Former President Donald Trump’s focus on the border and his ongoing vow to launch the biggest “domestic deportation operation” have dominated the political discourse on immigration this election cycle. But legal immigration is also in play in a potential second Trump term, with the announcement of some drastic cuts to foreign workers.
Trump’s record on immigration, as well as his playbook of proposals called Project 2025 — spearheaded by the conservative Heritage Foundation with input from former Trump administration officials — offer a good idea of what could be in store for noncitizens who have come into the U.S. or are trying to come through legal means.
During his administration, Trump made it harder for foreign-born workers to enter the U.S. on visas or as refugees. Under his watch, visa denials and extensions shot up and refugee admissions were slashed.
Without renewed visas, some U.S. businesses lost employees who had to leave when their work permits expired. Also, far fewer green cards were issued to people not already in the U.S., according to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that advocates for expanding legal immigration.
“What we saw last time, you would see again, but likely on steroids the next time around,” said Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan think tank on trade and immigration.
Policy and regulation changes under Trump, combined with the pandemic, led to a reduction in the U.S. foreign workforce, resulting in a significant decrease in the growth of the gross domestic product, economist Madeline Zavodny wrote in a policy brief for the foundation.
Zavodny said that between 2016 and 2022 the GDP growth fell, but, had the foreign-born, working-age population continued to grow, the GDP would have been about $335 billion larger than it was. The foreign worker slowdown began before Covid, but was exacerbated by it, she wrote.
“A slower-growing working-age…
Read the full article here
