The Trump administration now faces litigation to block its new $100,000 fee on employer-sponsored nonimmigrant visas.
Democracy Forward announced the lawsuit filed Oct. 3 by a coalition of health care providers, labor unions, religious organizations and schools against President Donald Trump’s charge on all new H-1B visa applications.
The action filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California comes in response to the president’s Sept. 19 proclamation claiming the visa program has been used to “replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor.”
The H-1B visa enables employers to hire highly trained foreigners to fill jobs in engineering, medicine, science, tech and other specialty fields, and allows those workers to remain in the U.S. for up to six years.
The president claimed the number of visas increased from 1.2 million in 2000 to 2.5 million in 2019 and pushed Americans out of STEM, tech and other fields in deference to lower-paid nonimmigrant workers.
“This isn’t about helping American workers, it’s about shutting the door on American innovation and essential work.”
“The high numbers of relatively low-wage workers in the H-1B program undercut the integrity of the program and are detrimental to American workers’ wages and labor opportunities, especially at the entry level, in industries where such low-paid H-1B workers are concentrated,” according to the proclamation. “These abuses also prevent American employers in other industries from utilizing the H-1B program in the manner in which it was intended: to fill jobs for which highly skilled and educated American workers are unavailable.”
The nation’s economy and national security are also threatened by the program, Trump said as he ordered the $100,000 fee and other requirements to go into effect Sept. 21.
“This isn’t about helping American workers, it’s about shutting the door on American innovation and essential work and opening the door to corruption,” Democracy Forward President Skye Perryman said. “H-1B workers keep rural hospitals staffed, bring STEM education to schools with teacher shortages, advance lifesaving medical research, keep our tech sector competitive, and help small businesses thrive.”
Mike Miller
Left unchecked, the administration’s attempt to restrict the visa program would put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage with other nations, said Mike Miller, director of Region 6 of the United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America. The union is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
“This edict makes clear the U.S. is no longer open to the world’s most brilliant and hardworking scientists,” he said. “It prioritizes wealth and connections over scientific acumen and diligence and tells the world that the U.S. is no longer a place to pursue scientific inquiry to solve some of the major diseases and other problems confronting us.”
Plaintiffs in the case are represented by Democracy Forward, the Justice Action Center, the South Asian American Justice Collaborative, Kuck Baxter LLC, Joseph and Hall, and IMMpact Litigation.
“We filed this lawsuit not just for those who are working hard to strengthen America’s industries, hospitals and schools, but for everyone in this country who stands to lose so much if these experts are effectively banned from entering the U.S.,’” said Karen Tumlin, director of the Justice Action Center.