By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
New tightened requirements for the United States H-1B visa are expected to be swept aside when Joe Biden assumes office as president, based on his campaign promise to reform immigration, and remove blockages to the Green Card and other visa categories.
He pledges to eliminate the country-quota for the Green Card that enables a holder to live and work in the U.S. permanently.
He does not support Medicare for all, nor is he keen on the Green New Deal, both issues being pushed by the left, but he underlines climate change and has pledged $2 trillion to tackle it – a departure from the denials and filibusters of President Donald Trump.
Biden acknowledges that, in all of its history, America’s greatness was and continues to be built on the ingenuity of immigrants from all over the world, which he says should be appreciated and encouraged, himself being from a family of Irish immigrants.
In contrast, Trump has blocked nearly all paths to legal immigration, although he is a mere second generation American himself compared with those who had been in the country long before he was born.
Both his grandfather and grandmother emigrated from Germany to the U.S. His father was born in the U.S. but his mother was an immigrant from Scotland.
Trump’s shameless hypocrisy about immigrants and his racism towards them is further buttressed by the fact his wife, Melania, is also an immigrant from Slovenia.
In the new rules announced on October 7, Trump built on the executive order he signed in April erecting barriers to getting the popular non-immigrant H-1B visa widely used by tech firms to fill labour shortages in the U.S.
Biden promises to carry out extensive immigration and visa system reform that ensures fairness to all, including protection for Dreamers – children brought to the country by immigrant parents.
Plan for the environment
He plans to spend $2 trillion over four years to escalate the use of clean energy in the transportation, electricity and building sectors, part of a suite of sweeping proposals designed to create economic opportunities and strengthen infrastructure while also tackling climate change.
He says he wants to revive the economy in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, with a new focus on enhancing infrastructure and emphasising the importance of significantly cutting fossil fuel emissions.
The economic proposal – made in a speech in Wilmington, Delaware on July 14, reported by The New York Times – is the second plank in his economic recovery plan.
Trump has struggled throughout his tenure to deliver on his pledges to pay for major improvements to American infrastructure.
Biden signals that he grasps the urgency of global climate challenges while also casting the issue as the next great test of American ingenuity.
But he staunchly opposes a range of progressives’ top priorities: He does not support “Medicare for all” or defunding the police, he has not fully endorsed the Green New Deal and has reservations about marijuana legalisation.
His record on issues like criminal justice has drawn fierce criticism from the left, and some in his party view his reverence for bipartisan deal-making as naïve.
His plan outlines specific and aggressive targets, including achieving an emissions-free power sector by 2035 and upgrading four million buildings over four years to meet the highest standards for energy efficiency.
In the speech, he offered a vision for “new, clean, made-in-America vehicles” to be made more accessible to American consumers as well.
He also pressed the need to link environmental advocacy to racial justice, describing pollution and other toxic harms that disproportionately affect communities of colour.
His plan calls for establishing an office of environmental and climate justice at the Justice Department and developing a broad set of tools to address how “environmental policy decisions of the past have failed communities of colour.”
Biden set a goal for disadvantaged communities to receive 40 percent of all clean energy and infrastructure benefits he was proposing. He also made explicit references to tribal communities and called for expanding broadband access to tribal lands.
His original plan called for spending $1.7 trillion over 10 years with a goal of achieving net-zero emissions before 2050. The new blueprint significantly increases the amount of money and accelerates the timetable.
To pay for it, campaign officials said, Biden proposes an increase in the corporate income tax rate to 28 percent from 21 percent, “asking the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share,” and using some still-undetermined amount of stimulus money.
One major element of the announcement will include charting a path to zero carbon pollution from the U.S. electricity sector by 2035. According to the Energy Information Association, coal and natural gas still account for more than 60 percent of the sector.
Biden promises new research funding and tax incentives for carbon-capture technology.
Immigration, work visa system reform
In his policy document, he pledges to support family-based immigration system and streamlining processing for religious worker visas, reform the H-1B visa system, and eliminate the country-quota for the Green Card.
The H-1B visa, a non-immigrant visa, allows U.S. companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise.
Companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China. Citizens of other countries, including Nigeria, also get the H-1B visa.
Biden promises to support family-based immigration and preserve family unification as a core principle of the immigration system, which includes reducing the family visa backlog, his campaign said.
“He will increase the number of visas offered for permanent, work-based immigration based on macroeconomic conditions and exempt from any cap recent graduates of PhD programmes in STEM fields,” his campaign explained in a policy document released in August.
“And, he will support first reforming the temporary visa system for high-skill, specialty jobs to protect wages and workers, then expanding the number of visas offered and eliminating the limits on employment-based Green Cards by country.”
According to the document, Biden will restore and defend the naturalisation process for Green Card holders. A Green Card allows a non-U.S. citizen to live and work permanently in America.
“He will increase the number of refugees we welcome into this country by setting the annual global refugee admissions target to 125,000 and seek to raise it over time to commensurate with our responsibility, our values, and the unprecedented global need.
“He will also work with Congress to establish a minimum admissions number of 95,000 refugees annually.
“Biden will remove the uncertainty for Dreamers by reinstating the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) programme and explore all legal options to protect their families from inhumane separation.”
The document says Biden will end workplace raids and protect other sensitive locations from immigration enforcement actions.
Muslim ban reversal
“Trump has waged an unrelenting assault on our values and our history as a nation of immigrants. It’s wrong, and it stops when Biden is president,” his campaign adds.
“Biden will rescind Trump’s Muslim ban on day one and reverse the detrimental asylum policies that are causing chaos and a humanitarian crisis at our border.
“He will immediately begin working with Congress to pass legislative immigration reform that modernises our system, with a priority on keeping families together by providing a roadmap to citizenship for nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants.”
Trump’s visa freeze
Biden promises to rewrite the new rules on H-1B visa announced on October 7, but he will have to wait until Trump leaves office on January 20, 2021.
H-1B visas are widely used by tech firms and visa recipients are mostly Indian and Chinese, the BBC reports.
The temporary visas are intended to allow U.S. companies to use foreign workers to fill skills gaps.
But the Trump administration argues the visa has been abused, often at the expense of American workers.
Up to 85,000 people are granted an H-1B visa each year, and about 500,000 people are currently living in the U.S. under the visa programme.
According to U.S. Department of Labor statistics, more than two-thirds of H-1B visa holders come from India, and more than 10 per cent come from China.
Increase in minimum wage
The new rules, jointly announced by the Department of Labor and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), will narrow the definition of “specialty occupations” eligible for the visa.
It will also increase the minimum wages companies must pay for workers enrolled in the H-1B programme.
Acting Director of Homeland Security, Kenneth Cuccinelli, said U.S. companies had abused loopholes in the system to drive wages lower.
“Companies have been incentivised to avoid hiring Americans or even lay off their own qualified, better-paid American workers and replace them with cheaper foreign labour,” he said, quoted by the BBC.
The new rules will also require firms to make “real” offers to U.S. residents before seeking to bring in foreigners. The plan will be implemented after a 60-day comment period.
The DHS has also vowed to “increase compliance through worksite inspections.”
Economic impact of visa blockade
The BBC says the move will likely face criticism from business groups, who have long argued that the visas are needed to help address a shortage of skilled U.S. workers.
Trump first announced a review of the visa programme in April, which led to backlash from technology giants.
In June, the administration banned H-1B workers and some other visa holders from entering the U.S. until the end of this year, citing the economic crisis caused by the pandemic.
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Netflix and Twitter were among many companies who argued that temporary visa bans would damage U.S. firms.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups sued the government over the ban.
In September, a District Court in California granted them a preliminary injunction blocking the government from ending the H-1B programme.