The White House issued the eagerly awaited proclamation today that laid out who cannot come to the US after a tweet created a national and international anxious frenzy. In sum, the following types of immigrants cannot enter the US for 60 days:
- Parents of US citizens,
- Siblings of US citizens,
- Children over 21 and/married
- Employment-based green card recipients – EXCEPT for those with EB5 visas (the expensive $900k (previously $500k) investors).
The proclamation is not to stop the spreading of Covid-19 but to protect the labor market, because the above types of green card holders can work in the “open market’- as claims the proclamation.
In reality, embassies have been closed for over a month and given the current global situation, embassies are likely remain closed for some time still. Therefore, the 60 days delay would likely have happened anyway.
But stopping the above people from entering, particularly the family-based visa holders will not stop the economy from entering a recession. Immigrants are known to be creative and hardworking. Statistics show that a large percentage of startup founders and job creators are immigrants. Is this the time we want job creators?
And when employment-based green card holders enter the US, they are supposed to work at the company that sponsored them. Therefore, they cannot be working in the open-market.
To me, this is essentially a vehicle to create much fear in the community, to pander to Trump’s base and to ensure the EB5 interests in which this administration’s top leaders are involved, remain in tact.
This will not stop people from losing their jobs, or help get new ones, and it will certainly not stop the spread of covid-19.
What we must watch out for though, is that the proclamation buys the administration 30 days to potentially create actual problems with non-immigrant visas such as H1Bs. .And that there could potentially be an extension of the 60 days in incremental measures.
The good news is that the concerns that many of us had are now subsided and visa holders (except for the above) can enter freely (but for the previous bans based on countries). And there is no suspension of filing cases as usual. Anyone with a pending case outside the US should expect delays, but not necessarily denials based on this. And cases filed within the US remain processing as usual (with covid-19 delays, of course).
More to come.