US-INDIA GLOBAL REVIEW JUL-SEP 2020

17 US-INDIA GLOBAL REVIEW JULY-SEPTEMBER 2020 20,000 people who come to the United States annually as au pairs to provide child care for families. Julie M. Weise, a historian at the University of Oregon, who is at work on a global history of post-WWII temporary labor migrants, writing in The Washington Post, pointed out that H-2A or "guest worker" visas, availed by farm workers mostly, will remain largely unaffected. So far this year, the Trump adminis- tration is approving H-2A visas at a rate 15 percent faster than last year, and it took steps to make it easier for farmers to hire tempo- rary farmworkers even after the pandemic began. Trump’s decision to suspend work visas for now is one that even the Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden seems to have accepted as common sense. He hasn’t responded to any of the legal immigration restrictions com- ing from the White House. One of the staunchest anti-immigration lawmakers, is in fact, one of the senior most Democratic lawmak- ers, Sen. Dick Durbin, from Illinois, who has been rooting for immigra- tion reforms. The US jobless rate skyrocket- ed in the past three months, peak- ing at nearly 15 percent in April and standing at 13.3 percent in May. That is the highest level since the Great Depression and a nearly fourfold increase since February, when the rate was 3.5 percent, reported the New York Times. While pro-immigration advo- cates may cry foul, at the heart of the issue is also that even as many companies in America, and elsewhere globally, are exploring doing away with office space, and expanding remote work from home, it would be political hara- kiri for Trump to have brought in at least 85,000 new foreign workers this fall to fill in office spaces which perhaps don’t exist any- more, or might not in the near future. Trump’s decision will go down with majority of Americans, regardless of political stripe. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll published last month found that 65% of Americans support a temporary halt on nearly all immigration dur- ing the pandemic, with 34% opposed. Republicans and inde- pendents support such restrictions by a wide margin, the poll found, while Democrats were split, according to a Post report. Mark Krikorian, whose Center for Immigration Studies has urged the Trump administration for years to adopt such restrictions, called Trump's order "a significant victory over corporate interests." Krikorian and others in the GOP who favor such restrictions have long argued that guest work- er programs displace U.S. workers and drive down their wages. They have been battling other Republicans for control of the party's immigration platform. "This is a victory for the immi- gration hawks within in the White House," Krikorian said. "Maybe it took the pandemic to help them overcome the pressure from lob- byists to keep the cheap labor coming." A Vox report noted that lawmak- ers in both parties agree that work visas shouldn’t displace American workers. It noted that Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys consistently receive more H-1Bs than even the largest US tech companies. Also, reports of companies like Disney, Southern California Edison and Abbott Labs, among others who laid off US workers and replaced them with H-1B workers, and in some cases, even ordering the US workers to train their replacements, made national news, and didn’t find support from Americans. Trump’s decision has a down- side to it, though, with more job losses on the home front because of the visa suspensions. About 15,000 Homeland Security Department employees were to receive reduction-in-force notices, warning them of upcom- ing furloughs in July if Congress does not provide emergency fund- ing, reported Govexec.com. Officials at USCIS, a fee-funded agency, told employees last month that a significant drop off in appli- cation receipts due to the novel coronavirus pandemic has led to an unexpected loss in revenue, potentially leaving the agency unable to meet payroll. USCIS is asking Congress for a $1.2 billion cash injection to help offset the losses and permission for a 10% increase its fees to reimburse the appropriation. Visa processing at US con- sulates abroad already has plunged, even before the new sus- pension. Last month, the United States granted just more than 40,000 nonimmigrant visas, down from 670,000 in January. Sujeet Rajan is Executive Editor | Parikh Worldwide Media, based in New York. Email him: sujeet@newsindiatimes.com