IN THE FINAL weeks of his campaign, speaking to a “town hall” hosted by Univision, a Spanish-language television network, Donald Trump made a point he doesn’t make very often. Asked about the need for immigrant workers, he replied: “We want workers, and we want them to come in.” The problem, he said, was
illegal immigration. “I want them in even more than you do,” he said. “And we’re going to make it so that people can come into our country legally.”
Is it a promise he can make good on? Some in Mr Trump’s camp hope so. In September Elon Musk, a South African-born American whose firms employ many foreign engineers, posted on his website X that “the legal immigration process in America needs to be greatly streamlined and expanded.” Yet immigration lawyers fear the opposite. They report they have already had a flood of calls from nervous visa-holders worrying about what it means for their ability to stay in America. One reason why is that on November 11th the president-elect announced his intention to appoint Stephen Miller, one of his long-standing advisers, to be his deputy chief of policy. Mr Miller says that America should be “for Americans only”.
In his 2016 campaign Mr Trump promised to create a “big beautiful door” for legal immigration. But in fact, his administration—largely under the direction of Mr Miller, who served in a similar role then—quietly ground sand in the gears of the machine that issues visas and work permits. “They created an invisible wall,” says Dimo Michailov, a prominent immigration lawyer based in Washington, DC. Denial rates for key work visas, such as the H1B (which allows foreigners with degrees or equivalent specialist skills to take jobs in America) and the L1 (which allows multinational companies to post workers to America) rose. So too did “requests for evidence”, where applicants are required to provide lengthy documentation to prove they qualify.
From 2016 to 2019, average wait times rose by 46%, according to analysis by the American Immigration Lawyers Association, an industry group. It was “more red tape, more paperwork, more interviews”, says Julia Gelatt of the Migration Policy Institute, a think-tank. Total legal immigration did not in fact fall much until the pandemic, she notes—lawyers worked out how to navigate the new rules and the total number of work visas issued plateaued. But it got costlier and slower.
Under Joe Biden, the government has slowly ungummed the system. It has, for example, lessened scrutiny for visa renewals, instead of treating them like new applications, and waived the requirement for interviews in many cases. These sorts of policies seem likely to be undone. “I kind of have a presumption that anything the Biden administration did they’ll try to rip out every little vestige of,” says David Bier, of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank. That could mean, for example, the spouses of H1B-holders being denied the right to work entirely, and those of L1-holders being made to apply for work permits. Graduates of American universities, who currently get to work in America for up to three years, depending on their degree, may see that right curtailed. More people converting to green cards (permanent residency) either from work visas or through family ties could be required to be interviewed.
The immigrants with the most to fear are Indians and Chinese nationals. Since 1991 there has been a cap on the number of employment-based green cards that can be issued to citizens of any one country. Indians and Chinese disproportionately arrive in America by studying at American universities and then taking jobs on graduation, but thanks to the cap only a vanishingly small share can hope to ever get permanent residency. Instead many stay stuck on nominally temporary visas even as they build lives. Should someone with an H1B lose their job, they have just 60 days to find a new qualifying one before having to leave the country (a grace period Mr Trump could cut). Having a child who is an American citizen offers no protection to a parent, and their non-American children lose their right to stay when they become adults. Longer waits and tighter renewals could force many such long-term residents to leave.
Jules, a Chinese-born corporate lawyer who has lived in America since arriving as an exchange student at high school, says that during the last Trump administration one of her visa renewals was delayed for two years. She was able to carry on working but she could not travel abroad while she waited for a decision. “It’s been so traumatic, I am kind of numb about it,” she says. With Mr Trump’s re-election, she is looking at whether she might be able to get permanent residency elsewhere. For her and others, America was first, but Canada or Australia may be second.
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