www.washingtontimes.com President Trump unleashed American workers to begin the coronavirus recovery Monday, announcing a series of immigration moves that will block hundreds of thousands of new foreign workers the rest of this year and push businesses to offer better pay to those that do come in the future.
Defying the Washington consensus that has long supported higher immigration, the White House said Mr. Trump is instead betting on American workers.
Mr. Trump will issue a proclamation tripling the size of his immigration pause, blocking what aides said is more than 525,000 foreign workers who otherwise would have entered over the next six months, and preserving those spaces for Americans.
His administration also announced a new regulation that will block most of those who come to the U.S. illegally from getting work permits while they apply for asylum or make other pleas for special treatment. Currently, they can apply for work permits while cases are pending, which Trump aides said creates an incentive to game the system.
The president also directed his administration to pursue new regulations to raise salaries for H-1B workers and to tighten the rules so Americans can’t be replaced with cheaper foreigners doing the same job.
“The point here is to put American workers first when businesses are rehiring,” Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary at Homeland Security, told The Washington Times.
Activists called it a historic moment, saying no president in modern times has so closely linked an economic recovery to immigration policy.
