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As climate change accelerates, theres also a strong argument to be made for developed countries to increase their migrant intake on the grounds of environmental justice. Ecological collapse, the product of developed-world industrialization, will hit those in poorer countries hardest. For centuries, Europe and the United States plundered these countries, and now their reward is impending obliteration by the ecological distortions that the rich worlds self-interest has unleashed. In addition to aid and other channels of economic assistance, significantly higher immigration intakes are one effective way for the developed world to discharge the moral obligation that this chain of cause and effect creates. This seems especially urgent at a time when those displaced by environmental degradation still have no formal refugee status under international law.

And yet. Despite the obvious benefits, these are not hospitable times for immigration across the developed world. Inspired by the Great Replacementinflected thinking of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbn, several countries in Eastern Europe are pulling up the drawbridge to foreign migrants, their dim demographic prospects notwithstanding. Even in nations with a healthy immigration intake today, the story is not much happier, and migrants continue to attract a xenophobic backlash. In some of these countries, such as the United States, nativists have ascended to the highest chambers of power. But even in those societies run by less nakedly reactionary governments, the dog whistle and the assimilationist value-grab remain sturdy tools of everyday policymaking. Theres a hypocrisy at the heart of immigration policy in the West today. On the one hand, immigrants are seen as useful agents of growth; on the other, immigrant-bashing is now a reliable vote winner. Openness to migrants is justified and encouraged as a matter of policy, in order to boost a countrys demographic and economic prospects, but the demands of electoral politics simultaneously require that openness to be undercut. Its not quite the case that democracy dictates that immigrantsmustbe demonized, but all too often short-term electoralism means they are.

Shedding immigration policy of its xenophobic skin is especially hard when it comes to climate change, since environmental destruction has long been associated, in the popular political imagination, with the libidinous, foreign Other. Indeed, theres a direct line connecting the thinking of post-Malthus populationists and those who oppose immigration in the developed world today. More important to the history of U.S. policy formulation than EhrlichsThe Population Bombwas a pamphlet of the same title published in 1954, 14 years before Ehrlichs book, by Dixie Cup co-founder Hugh Moore. Moores pamphlet paralleled the Eisenhower administrations approach to international aid policy at a time when the Unites States major concern was to limit the spread of communism. Containing population growth in the global southa place to be exploited for its natural resources and cheap labor but feared for its fecund and potentially Marxist billionsbecame a major priority for U.S. administrations during the Cold War. When an adviser to Lyndon Johnson suggested increasing relief to India in advance of a visit by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Johnson replied, Are you out of your fucking mind? Im not going to piss away foreign aid in nations where they refuse to deal with their own population problems. Before long, the international development community had joined this misguided effort to tie aid to reproductive suppression. The full horror of postwar population control measuresforced sterilization, infanticide, the state invasion of womens bodies, whole countries left demographically distorted for generations to comerested on this basic, orientalizing notion: The real danger to social order, not just globally but also at home, came from the irresponsible, untrustworthy foreigner incapable of controlling basic human urges.

This is to say nothing of the more general historical links between environmentalism and race science, which are plentiful. Californias Save the Redwoods League was founded in 1918 by eugenicists who explicitly linked the protection of the environment with the preservation of racial purity. In 1974, Garrett Hardin, a eugenicist and self-styled human ecologist, published Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor, in which he compared the United States to a lifeboat with little space to spare and argued that admitting more people would cause everyone to drown. World food banks move food to the people, hastening the exhaustion of the environment of the poor countries. Unrestricted immigration, on the other hand, moves people to the food, thus speeding up the destruction of the environment of the rich countries. Hardins anti-immigration environmentalism paralleled the U.S. governments campaign against undocumented workers from Mexico. By the late 1970s, environmental policy scholar Robert Gottlieb has written, population control was becoming synonymous with efforts to control the flow of Mexican migrants. The heirs to Hardins xenophobic brand of environmentalism today are organizations like the Center for Immigration Studies and the Federation for American Immigration Reform, both of which continue to push the line that curbing immigration will help reduce carbon emissions. The United States is not the only country where powerful interests employ a veneer of environmental concern to decorate the caravan of bigotry. In Australia, for example, a loose coalition of electronics store owners, ecologists, mining profiteers, and parliamentarians (with some overlap between these categories) has assembled to push the agenda for a smaller, whiter country. The Hardinesque slogan critics have mockingly tarred them with: Fuck off, were full.

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Making Life Cheap - The New Republic

Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, speaks in front of the U.S. Supreme Court during the 47th annual March for Life in Washington Jan. 24. (CNS/Gregory A. Shemitz, Long Island Catholic)

April saw the rapid spread of efforts by the Trump campaign to mobilize U.S. Catholics in the push to reelect President Donald Trump. Bookending the month were the April 2 online launch of the Catholics for Trump coalition and an April 25 conference call with Trump and over 600 people, including New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan and several Catholic leaders.

Dolan spent much of the next couple weeks warding off criticism including from NCR over his uncritical praise of President Trump on that call. But it was the earlier event, the Catholics for Trump launch, that centrally featured another New Yorker, a familiar face to Catholics, especially those active in pro-life circles, and someone whose praise of Donald Trump over the last four years has been not only uncritical but rhapsodic: Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life.

Pavone, 61, is no stranger to controversy. His rhetoric and tactics through the years have drawn criticism, and his leadership of Priests for Life an operation that earned about $13.2 million in total revenue in both 2016 and 2017, according to to Form 990 tax documents for those years has brought him into conflict with U.S. bishops (including Dolan). In 2016, he appeared in a livestreamed video in which he placed the body of an aborted fetus on an altar, a move that drew condemnation from Catholics over his treatment of human remains. The video, urging opposition to candidate Hillary Clinton in that year's presidential election, embodied the core of Pavone's decadeslong activism, which, politics aside, he distills down to four words: "You don't kill babies."

Pavone now does frequent webcasts from his Florida-based national headquarters, with Trump's photo often visible in the shot. "We're doing something that I think the church wants to do, which is to speak the teachings and the value of the church into the world of politics," Pavone told NCR. Seeing the Trump campaign from the inside, he paints a picture that belies the outward chaos of Trump himself. "They're so well organized," he said of his involvement with the campaign and its aggressive outreach to various coalitions, including pro-lifers and Catholics.

The admiration is mutual, as the Trump campaign recognizes what an asset Pavone is. Mercedes Schlapp, senior advisor for strategic communications, said in a comment relayed via email, "Through his steadfast pro-life advocacy and outpouring of support for the Catholic community, Father Pavone remains one of President Trump's most meaningful allies."

Pavone's advocacy for Trump is nothing new, having enthusiastically endorsed Trump's 2016 bid for the White House. The visual pairing of the Roman collar and the red "Make America Great Again" hat make him virtually a mascot for Catholics casting their lot with the man who is now president. But this posture is also a source of concern for Catholics and pro-lifers alike, who cite major disconnects between the church's witness in the public square and Pavone's embrace of Trump.

"I'm quite sure his heart is in the right place. And he's got the right views on the central question," said Charles Camosy, an associate professor of theology at Fordham University, via email. "But it is hard to quantify just how badly the pro-life movement has been damaged by uniting so uncritically to Trump. At least in the long term. And Father Pavone is at the heart of that."

Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, speaks during a prayer and protest rally outside of the new Planned Parenthood building in Washington Jan. 21, 2016, the day before the annual March for Life. (CNS/Lisa Johnston, St. Louis Review)

Man of the movement

Pavone is a native of Port Chester, New York, a village in Westchester County bordering Connecticut. He recounts his earliest recollections of political engagement as playing out in his childhood, as he and his younger brother tuned in the national party conventions of the '70s and the Watergate proceedings. In the seminary, he attended the worship service of a different non-Catholic denomination each weekend, driven by an ecumenical sensibility that he believes prepared him well for his work in pro-life circles. According to Pavone, the pastor of the Baptist church in his hometown even invited him to preach at her Good Friday service one year, a liturgy attended by several of Pavone's fellow seminarians. She would later attend his first Mass.

Pavone was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of New York in 1988 by Cardinal John O'Connor a longtime and vocal proponent of the pro-life movement. An early turning point in Pavone's own advocacy for the unborn occurred when Fr. Lee Kaylor,founder of Priests for Life,asked himto take overthe organization a couple years after its founding in 1991. After transferring to the Diocese of Amarillo, Texas, with the intention offounding an orderof priests, Pavone found himself in conflict withtwo successive bishops Bishop John Yanta,who shut down the order in 2007, and Bishop Patrick Zurek,who in 2011forbade Pavone from traveling outside the diocese following a conflict over the financial transparency of Priests for Life. A subsequent Vatican-mandated restructuring of Priests for Life overseen by Cardinal Dolan, who asked the organization to undergo a forensic audit and establish an independent board,ended in 2014, when Dolan wrote to the U.S. bishops, declaring, "I am unable to fulfill [the Vatican's] mandate, and want nothing further to do with the organization."

Pavone insisted to NCR that he has deep respect for the hierarchy and that church structures and functions have been abused to disparage him. The New York Archdiocese and the Amarillo Diocese did not respond to inquiries for this story. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops declined a request for comment. And following anApril profile by Catholic News Agencyinquiring whether Pavone was still a priest in good standing in Amarillo or elsewhere, Pavone sent the outlet an email that read, in part, "The Congregation for Clergy, after a thorough investigation, has declared that I am a priest in good standing. Whoever denies this, in any manner and in any forum, will be called to respond before the competent civil and canonical authorities." The Congregation for Clergy also did not respond to inquiries from NCR.

Despite this bruising history, Pavone still enjoys some unlikely allies, particularly in the pro-life movement, where he is regarded, however improbably, as a bridge builder. Terrisa Bukovinac, founder and executive director of the group Pro-Life San Francisco, is a self-described leftist, atheist, feminist pro-lifer, the kind of "whole life" activist whose approach to say nothing of background would seem at odds with Pavone's.

"We cannot win a social justice movement without people power," said Bukovinac. "Unity is required, and Father Frank knows that, 100 percent. He has put this on the line his entire career, and he will not give up." Bukovinac notes that even attaching himself to Trump "makes perfect sense" to her. "He's using Trump as a way to gain unprecedented interest in this topic."

Herb Geraghty, an atheist who espouses Cardinal Bernardin's "seamless garment" ethic through his work as director of outreach for the organization Rehumanize International, first encountered Pavone as the priest offering an unexpectedly warm welcome to him as a board member of the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians.

"We're coming at the issues from all angles," Geraghty noted of the diversity of the movement, adding that he considers Pavone a friend and colleague who has done good work for babies and "people like me." Pavone likewise considers Bukovinac and Geraghty friends with whom he would be more at ease sitting and conversing with than he would with many bishops. And, he adds, his willingness to seek out diverse voices and work alongside the LGBTQ community puts him, in this regard, to the left of much of the hierarchy.

"The more things you require people to agree on if they're going to accomplish a common task, the fewer people you're going to have. The fewer things you require them to agree on and the more focused laser focused your purpose is, the broader and more diverse is going to be the group of people you get together to do that one thing," Pavone told NCR.

Screenshot of a YouTube video featuring Fr. Frank Pavone during a livestream May 4 (NCR photo/https://youtu.be/utDfsjZ1bNE)

Going full MAGA

This laser focus comes into play with the Trump campaign, where Pavone has made opposition to legal abortion the determining factor as to whether a candidate is anathema or unassailable. The embrace of Trump is one that Pavone's allies liken to the concession another pro-lifer or Catholic might make, for instance, in partnering with someone who supports Planned Parenthood while working on immigration reform.

But Camosy,who publicly leftthe Democratic Party because of its support for legal abortion, says there's no comparison.

"Pavone isn't cooperating on this or that issue with Trump and the GOP while keeping critical distance in other ways. For instance, he absorbed and defended the child separation policy at the border ... even when the USCCB itself has criticized it and called it a pro-life issue. That's just one example," Camosy said.

But Pavone doesn't see it that way,tweeting last July 19: "So much political hypocrisy when people complain about 'family separation' but fail to point out that if someone is breaking the law, being separated from their family is not the fault of those enforcing the law but of those who broke it! #Immigration #Catholic #KeepAmericaGreat."

Caravans of migrants from Latin America are another immigration-related issue that have led Pavone to embrace the rhetoric of Trump.

"Honest to God, I am really getting sick and tired of these caravans. What in the world is this? Just come and push your way into the country? And all of this just happening by itself?" Pavone tweeted on Jan. 15, 2019, going on to thank Trump for standing "against the un-American #Democrat party. #MAGA."

Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, speaks in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington Oct. 1, 2019, after a petition with more than 250,000 signatures calling for Roe v. Wade to be overturned was presented to the court. (CNS/Tyler Orsburn)

On their shared appreciation for brashness and shock value, via Twitter or otherwise, Pavone said he hears people say in conversation, "Father Frank is bringing into the church world what Donald Trump has brought into politics."

Not everyone in the pro-life movement or the church welcomes this point.

"I have very major disagreements with Father Frank," said Geraghty, who suspects that his friend's vocal support is about feeding the president's ego. And, through it all, "I know he's doing that because he supports the unborn. I am willing to work with him on things other than electing President Trump."

Camosy is less accommodating: "His uncritical support of Trump even using Trump's vile language and euphemisms makes the very people we need to convince to join us to protect and support vulnerable human life dramatically less likely to do so."

Cathleen Kaveny, a theology and law professor of Boston College, regards Pavone as "an increasingly marginal figure" in the church and notes that extreme rhetoric, in the tradition of a Fr. Charles Coughlin, tends "to shore up people who are already a narrow group of true believers. And those people tend to give money." She added, "I don't think they're all supporting Trump for pro-life reasons," citing anti-immigrant and economic policies.

Pavone places his policy advocacy squarely along the divide of whether a Catholic moral principle allows for legitimate disagreement in its policy application here he cites poverty and immigration or if a principle that is itself the policy, which is how he frames defense of unborn life. But Kaveny says this dichotomy isn't reflective of what Pope St. John Paul II was trying to accomplish with his 1995 encyclicalEvangelium Vitae("The Gospel of Life"), a text Pavone claims is foundational in his work.

"There wasn't a whole lot of difference between Bernardin" and John Paul's thought, Kaveny said, noting that the pope was trying to move perceptions of abortion from the realm of personal sin to a social ethic. "That program got hijacked" by the culture wars, Kaveny added. "There was a convergence in Catholic teaching that got ripped apart by American politics."

Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, and Alveda King, director of African-American outreach at Priests for Life and niece of late civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., pose in the Freedom Ride Bus in Birmingham, Alabama, in this April 26, 2010, file photo. (CNS/Priests for Life)

Gains vs. costs

A quarter century later, a Latin American pope has spent his pontificate speaking out on behalf of migrants, raising care for the environment to unprecedented moral weight and even explicitly warning against the allure of strongmen who exploit societal unrest by pinning blame on a "non-neighbor." Yet Pavone is unequivocal in his support for both Trump the man and the policy gains under this administration.

"It's the Emmaus experience: 'Were not our hearts burning within us as he spoke to us?' President Trump accomplishes that," Pavone told NCR, citing Trump as an inspirational speaker when he speaks about the greatness of America. "We're not going to be taken advantage of anymore I mean, that's a Catholic value! And he talks about it in the way that American people are talking about it in their living rooms."

John Gehring, contributor to NCR and Catholic program director at Faith in Public Life, a progressive advocacy group in Washington, notes that this is not an articulation of Catholic values: "Trump's ugly nativism and nationalist policies are radically out of step with a Catholic understanding of the global common good," Gehring said. "The entire construct of 'America First' is anathema to how Catholic teaching asks us to see our interconnectedness as people and as an international community. It's also a reactionary ideology with roots in white nationalism. You can try and defend that as a Republican if you want, but not as a Catholic."

But as with much of the U.S. political debate and Catholics, Pavone cites abortion, particularly an exchange on late-term abortion in the third 2016 presidential debate with Hillary Clinton, as a turning point in the narrative. Trumpsaid in that exchange: "Now, you can say that that is OK and Hillary can say that that is OK, but it's not OK with me."

"Well that's exactly what the average pro-life American is thinking," Pavone told NCR, adding that Trump has since done "everything in his executive power to take money away from the abortion industry, especially money that was coming out of our pockets."

This has included, he notes, expanding theMexico City Policy,forcing Planned Parenthood outof Title X, strengthening the ability of states to funnel money away from abortion, more robust enforcement of protections in law for those who don't want to work in abortion, stopping internal government funding for fetal tissue research and promoting ethical review for would-be government contractors who might conduct fetal tissue research.

For Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa, founder of the pro-life organization New Wave Feminists, this list is unpersuasive because of how the alignment with Trump sets back the decadeslong struggle to undo perceptions of the pro-life movement as being anti-woman.

"It is not a mindset we're going to change by aligning with someone who degrades women," she said. "I have not seen Trump do anything that actually makes it easier for women to choose life." Herndon-De La Rosa grew up Protestant and was horrified, during the 2016 campaign, to see the people who'd instilled her the moral values in her turn to Trump as a savior figure. The ensuing crisis of faith has led her to self-identify as agnostic.

Herdon-De La Rosa, whose organization was disinvited from the first Women's March in 2017 over their pro-life stance, draws a comparison to aging feminists who turned a blind eye to former president Bill Clinton's misdeeds in their desire to elect Hillary Clinton as a woman president in their lifetimes.

"I think the same thing happened for a lot of pro-lifers, where they're older, they've been saying since 1973 that 'Roe is not going to survive me. I'm going to be part of overturning this,' " she said. "Now you're locked into this very bad decision, and you're going down with this ship."

Conversely, Pavone sees the choice to support Trump as existential. "If he weren't where he is, we wouldn't be where we are, because he literally saved us from incurring crippling fines from our own government fines that we would have incurred for living out the demands of our faith," he said, in reference to the Department of Health and Human Services' contraceptive mandate put in place by the Obama administration. "It was only the election of the president that took that mandate away, and I don't think Catholics can afford to forget this."

Steven Millies, associate professor of public theology and director of the Bernardin Center at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, calls this rationale a perverse caricature. "I would not be cheerful for a bishop to be persuaded that he should hold any political position bearing on the rights of other Americans who do not share our faith only because of his diocese's bottom line," Millies said.

And where Pavone sees alliance with Trump protecting the church's institutional well-being, others cite concern for the long-term well-being of the pro-life movement. Herndon-De La Rosa sees him and other pro-lifers engaged in a strategy that aims for the lowest possible bar zero-sum policy gains for the unborn that don't foster a wider culture of life.

"It's the only thing they could imagine doing," she said. "I don't think he's a horrible monster. I think he's somebody who's fought a very good fight for years, and it has made him a bit unhinged and fanatical when it comes to the unborn. Which I don't think is a bad thing. I think that we should all be a bit fanatical when it comes to defending human life inside the womb."

[Don Clemmer is a former staffer of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He writes from Indiana and edits Cross Roads magazine for the Catholic Diocese of Lexington. Follow him on Twitter:@clemmer_don.]

Read the original:
'Catholics for Trump' puts Fr. Frank Pavone back in the spotlight - National Catholic Reporter

President TrumpDonald John TrumpSusan Rice says she would 'certainly say yes' to be Biden's VP Jim Jordan requests documents from Pompeo regarding Hunter Biden, Burisma Graham rebuffs Trump over Obama testimony: 'It would be a bad precedent' MORE has essentially closed the immigration system in response to the COVID-19 crisis with few exceptions for some guest workers. However, many people in the administration and some Republicans in Congress want to close off even those few exceptions because of the coronarecession. The president will not reopen the rest of the immigration system until the threat from the virus has subsided. When that occurs, reopening immigration will provide a good opportunity for needed reform but new ideas are needed.

The Cato Institute has just released a new white paper called 12 New Immigration Ideas for the 21st Century on how to improve the legal immigration system. Many of the ideas are wonky and written by experts in immigration policy while some are written by knowledgeable outsiders thinking way outside of the box.

We need new innovative immigration reform ideas because Congress has tried to reform immigration for decades using the same playbook that has failed repeatedly. Immigration reform bills in the past seek to improve enforcement, legalize illegal immigrants, and increases lawful immigration. The last of those is the most important and the focus of the Cato white paper. Without a well-functioning legal system that is open and fair, the cornerstones of a legitimate system, improved enforcement and legalization wont work.

Weve tried legalization and enforcement before in the 1986 Reagan amnesty and illegal immigration shot up afterwards because there was no improvement to the legal system that allowed more lawful immigration. Creating better and more open legal immigration pathways is the only way to reduce illegal immigration substantially and create a sense of fairness and predictability in our complex immigration system that is second only to the Internal Revenue Code in complexity, according to Rutgers law professor Elizabeth Hull.

Reopening immigration after COVID-19 diminishes is a golden opportunity to try some of these new ideas.

Most of these ideas are just common sense. Daniel Griswold of the Mercatus Center proposes tying the growth of employment based visas to growth in the most relevant sectors of the U.S. labor force to assure that the annual number of visas available more closely matches the demands of the U.S. economy as it changes. The H-1B visas numbers, with a few years exception around the time of the tech bubble bursting, has had the same small numerical cap as when the internet was a weird curiosity rather than an everyday tool for billions of people. Griswolds proposal would solve this problem by automating visa adjustments.

Stuart Anderson, the former associate commissioner for policy and planning and counselor to the commissioner at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, recommends a maximum wait time for green cards. Currently, wait times for some highly-skilled immigrants seeking the coveted employment-based green card can stretch into decades or even longer. Nobody thinks such insanely-long wait times are fair. Anderson would replace that system with a maximum wait time of five years for employment-based green cards and 10 years for family-sponsored green cards. This is a fair and common-sense way to give American employers, immigrants and their American family members some certainly and predictability.

Griswolds and Andersons ideas are important tweaks that would improve the current immigration system, but the white paper also improves bigger and more far reaching proposals. Economist Michael Clemens from the Center for Global Development proposes a bilateral temporary worker agreement with Mexicosomething that hasnt been attempted in over half a century. Michelangelo Landgrave, a political science doctoral candidate at the University of California, Riverside, proposes a similar arrangement with Canada. He finds that support for immigration rises substantially when Americans get the opportunity to work in Canada and vice versa.

My Cato colleague David Bier proposes creating a state-based visa that allowed states to design temporary worker systems to suit their needs, a policy favored by politicians in red and blue states. Jack Graham and Rebekah Smith propose a more micro-version of state-based visas focusing on local community sponsorship. George Mason political scientist Justin Gest proposes using big data to create a money ball visa that selected the best immigrants on their economic potential and cultural compatibility and entrepreneur and philanthropist Steve Kuhn proposes selling temporary work permits.

We even included some more ambitious proposals that would fundamentally change how the United States government manages immigration. Nathan Smith, a PhD economist working in Arkansas, proposes a scheme where immigrants can come here and work so long as they pay much higher taxes. Grover Norquist, founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, proposes that each member of Congress should be allowed to handout 100 green cards a year to whomever they like if they pass the security, criminal and health checks. Norquists idea is very similar to how congressmen currently nominate constituents for admission to U.S. military academies.

George Mason economist Robin Hanson proposes two more radical ideas. His first is to use the power of prediction markets, where people bet on certain outcomes, to select immigrants. His second is to allow Americans to trade residency status or citizenship with foreigners. Many Americans want to work and live overseas for a short period of time, so why not let them rent their residency status and work authorization to interested foreigners who will then take their place here? Both sides would win.

Some of the ideas above are moderate adjustments to the current system. Many would create new visa categories entirely. Still others are a more radical rethinking of how the immigration system can be redesigned to benefit Americans. Some of these ideas will undoubtedly make policy makers consider new options and others will make them recoil, but putting new ideas out there for discussion and debate is an important goal of Catos new white paper. Regardless, Congress should take up some of these ideas and use the post-COVID reopening of the immigration system to reform it.

Alex Nowrasteh is the senior immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute.

Read more here:
Immigration reform after COVID-19 | TheHill - The Hill

1 U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Gross Domestic Product [GDP], Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, accessed February 9, 2020, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP.

2 Stuart Anderson, The World Has Changed since 1990, U.S. Immigration Policy Has Not, National Foundation for American Policy Policy Brief, September 2015.

3 Daniel Griswold and Jack Salmon, Attracting Global Talent to Ensure America Is First in Innovation, Mercatus Center at George Mason University Policy Brief, March 2019.

4 David Bier, Immigration Wait Times from Quotas Have Doubled: Green Card Backlogs Are Long, Growing, and Inequitable, Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 873, June 18, 2019.

5 Daniel Griswold, Reforming the US Immigration System to Promote Growth (Arlington, VA: Mercatus Center at George Mason University, October 2017).

6 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Characteristics of H-1B Specialty Occupation Workers: Fiscal Year 2017 Annual Report to Congress October 1, 2016September 30, 2017 (Washington: Department of Homeland Security, April 9, 2018).

7 EmploymentBased Immigration, Senate Republican Policy Committee, February 6, 2018, https://www.rpc.senate.gov/policy-papers/employment-based-immigration.

8 Establishment Data: Table B1a. Employees on Nonfarm Payrolls by Industry Sector and Selected Industry Detail, Seasonally Adjusted, Employment and Earnings Table B1a, Current Employment StatisticsCES (National), Bureau of Labor Statistics, last modified February 7, 2020. Professional and technical services is CES ID 60540000.

9 Establishment Data: Table B1a. Architectural and engineering services is CES ID 60541300, and Computer systems design and related services is CES ID 60541500.

10 As an alternative to official employment data compiled by the government, the escalator could be indexed to more timely employment indicators generated in the private sector, such as the number of job vacancies scraped from relevant employment websites.

11 The proposed adjustment and escalator mechanism could also be applied to temporary work visas for lowerskilled workers, such as the H-2A and H-2B visa categories. But demand for those visas also reflects the decreasing supply of nativeborn workers who are available to fill those jobs and thus the demand is not as closely tied to the employment numbers in the relevant categories.

12 Jake Ulick, Nasdaq Off 20% This Year: Another Day, Another Tech SellOff, This Time Amid Chip Stock Downgrades, CNNMoney, October 10, 2000.

13 Neil G. Ruiz, Key Facts about the U.S. H-1B Visa Program, Fact Tank, Pew Research Center, April 27, 2017.

14 For an overview of commission proposals, see American Council on International Personnel, Examining Proposals to Create aNew Commission on EmploymentBased Immigration, June 2009.

15 Daniel Costa, Future Flows and Worker Rights in S. 744 (Washington: Economic Policy Institute, November 12, 2013).

16 For an overview of commission proposals, see American Council on International Personnel, Examining Proposals to Create aNew Commission on EmploymentBased Immigration.

17 8U.S.C. 1151(b)(2)(A)(i).

18 8U.S.C. 1152(a).

19 Business Roundtable, State of Immigration: How the United States Stacks Up in the Global Talent Competition (Washington: Business Roundtable, March 2015).

20 Reuniting Families Act, H.R. 4944, 115th Cong. (2018).

21 Stuart Anderson, Bill Aims to End DecadesLong Waits for HighSkilled Immigrants, Forbes, February 15, 2019; and David Bier, 150Year Wait for Indian Immigrants with Advanced Degrees, Cato at Liberty (blog), June 8, 2018.

22 Fairness for HighSkilled Immigrants Act of 2019, H.R. 1044, 116th Cong. (2019).

23 David Bier, Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act: Wait Times and Green Card Grants, Cato at Liberty (blog), September 30, 2019.

24 Department of State, National Visa Center, Annual Report of Immigrant Visa Applicants in the FamilySponsored and EmploymentBased Preferences Registered at the National Visa Center as of November 1, 2019, 2019.

25 Charles Wheeler, Backlogs in FamilyBased Immigration: Shedding Light on the Numbers, Catholic Legal Immigration Network, last updated March 1, 2019.

26 David Bier, Immigration Wait Times from Quotas Have Doubled: Green Card Backlogs Are Long, Growing, and Inequitable, Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 873, June 18, 2019.

27 Office of Immigration Statistics, 2017 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics (Washington: Department of Homeland Security, July 2019), 2024.

28 Anderson, Bill Aims to End DecadesLong Waits.

29 Michael A. Clemens, Carlos Gutierrez, and Ernesto Zedillo, Shared Border, Shared Future: ABlueprint to Regulate USMexico Labor Mobility (Washington: Center for Global Development, 2016).

30 Giovanni Peri makes aversion of this proposal. Giovanni Peri, Rationalizing U.S. Immigration Policy: Reforms for Simplicity, Fairness, and Economic Growth, Discussion Paper 2012-01, The Hamilton Project, Brookings Institution, May 2012.

31 Giovanni Peri and Chad Sparber, Task Specialization, Immigration, and Wages, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 1, no. 3 (July 2009): 13569; and Julie L. Hotchkiss, Myriam QuispeAgnoli, and Fernando RiosAvila, The Wage Impact of Undocumented Workers: Evidence from Administrative Data, Southern Economic Journal 81, no. 4 (April 2015): 874906.

32 Giovanni Peri, The Effect of Immigration on Productivity: Evidence from U.S. States, Review of Economics and Statistics 94, no. 1 (February 2012): 34858; and Ethan Lewis and Giovanni Peri, Immigration and the Economy of Cities and Regions, in Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, vol. 5 (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2015), pp. 62585. This occurred both through encouraging capital formation and by raising total factor productivitythe collective productivity of all inputs to production, including both capital and labor, through changes in the technology and organization of production; Andri Chassamboulli and Giovanni Peri, The Labor Market Effects of Reducing the Number of Illegal Immigrants, Review of Economic Dynamics 18, no. 4 (October 2015): 792821.

33 Michael A. Clemens and Kate Gough, Can Regular Migration Channels Reduce Irregular Migration? Lessons for Europe from the United States, Center for Global Development Brief, February 2018.

34 Ana GonzalezBarrera and Jens Manuel Krogstad, What We Know about Illegal Immigration from Mexico, FactTank, Pew Research Center, June 28, 2019.

35 Allison OConnor, Jeanne Batalova, and Jessica Bolter, Central American Immigrants in the United States, Migration Information Source, Migration Policy Institute, August 15, 2019.

36 Jens Hainmueller and Daniel J. Hopkins, Public Attitudes toward Immigration, Annual Review of Political Science 17, no. 1 (May 2014): 22627.

37 Jeff R. Clark et al., Does Immigration Impact Institutions?, Public Choice 163, no. 3 (June 2015): 32135; and Benjamin Powell, Jeff R. Clark, and Alex Nowrasteh, Does Mass Immigration Destroy Institutions? 1990s Israel as aNatural Experiment, Journal of Economic Behavior &Organization 141, (September 2017): 8395.

38 Timothy B. Gravelle, Partisanship, Border Proximity, and Canadian Attitudes toward North American Integration, International Journal of Public Opinion Research 26, no. 4 (Winter 2014): 45374.

39 Other extant free movement agreements include the Nordic Pass Union and the British Isles Common Travel Area.

40 Alessandra Casella and Adam B. Cox, A Property Rights Approach to Temporary Work Visas, The Journal of Legal Studies 47, no. S1 (January 2018): S21214.

41 B. Lindsay Lowell and Johanna Avato, The Wages of Skilled Temporary Migrants: Effects of Visa Pathways and Job Portability, International Migration 52, no. 3 (September 2013): 8598.

42 Matthew Goodwin and Caitlin Milazzo, Taking Back Control? Investigating the Role of Immigration in the 2016 Vote for Brexit, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 19, no. 3 (2017): 45064; Sofia Vasilopoulou, UK Euroscepticism and the Brexit Referendum, The Political Quarterly 87, no. 2 (AprilJune 2016): 21927; and Italo Colantone and Piero Stanig, Global Competition and Brexit, American Political Science Review 112, no. 2 (May 2018): 20118.

43 David M. Rankin, Borderline Interest or Identity? American and Canadian Opinion on the North American Free Trade Agreement, Comparative Politics 36, no. 3 (April 2004): 33151.

44 Connor Huff and Dustin Tingley, Who Are These People? Evaluating the Demographic Characteristics and Political Preferences of MTurk Survey Respondents, Research &Politics 2, no. 3 (July 2015); Kevin J. Mullinix et al., The Generalizability of Survey Experiments, Journal of Experimental Political Science 2, no. 2 (Winter 2015): 10938; Scott Clifford, Ryan M. Jewell, and Philip D. Waggoner, Are Samples Drawn from Mechanical Turk Valid for Research on Political Ideology?, Research &Politics 2, no. 4 (October 2015); and Antonio A. Arechar, Simon Gchter, and Lucas Molleman, Conducting Interactive Experiments Online, Experimental Economics 21, no. 1 (March 2018): 99131.

45 This sample size is adequate for evaluating nationwide opinion, but caution should be used when interpreting regional variations.

46 Question wording: Would you support allowing Canadian citizens to [live, but not work / live and work] in the United States indefinitely? Canadians would [not have / have] access to American welfare programs. [-blank / In exchange, American citizens would receive reciprocal treatment in Canada.] Answer wording: Iwould support this policy / Iwould not support this policy.

47 Twotailed; pvalue 0.05.

48 ATN visa classification also exists for Mexican citizens, but its requirements are significantly stricter.

49 TN NAFTA Professionals, Temporary Workers, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, last updated March 7, 2017, https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers/tn-nafta-professionals.

50 This essay is largely based on David Bier, StateSponsored Visas: New Bill Lets States Invite Foreign Workers, Entrepreneurs, and Investors, Cato Institute Immigration Research and Policy Brief no. 2, May 11, 2017.

51 Nonimmigrant Classes, 8C.F.R. 214.2(h)(2) (2019).

52 Nonimmigrant Classes, 8C.F.R. 214 (2019).

53 David Bier, Do Guest Workers Overstay? Not Often, Niskanen Center, March 12, 2015.

54 Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Evaluation of the Provincial Nominee Program, September 2011.

55 Facts &Figures 2015: Immigration OverviewPermanent ResidentsAnnual IRCC Updates, Government of Canada, last modified May 3, 2017.

56 Brandon Fuller and Sean Rust, StateBased Visas: AFederalist Approach to Reforming U.S. Immigration Policy, Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 748, April 23, 2014; Subclass 188: Business Innovation and Investment (Provisional) Visa, Department of Home Affairs, Australian Government, last updated March 5, 2020, https://www.border.gov.au/Trav/Visa-1/188-; Subclass 187: Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme Visa, Department of Home Affairs, Australian Government, last updated March 5, 2020, https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/getting-a-visa/visa-listing/regional-sponsor-migration-scheme-187; Subclass 190: Skilled Nominated Visa, Department of Home Affairs, Australian Government, last updated March 5, 2020, https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/getting-a-visa/visa-listing/skilled-nominated-190; Subclass 489: Skilled Regional (Provisional) Visa, Department of Home Affairs, Australian Government, last updated March 5, 2020, https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/getting-a-visa/visa-listing/skilled-regional-provisional-489; and Australian State Sponsored Visa: SkilledNominated (Provisional) Visa (subclass 489), Australian Visa Bureau.

57 Department of Immigration and Border Protection, 201516 Migration Programme Report, Australian Government, June 30, 2016, p. 11.

58 Roslyn Cameron, Responding to Australias Regional Skill Shortages through Regional Skilled Migration, Journal of Economic and Social Policy 14, no. 3 (2011): 4.

59 Permanent ResidentAd Hoc IRCC (Specialized Datasets), Government of Canada, last modified March 3, 2018; and Overseas Arrivals and Departures, Department of Home Affairs, Australian Government, last updated February 26, 2020.

60 Congress specifically preserved such authority for the States , Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting, 563 U.S. 582, 60001 (2011).

61 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, EB-5 Adjudications Policy, PM-6020083, May 30, 2013; Conrad 30 Waiver Program, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; Mark Spivey, Report: Rural Health aTarget for Harm by Trump Travel Ban, RAC Monitor, February 8, 2017; and About the SEVIS Help Hub, Study in the States, Department of Homeland Security, last updated January 25, 2018.

62 Liz Robbins, CUNY Schools to Lure Foreign Entrepreneurs with New Visa Program, New York Times, February 17, 2016; The Global Entrepreneur in Residence (GEIR) Program, Innovation Institute, MassTech Collaborative, accessed March 10, 2020, https://innovation.masstech.org/projects-and-initiatives/global-entrepreneur-residence-pilot-program; and Colorado Law, The University of Colorado Global Entrepreneurs in Residence Pilot Program, University of Colorado Boulder, https://siliconflatirons.org/documents/newsletters/EIR%20Flyer.pdf.

63 Dirk Hegen, State Laws Related to Immigrants and Immigration (Washington: National Conference of State Legislatures, July 24, 2008); and Kirk Siegler, Three Years On, Utahs Immigrant Guest Worker Law Still Stalled, NPR, July 31, 2014.

64 S.J.R. 12, 2011 Gen. Sess. (Ut. 2011); H.B. 469, 2011 Gen. Sess. (Ut. 2011); H.B. 466, 2011 Gen. Sess. (Ut. 2011); and H.B. 116, 100 Gen. Sess. (Ut. 2011).

65 Dirk Hegen, 2007 Enacted State Legislation Related to Immigrants and Immigration (Washington: National Conference of State Legislatures, January 31, 2008); Kansas Seeks Waiver for Undocumented Workers to Solve Farm Crisis, Fox News, last updated December 23, 2016; S.R. 715, 151st Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess. (Ga. 2012); and Monica Davey, Immigrants Seen as Way to Refill Detroit Ranks, New York Times, January 23, 2014.

66 Jon Johnson, Konopnickis Guest Worker Bill Passes Committee, Eastern Arizona Courier, February 20, 2008; and Alex Nowrasteh, Immigration Reform: Let the States Lead the Way, oped, Los Angeles Times, June 16, 2015.

67 NewsOn6.com and Wire Reports, Oklahoma State Senator Plans to Propose Guest Worker Program Bill, News 9, December 14, 2012; H.B. 3735, 84th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Tx. 2015); and S.B. 14, 50th Leg., 2nd Sess. (Nm. 2012).

68 Regional Data, Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce, accessed March 11, 2020, https://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?reqid=70&step=1&isuri=1&acrdn=2#reqid=70&step=1&isuri=1.

69 Local Area Unemployment Statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor.

70 David Rogers, Senate Passes $787 Billion Stimulus Bill, Politico, updated February 16, 2009.

71 American Farm Bureau Federation, Statement by Bob Stallman, President, American Farm Bureau Federation, Regarding Final H2A Rule, ImmigratonWorks USA, February 12, 2010.

72 Occupational Employment Statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor.

73 Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor, ForeignBorn Workers: Labor Force Characteristics2015, news release no. USDL-160989, May 19, 2016, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/forbrn_05192016.pdf.

74 Bureau of Labor Statistics, Major Industries with Highest Employment, by State, 19902015, TED: The Economics Daily, Department of Labor, August 5, 2016.

75 Jeffrey S. Passel and DVera Cohn, Size of U.S. Unauthorized Immigrant Workforce Stable after the Great Recession, Pew Research Center, November 3, 2016; and Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor, Labor Force Characteristics2015.

76 State Sponsored Visa Pilot Program Act of 2017, S. 1040, 115th Cong. (2017); and State Sponsored Visa Pilot Program Act of 2019, H.R. 5174, 116th Cong. (2019).

77 Elizabeth Fussell, Warmth of the Welcome: Attitudes toward Immigrants and Immigration Policy in the United States, Annual Review of Sociology 40 (July 2014): 47998; and Chris Lawton and Robert Ackrill, Hard Evidence: How Areas with Low Immigration Voted Mainly for Brexit, The Conversation, July 8, 2016.

78 Michael A. Clemens, Global Skill Partnerships: AProposal for Technical Training in aMobile World, IZA Journal of Labor Policy 4, no. 2 (January 2015).

79 Michael Clemens, Claudio Montenegro, and Lant Pritchett, Bounding the Price Equivalent of Migration Barriers, Center for Global Development Working Paper no. 428, June 2016.

80 Ronald Brownstein, Places with the Fewest Immigrants Push Back Hardest against Immigration, CNN, August 22, 2017.

81 Jonathan Woetzel et al., People on the Move: Global Migrations Impact and Opportunity (McKinsey Global Institute, December 2016); and Florence Jaumotte, Ksenia Koloskova, and Sweta Saxena, Migrants Bring Economic Benefits for Advanced Economies, IMFBlog, October 24, 2016.

82 Ricardo Gambetta and Zivile Gedrimaite, Municipal Innovations in Immigrant Integration: 20 Cities, 20 Good Practices, American Cities Series (Washington: National League of Cities, Municipal Action for Immigrant Integration, 2010).

83 Xi Huang and Cathy Yang Liu, Welcoming Cities: Immigration Policy at the Local Government Level, Urban Affairs Review 54, no. 1 (2018): 332.

84 Griff Witte, Trump Gave States the Power to Ban Refugees. Conservative Utah Wants More of Them, Washington Post, December 2, 2019.

85 Who We Are, About, Welcoming America, accessed February 17, 2020, https://www.welcomingamerica.org/about/who-we-are.

86 Huang and Yang Liu, Welcoming Cities.

87 Sponsor aRefugee, Government of Canada, last modified December 3, 2019, https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/refugees/help-outside-canada/private-sponsorship-program.html.

88 Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada, Rapid Impact Evaluation of the Syrian Refugee Initiative, December 2016.

89 Subclass 489: Skilled Regional (Provisional) Visa, Department of Home Affairs, Australian Government, last updated March 5, 2020, https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/getting-a-visa/visa-listing/skilled-regional-provisional-489.

90 Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot: About the Pilot, Government of Canada, last modified January 14, 2020, https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada/rural-northern-immigration-pilot.html.

91 Chae Chan Ping v. United States, 130 U.S. 581, 603 (1889).

92 R. Eric Petersen and Sarah J. Eckman, Congressional Nominations to U.S. Service Academies: An Overview and Resources for Outreach and Management (Washington: Congressional Research Service, 2017), pp. 1, 9, 18.

93 Trump v. Hawaii, 585 U.S. ___ (2018).

94 Dan Mangan, Trump Calls for MeritBased Immigration System in Address to Congress, CNBC Markets, February 27, 2017, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/28/trump-calls-for-merit-based-immigration-system-in-congress-speech.html.

95 Harriet Duleep and Mark Regets, FamilyFriendly and HumanCapitalBased Immigration Policy, IZA World of Labor 389 (October 2017).

96 Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (New York: W. W. Norton &Co., 2003).

97 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration (Washington: The National Academies Press, 2017); and National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Integration of Immigrants into American Society (Washington: The National Academies Press, 2015).

98 Immigration and Nationality Act, 8U.S.C. 1182(a)(9)(B) (2012).

99 Michelangelo Landgrave and Alex Nowrasteh, Criminal Immigrants in 2017: Their Numbers, Demographics, and Countries of Origin, Cato Institute Immigration Research and Policy Brief no. 11, March 4, 2019.

100 This essay and planks are partly based on The IDEAL Immigration Policy, IDEAL Immigration, https://www.idealimmigration.us/policy.

Excerpt from:
12 New Immigration Ideas for the 21st Century - Cato Institute

Like millions of American workers, an Indian software engineer, a British market researcher and an Iranian architect lost their jobs amid the coronavirus pandemic. Unlike Americans, they are not entitled to unemployment benefits, despite paying taxes, because they are on foreign work visas. And, if they fail to find similar jobs soon, they must leave the country.

Rejish Ravindran analyzed data for a national footwear retailer, helping make sales projections and investment decisions. After hiring him on an H-1B skilled-worker visa nearly two years ago, the company recently sponsored his application for legal permanent residency, a process that takes several years to complete.

It was going good. I thought I would be in Michigan forever. We were going to buy a house and settle down here, said Mr. Ravindran, 35, who lives in Grand Rapids, Mich. His wife, Amrutha, a nurse, was finishing a course and hoped to put her training to use soon.

But battered by the coronavirus outbreak, the retailer furloughed Mr. Ravindran last month, which is not allowed under the terms of his visa. So two days later, the company terminated him.

Everything came crashing down, said Mr. Ravindran, who arrived in the United States in 2012.

Now, he is scrambling to find another job before the 60-day grace period for transferring his visa to another employer expires early next month. He is not optimistic.

The lives of tens of thousands of foreign workers on skilled-worker visas, such as H-1Bs, have been upended by the economic fallout from the Covid-19 crisis. Many have been waiting in a backlog for several years to obtain permanent legal residency through their employer, and now face the prospect of deportation.

The Trump administration is also expected within the next few weeks to halt the issuance of new work visas such as the H-1B, for high skilled foreigners, and the H-2B, for seasonal employment. The new measures under review, according to two current and two former government immigration officials, would also eliminate a program that enables foreign graduates of American universities to remain in the country and work.

The tightening work rules come as unemployment in the U.S. soared last month to 14.7 percent, the highest level on record, and as calls escalated in Congress for Americans to be given priority for jobs.

Given the extreme lack of available jobs for American job-seekers as portions of our economy begin to reopen, it defies common sense to admit additional foreign guest workers to compete for such limited employment, a group of Republican senators said in a letter last week calling for a suspension of new visas to guest workers who have not yet entered the country.

For those already rooted in the U.S., the consequences of canceling the existing visas are life-altering, said Shev Dalal-Dheini, director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

They have been thrown into limbo. Its not like they can go and just find any job, like at a pizza place, Ms. Dalal-Dheini said. A new job must meet specific criteria for the visa, such as by paying a certain salary and requiring at least a bachelors degree.

Ms. Dalal-Dheinis association of 15,000 lawyers has asked United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to extend the grace period, giving H-1B holders at least 90 days after the public health emergency has ended to find employment.

An agency spokesman did not address whether an extension was under consideration. He said the agency would continue to monitor the coronavirus and assess various options related to temporary worker programs.

Since taking office, President Trump has thrust immigration and job displacement onto center stage, introducing a series of policies to curtail both legal and illegal immigration. More recently, his administration has cited the pandemic to justify even stricter restrictions.

On April 22, Mr. Trump suspended the entry of new immigrants for 60 days. Less noticed in his proclamation was the order to the secretaries of labor and homeland security for a speedy review of nonimmigrant work visa programs.

There are about 500,000 people on H-1B visas in the United States, according to estimates by Daniel Costa, a researcher at the Economic Policy Institute. More than 70 percent of them are Indians, and many of them technology workers. About 220,000 people were enrolled in the 2018-19 academic year in the Optional Practical Training program, which allows foreign students to work after completing their studies.

The strong economy had fueled brisk demand for foreign workers in recent years, with H-1B applications by private companies far outstripping the annual supply of 85,000, a situation that prompted the government to resort to a lottery to award them.

But proponents of limiting immigration say that if there was ever a time to prioritize American workers, it is now.

If an H-1B visa holder is terminated from their job and is unable to find another employer willing to sponsor them, they should go back home, said Kevin Lynn, executive director of Progressives for Immigration Reform, which advocates for American technology workers.

American citizens with foreign partners on visas are also affected.

Andrew Jenkins and Krista York of Minnesota began more than a year ago to plan their wedding. The couple had settled on getting married Aug. 22 at the majestic Cathedral of St. Paul, where Ms. Yorks grandparents were married decades ago and she was confirmed in the church as a teenager. Then the coronavirus struck.

Ms. York was furloughed. Mr. Jenkins, who is British, lost his job as a market research analyst. Because he is on an H-1B visa, Mr. Jenkins is not eligible for unemployment. Its far from ideal to not have any income when youre planning your wedding, said Mr. Jenkins, 27.

Whats worse, the couple said, is that Mr. Jenkins is in a race against time to find him another job before his visa expires in July.

Unless he succeeds, they may have to hurriedly get married at a courthouse so that Mr. Jenkins can salvage his immigrant status by filing an application for a green card through a spouse. If that happens, the couple will not be allowed to hold a religious ceremony at the cathedral.

Everything is ready to go for the cathedral. But if we have to get married on paper, well have to find another church, said Ms. York, 27.

Bahar Shirkhanloo of Iran completed a masters degree in architecture two years ago and used the Optional Practical Training program to get a job at a firm in Chicago, where she is part of a team that designs high-rise residential buildings.

Early this year, the firm decided to sponsor her for a green card. But she was abruptly terminated in early April when projects came to a standstill, leaving her with 60 days, under the terms of the program, to find a new job.

Im applying every day, everywhere in the U.S. you can think of, said Ms. Shirkhanloo, 28. Most often, she hears the same thing: They are interested, but, for now, theres a hiring freeze.

In Michigan, Mr. Ravindran is contemplating selling his 2013 Honda Accord to make the rent and pay outstanding bills, including $6,000 for a hospital visit by his wife last year.

The son of a tea stall owner and the first to attend college in his family, the software engineer said that if he ends up having to return to India, I want to clear all my debts. I need to make a smooth exit from the U.S.

But there is a wrinkle: Commercial flights to India have been suspended since that country went into lockdown in March. While the government recently started repatriating some Indians stranded abroad, it has stipulated that pregnant women, older people and those with medical conditions will have priority.

That could put someone like Mr. Ravindran at risk of overstaying his visa, which could jeopardize his ability to live in the United States in the future.

If I dont find a new job, I cant stay here, he said.

See the original post here:
Immigrants on H-1B and Other Work Visas May Face Deportation - The New York Times