Business Elites Complain: Trump Making It Harder to Import Foreign Workers

The business lobby, corporate executives, and economists complain that President Donald Trump’s precautions to protect American workers are making it more difficult to readily import foreign workers to take U.S. jobs.

The latest New York Times report serves as a grievance letter for the big business lobby that claims the Trump administration is preventing their efforts to easily import thousands of foreign workers every year to take coveted, high-skilled American jobs.

The Times reports:

In practice, businesses say the increased red tape has made it harder to secure employment-based visas. That has added to the difficulty of finding qualified workers with the unemployment rate falling to 3.9 percent. [Emphasis added]

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Experts say a sustained reduction in immigration could dampen growth over time as more baby boomers retire, leaving big gaps in the job market.

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The Business Roundtable, a group of corporate leaders, recently challenged the Trump administration over changes that it says threaten the livelihoods of thousands of skilled foreign workers, and economic growth and competitiveness. [Emphasis added]

Every year, more than 100,000 foreign workers are brought to the U.S. on the H-1B visa and are allowed to stay for up to six years. That number has ballooned to potentially hundreds of thousands each year as universities and non-profits are exempt from the cap. With more people entering the U.S. through the visa, Americans are often replaced and forced to train their foreign replacements.

The New York Times did not interview any American workers who had been laid off and forced to train their H-1B visa foreign replacements.