials involved in the project.
The camera feed will be carried on the website of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the officials said, and could include footage from multiple locations. One official involved in the planning said the feed will have a time delay to avoid tipping off smuggling organizations to the whereabouts of U.S. Border Patrol agents or their absence.
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