The South Asian Bar Association of Northern California denounces recent efforts to block immigration that seem particularly targeted at the Asian- and South Asian-American communities.
The
SECURE CAMPUS Act
, recently introduced by Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) and Congressman David Kustoff (R-Tennessee), seeks to prohibit Chinese STEM graduate students from receiving a visa to study in the United States and to block federal funding to any institution that has participation from these students. The Act is based on the unfounded presumption—
one previously made by President Trump himself
—that almost all Chinese STEM students engage in espionage. The reality is that for decades, students from China and the rest of Asia have formed an integral part of graduate-level STEM studies in this country, and there is scant evidence that any of these students, much less all of them, engage in espionage. Previous estimates pegged the value of Chinese students to the American economy at $12 billion in 2018.
President Trump also recently extended a freeze on issuance of green cards for new immigrants and signed an
Executive Order
suspending issuance of new H-1B, H-2B, L-1, J and other temporary work visas for skilled workers, managers and au pairs through the end of 2020. Immigrants who join our American community through these visa programs are at the heart of our technology, agriculture and healthcare industries, among others, and they are key drivers of the U.S. economy. It is therefore deeply disheartening to see President Trump attempt to justify this Executive Order with generic statistics about American job losses. Particularly for the highly skilled workers that would receive H-1B visas, there is ample evidence that the jobs held by immigrants holding these visas do not displace other Americans. Moreover, the
unemployment rate for occupations that employ large numbers of H-1B visa holders has been very low
, and there is no evidence that other American workers in those occupations face the unemployment pressures the Executive Order cites. There is no reasoned analysis that could support the overbroad ban in the Executive Order.
Moreover, just days ago, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued new guidelines indicating that international students with F-1 or M-1 visas (which are for academic and vocational international students, respectively) will not be permitted to stay in the United States if enrolled in schools that have switched completely to remote/online learning. Students already in the U.S. under those programs who are planning to attend colleges or universities that will only offer online classes in the fall will need to transfer to other schools providing in-person instruction, voluntarily depart the country or face potential deportation. This means that international students enrolled at schools throughout the U.S. must now risk exposure to the coronavirus either by travelling back to their home countries or attending in-person courses (either at their current school if it offers in-person courses or a different school that they must now find).
The ICE guidelines ignore the facts that many countries have closed their borders to travellers coming from the United States, and that several higher educational institutions rely heavily on tuitions received from international students for their day to day operations, including paying faculty and staff. Therefore, ICE’s latest move seems likely to force schools to lay off their staff and faculty or succumb to pressure to offer in-person classes, despite well-documented health risks. Another obvious ramification will be the severe drought of talent in the hiring market, especially in jobs involving science, technology, mathematics and engineering, which traditionally see a large number of international applicants in the U.S. But the highest toll of all will be the moral one, where ICE crushes overnight the dreams of some of the world’s hardest working and brightest minds that could become the next Indra Nooyi, Sundar Pichai, or Satya Nadella.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent reversal of the Trump administration’s attempt to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigration relief program demonstrated that such arbitrary government action is unlawful and should be reversed, and it is our sincere hope that the discriminatory Executive Order and ICE guidelines will be withdrawn without resorting to a lengthy judicial process.
All of these initiatives are part of a troubling drumbeat of attempts by the Trump administration and its supporters in Congress to divide this country along racial lines and deny the contributions that immigrants have made, and continue to make, to this nation. We urge the President and his supporters in Congress to stop coming up with thinly-veiled excuses to discriminate against immigrants and instead start fostering their contributions to a vibrant and powerful America.
