Tech industry frets over possible H-1B visa program changes under President Trump

124 Comments

“American technology companies for years have relied on a steady stream of skilled engineers from overseas to help them create their products,” Nick Wingfield and Mike Isaac report for The New York Times. “Now many of those companies and their workers are girding for expected changes to immigration policy under President Trump that the companies say could hurt their ability to tap the technical talent they need to stay competitive.”

“The technology industry relies heavily on the H-1B visa program, through which highly skilled workers like software engineers are permitted to work in the United States for companies like Microsoft, Google and Intel,” Wingfield and Isaac report. “The draft proposed a regulation to ‘restore the integrity of employment-based nonimmigrant worker programs’ and to consider options for modifying the H-1B program to ‘ensure that beneficiaries of the program are the best and the brightest.'”

“That language rattled some executives and lawyers representing technology companies because of its implication of sweeping changes,” Wingfield and Isaac report. “‘You’d be shocked at the number of people who are feeling fear, calling our firm alarmed based on what’s coming out,’ said Priya Alagiri, an immigration lawyer based in the Bay Area who has tech clients. ‘It’s not just the undocumented. Even people who are here on green cards, legally. Citizens. They’re scared.'”

MacDailyNews Take: An immigration lawyer who wants his business to continue unabated is worried. Shocker.

“The companies see skilled worker visas as a signature policy issue that they have fought to protect and expand,” Wingfield and Isaac report. “They fear Jeff Sessions, the nominee for attorney general, and others in the administration will take a more severe approach to immigration and sweep up H-1B visas into prohibitions on refugees and stronger border protection.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: The following editorial was published by The New York Times‘ Editorial Board, June 16, 2016, prior to the U.S. Presidential election:

Visa Abuses Harm American Workers

There is no doubt that H-1B visas — temporary work permits for specially talented foreign professionals — are instead being used by American employers to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor. Abbott Laboratories, the health care conglomerate based in Illinois, recently became the latest large American company to use the visas in this way, following the lead of other employers, including Southern California Edison, Northeast Utilities (now Eversource Energy), Disney, Toys “R” Us and New York Life.

The visas are supposed to be used only to hire college-educated foreigners in “specialty occupations” requiring “highly specialized knowledge,” and only when such hiring will not depress prevailing wages. But in many cases, laid-off American workers have been required to train their lower-paid replacements.

Lawmakers from both parties have denounced the visa abuse, but it is increasingly widespread, mainly because of loopholes in the law. For example, in most instances, companies that hire H-1B workers are not required to recruit Americans before hiring from overseas. Similarly, companies are able to skirt the rules for using H-1B workers by outsourcing the actual hiring of those workers to Tata, Infosys and other temporary staffing firms, mostly based in India.

riticism of the visa process has been muted, and reform has moved slowly, partly because laid-off American workers — mostly tech employees replaced by Indian guest workers — have not loudly protested. Their reticence does not mean acceptance or even resignation. As explained in The Times on Sunday by Julia Preston, most of the displaced workers had to sign agreements prohibiting them from criticizing their former employers as a condition of receiving severance pay. The gag orders have largely silenced the laid-off employees, while allowing the employers to publicly defend their actions as legal, which is technically accurate, given the loopholes in the law.

The conversation, however, is changing. Fourteen former tech workers at Abbott, including one who forfeited a chunk of severance pay rather than sign a so-called nondisparagement agreement, have filed federal claims with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission saying they were discriminated against because of their ages and American citizenship. Tech workers from Disney have filed federal lawsuits accusing the company and two global outsourcing firms of colluding to supplant Americans with H-1B workers. Former employees of Eversource Energy have also begun to challenge their severance-related gag orders by publicly discussing their dismissals and replacement by foreign workers on H-1B and other visas.

Congressional leaders of both parties have questioned the nondisparagement agreements. Bipartisan legislation in the Senate would revise visa laws to allow former employees to protest their layoffs. Beyond that, what Congress really needs to do is close the loopholes that allow H-1B abuses.

— The New York Times‘ Editorial Board, June 16, 2016

SEE ALSO:
President Trump eyes an H-1B visa aimed at ‘best and brightest’ – January 27, 2017
Silicon Valley chiefs frozen out of President Trump’s White House – December 3, 2016
Silicon Valley uncertain after Donald Trump wins U.S. presidency – November 10, 2016
Silicon Valley donated 60 times more to Clinton than to Trump – November 7, 2016
99% of Silicon Valley’s political dollars are going to Hillary Clinton – October 25, 2016
Apple CEO Tim Cook and the rest of Silicon Valley throw big money at Clinton and pretty much bupkis at Trump – August 23, 2016
Donald Trump’s most unlikely supporter: Silicon Valley billionaire Pete Thiel – July 21, 2016
Tech investor Peter Thiel’s embrace of Donald Trump for U.S. President has Silicon Valley squirming – July 20, 2016
An open letter from Apple co-founder Woz, other techies on Donald Trump’s candidacy for U.S. President – July 14, 2016
Apple refuses to aid 2016 GOP presidential convention over Trump comments – June 18, 2016
Apple and Silicon Valley employees love Bernie Sanders. Donald Trump? Not so much – May 6, 2016
Trump: We’ll get Apple to manufacture ‘their damn computers and things’ in the U.S.A. – January 18, 2016

124 Comments

        1. And everyone else. GE, Boeing, etc.

          Software runs the world now, there’s very few companies that can keep up with the competition without having a significant expenditure in the development space.

          Will that mean some companies will redouble offshoring efforts (so there’s no requirement to bring anyone into the country in the first place)?

        15. Yep. Catholic Church, via Inquisitions and Crusades over the centuries, was quite perpetator of torture when punishing people who did not embrace Christianity. Religious Zealots in all faiths have created more havoc in this world through torture. This includes the current scum called ISIS.

        17. I condemn your bullshit moral equivalence. Christian fundamentalists are NOTHING like Muslims. Islam was created with violence by a violent, pedophile murderer. It supports violence and oppression. 30,000 acts of terror have occurred since 9/11/2001 in the name of Allah. Can you name 5 acts of terror committed by Christian fundamentalists in the same period?

        18. Your imposition of historical period is arbitrary and meaningless. Still, Timothy McVeigh would be a good recent example as well as the bombings and killings performed by Christian Fundamentalists over abortion.

          Please note that my comment did not absolve anyone’s faith, rather I condemned killing in the name of the Almighty.

      2. Zuckerburg is not only human trafficker but also caught for being Hypocrisy over purchased properties from local Hawaii’s people. I used to respect Mark Zuckerburg very much. But now only sad and disappointed in a man.

        Reply

    2. “Yeah”, In more ways than one !

      Large “computer” companies should have been partnering with all sorts of schools to develop curriculum that represented real world need of those companies so they could start getting “local talent” graduating from schools of all levels.

      Oregon Institute of Technology has specialized in offering technical training by working with companies to develop courses that match industry needs for over 60 years. It works.

      Something like 96% of OIT grads have a full time high paying job within 6 months of graduation. My best man’s son just graduated with a software degree and joined Boeing at a 6 figure starting salary.

      Reply

      1. Hmm.. Then according to you, there should be no unemployment among highly skilled local labour.

        If the problem is among low-skilled workers, then how is an anti-immigration bill on high-skilled workers going to bring more jobs? It will only create a workforce deficiency!

        Eventually, many companies move to a place with a better global policy. (Canada, Germany, France, India or China )
        So in total, it will decrease GDP.

        But who cares! We need more jobs!
        The problem is those who need jobs are just bad at it!

        Reply

        1. “If the problem is among low-skilled workers …”
          “The problem is those who need jobs are just bad at it!”

          No, they are not trained for it.

          Nailed it.

  2. As I’ve explained ad infinitum before:

    For Silicon Valley and Apple’s Tim Cook, it’s all about H-1B visas and cheap labor.

    American companies and their shareholders, in general, want skilled labor as CHEAPLY as possible. That’s a main reason why Tim Cook, Apple and other tech firms backed the loser Clinton – they wanted unlimited H-1Bs to continue, so they can pay Ajeet from India half what they’d have to pay Tom from Tulsa who can’t find a job after graduating from college and has to live in his parents basement because Apple got Ajeet from India to do it on the CHEAP.

    H1-B visas for skilled workers DO NOT EQUAL uneducated illegal aliens streaming across the southern border intent on cashing in on American taxpayer’s largesse while setting up shop in the domestic drug trade and/or other crimes (gangs, rape, robbery, etc.).

    Trump is for upholding the laws already on the books designed to protect our borders and our nation’s sovereignty.

    The Trump campaign’s policy:

    Increase prevailing wage for H-1Bs. We graduate two times more Americans with STEM degrees each year than find STEM jobs, yet as much as two-thirds of entry-level hiring for IT jobs is accomplished through the H-1B program. More than half of H-1B visas are issued for the program’s lowest allowable wage level, and more than eighty percent for its bottom two. Raising the prevailing wage paid to H-1Bs will force companies to give these coveted entry-level jobs to the existing domestic pool of unemployed native and immigrant workers in the U.S., instead of flying in cheaper workers from overseas. This will improve the number of black, Hispanic and female workers in Silicon Valley who have been passed over in favor of the H-1B program. Mark Zuckerberg’s personal Senator, Marco Rubio, has a bill to triple H-1Bs that would decimate women and minorities.

    Requirement to hire American workers first. Too many visas, like the H-1B, have no such requirement. In the year 2015, with 92 million Americans outside the workforce and incomes collapsing, we need companies to hire from the domestic pool of unemployed. Petitions for workers should be mailed to the unemployment office, not USCIS.

    End welfare abuse. Applicants for entry to the United States should be required to certify that they can pay for their own housing, healthcare and other needs before coming to the U.S.

    Jobs program for inner city youth. The J-1 visa jobs program for foreign youth will be terminated and replaced with a resume bank for inner city youth provided to all corporate subscribers to the J-1 visa program.

    Refugee program for American children. Increase standards for the admission of refugees and asylum-seekers to crack down on abuses. Use the monies saved on expensive refugee programs to help place American children without parents in safer homes and communities, and to improve community safety in high crime neighborhoods in the United States.

    Immigration moderation. Before any new green cards are issued to foreign workers abroad, there will be a pause where employers will have to hire from the domestic pool of unemployed immigrant and native workers. This will help reverse women’s plummeting workplace participation rate, grow wages, and allow record immigration levels to subside to more moderate historical averages.

    Reply

    2. Back in 1930, when American unemployment was rising to an all-time high, a women named Mairi Anna NicLeoid (Anglicised as Mary Anne MacLeod) arrived at Ellis Island the day after her 18th birthday. She spoke English as a second language, had $50 in total assets, and had no skills aside from housework. Because she was willing to compete with American citizens on pay and working conditions, she managed to support herself in a series of maid and nanny jobs. In 1936, she married one of Queens’ most eligible bachelors—himself the son of immigrants who could not have entered the country in more recent decades. She finally became a citizen in 1942.

      Mairi lived long enough to meet both of her eldest surviving son’s two immigrant wives, both of whom entered the United States on employment visas for jobs that did not lack American applicants. Mairi also knew her future grandson-in-law’s grandparents, who came to America as war refugees in 1949.

      If the United States had pursued these new immigration policies during the 20th century, none of the President’s family could ever have entered the country.

      Reply

        1. I didn’t mention it because it was irrelevant. Are you under the impression that the H1-B or J-1 visa programs are illegal? My point was that those programs—like all other current routes for legal immigration—are far more restrictive than the legal immigration programs that were in effect during prior eras. Most of the individuals who are now in the country illegally could easily have obtained legal status in the past. Most of those who were admitted legally in the past would be excluded today. That very clearly includes the President’s mother and grandfather.

          The prior immigration regime did us no harm. We survived the Great Depression and World War II despite relatively open borders. We admitted people, including most of the President’s kinfolk, who would never get in today. Those immigrants were an asset, not a detriment, notwithstanding all the “No Irish need apply” signs. Read the poem on the Statue of Liberty.

          Even before 9/11, it was not easy to get permanent residency. My wife was a University graduate from Great Britain married to an American in law enforcement, and the process for her during the 1990s involved wrestling with paper tigers for years. The process today is much, much more rigorous. The process for refugees are the most rigorous of all. Why screw it up?

          Nativism and isolationism are not the same as patriotism.

        3. If Trump has no reservations about legal immigration, how come hundreds of people with perfectly valid entry visas (including some with permanent residency status) have been denied entry since last night?

          Lies from the Father of Lies.

        8. No. KingMel is speaking for a lot of us. If you need a mouse, fine then. I’m a mouse.

          Bot is off the rails, again. I don’t see much point in bothering to reply to him. But I’m happy to support KingMel’s point.

        9. Thanks, DC. I often wonder why I bother. But then I realize that we have to remain vigilant and vocal against the insanity. Moderation is the key to the future, and this hyper partisan extremism has to end sometime. Science has to win over gut feel. Truth and fact over lies and fantasy. Every day we must remind ourselves that the the current status of our country is *not normal.* We need to remind ourselves that people like botty and Fwhatever are like cult poison in the minds of the impressionable and desperate and disenfranchised.

        11. Meanwhile, people directly responsible for the 2007-2008 worldwide stock market crash and recession are going to be in the Trump cabinet.

          There’s lots of corrupt scum to stomp and mop up from all sorts of directions. It’s about We The People, not the games people play, including money.

        21. And of course I’d duck my head if I blurted out something like Retardlican. I’d get a good bashing, wouldn’t I. So please do STFU with your equally ‘nasty’ little ‘Libtard‘ insult.

          Meanwhile, thank you KingMel. And a toast to the demolition of both worthless, corrupt US political parties. Let’s get some actual REPRESENTATIVE of We The People parties going.

        23. Who is this “your people” you refer to? It’s certainly not this worse-case you managed to dig up of someone off the rails f-ing everything that comes to mind with demands for ‘reparations’ and killing of everything to be replaced by nothing but more f-ing.

          Very poor choice Mr. Bot.

        28. Quick Tutorial for Morons:

          You cannot apply for U.S. citizenship without five years as a lawful permanent resident (three for the spouse of a U.S. citizen). Green Cards aren’t just “work visas.” In almost all cases, applicants for permanent residency and eventual citizenship initially enter the country in some other status (tourist, worker, student, spouse, et al.) and then petition for permanent residency.

          So, there is no way—none, zero, nada—for somebody to legally become a citizen unless they can get into the country and spend the requisite five (or three) as a lawful permanent resident. Generally speaking, permanent residents have all of the legal rights and responsibilities of a citizen except the power to vote or hold office. Quite specifically, they are “persons under the jurisdiction of the United States” for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses.

          Therefore, it seems obvious even to a moron like me that barring somebody from entry into the United States has the unavoidable effect of preventing them from immigrating or ever becoming a citizen. In this case, that does not seem to be an incidental side-effect but rather the main purpose of the prohibition. That might be legal (I never practiced immigration law), but it is *certainly* not something that a person who “has no reservations about immigrants coming here through legal means” might do. If there are no legal means, what is left?

          I don’t practice law anymore, but it also seems pretty clear to me that barring someone from reentry who has already properly been granted permanent residency status (and who was temporarily absent from the U.S. on vacation or for business) without any notice or due process is problematic. That appears to be happening, with the victims singled out on a basis that is based solely on national origin, making it also problematic on equal protection grounds.

          Face it, botvirnnik, you would be going through the ceiling if Obama or Clinton were using executive orders to deprive legal American residents of their most fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution and statutes. In fact, I recall that you were! As I kept saying during the campaign, I am not opposed to this man because I am a liberal, but because I am a constitutional conservative.

          To get back on point… Apple and the rest of the tech industry are going to get into really hot water if they lose the ability to move their employees around from one country to another without prohibitive regulation. With the immigration war against Islam and the trade war against Mexico, that scenario is getting more likely by the hour.

        30. Again, she entered legally in 1930, but there is no way she would get past the ICE man at the airport today. She spoke a language popularly associated with terrorism, had no money, and no skills. Most of us don’t have the luck to marry a fabulously wealthy (by 1935 standards) real estate developer.

        32. Botty, you were doing okay there until TxUser got under your skin. Once that happened you resorted to your usual name-calling and personal attacks. Your skin is at least as thin as Trump’s. If you want to play in the big arena and be an effective leader of the mindless who can’t think for themselves, you will have to do better in the emotional toughness department.

          I had high hopes for you in the post election era. Sadly, I deceived myself.

        34. Whose opinions, then, do bother you? From what I know of you, no one’s. And that troubles me. As the Irish genius Oscar Wilde said, He who is without conscience has much company, but no friends.

        36. You might be interested in this:

          Sign WhiteHouse.gov petition to issue an international arrest warrant for George Soros:

          “George Soros is a menace to the free world and stands in the way of making America great again. He is guilty of the following crimes:

          1) Financially supports open sedition in major American cities resulting in millions of dollars of property damage as well as loss of life.
          2) Attempts to manipulate democratic elections by donating millions of dollars to his preferred candidates.
          3) Seeks to curtail American sovereignty. In his own words: “The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States … Changing [the] attitude and policies of the United States remains my top priority.”
          4) Is a currency manipulator. Soros initiated a British financial crisis by dumping 10 billion sterling, forcing the devaluation of the currency and gaining a billion-dollar profit.”

          https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/issue-international-arrest-warrant-george-soros

        41. President Trump is taking the same action as Obama in 2013, and applying Visa restrictions to the very nation states that Obama selected in 2015 and 2016. http://bit.ly/2jFkjUE

          The nation of Indonesia is home to the largest Muslim population on earth. Indonesia is not on President Trump’s prohibited list. Therefore, there is no “Muslim Ban.”

          Stop being a pawn of George Soros, ignorant marching fools.

          MAGA

        42. You are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts. As the InfoWars article you cite clearly shows, the 2013 action by President Obama was not “the same action” as that taken by Trump.

          There are a number of countries in the world whose residents are eligible for waivers, such that they do not have to apply for and receive a visa prior to traveling to the United States. Obama added these seven countries to the much longer list of countries that do require visas.

          That is not at all “the same action” as saying that the U.S. will not accept visa applications from persons born in those seven countries (even if they have long since moved somewhere else), or that the U.S. will refuse to honor visas that were previously issued after proper screening. It is certainly not “the same action” as refusing re-entry to the United States for legal American residents born in those countries who have already undergone “extreme vetting” before being granted permanent residence status, the last step before citizenship.

          It is also not the same as excluding from entry to the United States the citizens of other countries who just happen to have been born in one of the listed countries. For example, a member of the British Parliament has been told he cannot visit his children in America because he came from Iraq as a child, and the same is true of Sir Mo Farrah, a British Olympian and knight who was born in Somalia and has children living in the U.S.

          It is this impact on dual-nationality persons that concerns the tech world, and should concern the Apple user base. Again, multinational corporations simply cannot function unless their employees have the ability to travel between the countries where the corporation operates. There are a lot of very talented individuals overseas who were born in one of the targeted country and now cannot enter the U.S. There are also a lot of talented workers in America who are still in the waiting period for citizenship and now cannot reliably leave the country. Need I even mention that Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian?

          At least make the effort to tie your InfoWars fake news back into the purposes of this website.

        43. From what I’ve read, he hasn’t banned anyone from Saudi Arabia either. Which most terror experts (I’ve read) have said for years is the major funding/support for fundamentalist Islamic terrorism.

          Why?

          Wouldn’t have anything to do with someone’s business ties to that two-faced theocracy, would it?

        45. TxUser bitch-slapped you with facts, botty, and you don’t seem to realize it. Freaking hilarious! I am busting a gut imagining you attempting to process TxUser’s post and realizing that he just spanked you with your own irrationality.

          Has the H-1B program been abused? Probably. Corporations find a way to twist and skew every policy and law. In that aspect, corporations very much resemble people. But you right wingers should keep in mind the law of unintended consequences. By restricting the technical H-1B visas, the unintended consequence may be that corporations open up new facilities in foreign countries if they cannot find sufficient workers in the U.S. You need to think very carefully before enacting rules and laws. Going with the Trump gut may end up getting this country in trouble.

          The stupid wall sucks too. If it is funded by tariffs, then U.S. citizens will be paying for that useless piece o’ crap, not Mexico. Yet another Trump lie.

        48. Sorry botty, but there is no access provided there, not even for Locker Room Donnie. I have a feeling that you and he have already used up the contents, anyway. Better order a new one for the White House glory hole.

          By the way, he is not a “Doctor” – you do know that, right? Please let us know that some reality penetrates your fantasy world,

        50. And something that TxUser didn’t bother to nuke Botty with were any of the other flaws within the “legal” immigration system. For example, it is also known to be deliberately discriminatory by region/country.

          Case in point, I did some research recently and ran the numbers on a current citizen of a particular former US Territory who wanted to emigrate to the USA.

          The simple bottom line was that the legal “Waiting List” is currently ~100 years long.

          Similarly, US history has record of how it was found that one country had an unconscionably restrictive quota, considering that they were currently a military ally during a major war … so the USA vastly improved the quota, increased it by over 1000% … which resulted in it then being all of a mere 105 persons/year limit.

    3. “Ad Infinitum” ought to be your handle, botty. Just because you say the same thing over and over does not make it true. We understand what you think. You scream it every day on this forum and repost the same stuff…well…ad finitum. But your very limited and simplistic view of the world is highly flawed. Your boy Trump – Locker Room Donnie – is due for some harsh lessons in the unintended consequences of sweeping legislation.

      The Trade Wars, they have begun.

      Reply

  3. The editorial was published by The New York Times‘ Editorial Board, June 16, 2016, prior to the U.S. Presidential election when they were sure the horse (nag) they were backing would win. FTFY

    MAGA

    Reply

  4. Visas don’t get issued for tech people because non-US workers are cheap, it’s mostly because a large part of the US workforce, just as in most countries, aren’t capable of doing the job. You could give some people 20 years of IT development or engineering skills training and they still wouldn’t think the way the tech companies need.

    This Executive Order (which are apparently as OK now as private email servers, who’d have thought?) will only result in harming the US tech sector. However, seeing as it’s mostly in California I wouldn’t be surprised if the Petulant Orange One and his inner team of Neo-Nazis actually want that to occur.

    Reply

  5. Wealthy corporations wrote the the H-1B Visa law to benefit the corporation, not the American worker. But this injustice is merely part of the corporate globnalization scheme to cheat American workers out of a decent wage, the difference in in wage disparity between the imported worker and the CEO goes to the CEO’s and other top managements’ offshore accts where it’s hoarded it does no benefit to consumers who could use that money to buy their gadgets, but the short sighted corporation is not concerned.

    Reply

    1. In some ways I wish the “Ghost Of Business Future” could show corporations a world where most of the masses have low paying jobs that can no longer pay for the products they manufacture and they go spectacularly down the tubes for their short-sightedness and greed. Sharing the wealth is a concept business and corporations are often loathe to practice, seemingly expecting others to take upon the slack while they get away with financial murder.

      Reply

    2. The citizens of the US of A are entitled to a job which should be controlled by government laws, right? The former Soviet Union had such laws and look how well that turned out.

      Reply

  7. I am not an American, I don’t work in America, my son is an engineering student. I think Trump is generally bad for the U.S. but if he is looking to put an end to or curtailing the H1-B visa program I can get behind that. I think there is a need for H1-B visa’s but not until domestic workers are considered, and if they want to hire an H1-B worker then any wage difference between them and a domestic worker should be charged for the visa and used to provide scholarships to Americans who want to get an education in the field.

    Reply

    1. 1 more thing, if these companies argument for bringing in foreign workers is because of their unique skill set and expertise. The company bringing them in should be forced to pay same amount as the highest paid American worker, after all they have skills that can’t be found in a U.S. worker they should be compensates as such. If that was put in place I ma sure these companies would suddenly find an abundance of local talent.

      Reply

      1. Jeff, that’s the start of a good start: what the law should be is that the H-1B fee should be no less than the domestic market rate for the job as described … which is above & beyond what the employer then pays the employee. If the candidate really is that valuable and unique, the business will have no qualms about paying.

        Reply

  8. Ho! Ho! Ho! USA without immigration… what a hoax!
    If immigrants wouldn’t have stolen the lands of natives, USA would have never existed… and now, some extremely populists want to keep out people would would never behave as bad as their forefathers?
    Being so afraid and scared of a simple twist of faith?

    Reply

    1. Nowhere in President Trump’s order are ANY nations listed.

      President Trump is taking the same action as Obama in 2013, and applying Visa restrictions to the very nation states that Obama selected in 2015 and 2016. http://bit.ly/2jFkjUE

      The nation of Indonesia is home to the largest Muslim population on earth. Indonesia is not on President Trump’s prohibited list. Therefore, logically, there is no “Muslim Ban.”

      Stop being a pawn of George Soros, ignorant marching fools.

      MAGA

      Reply

        1. America is a proud nation of immigrants and we will continue to show compassion to those fleeing oppression, but we will do so while protecting our own citizens and border. America has always been the land of the free and home of the brave. We will keep it free and keep it safe, as the media knows, but refuses to say. My policy is similar to what President Obama did in 2011 when he banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months. The seven countries named in the Executive Order are the same countries previously identified by the Obama administration as sources of terror. To be clear, this is not a Muslim ban, as the media is falsely reporting. This is not about religion – this is about terror and keeping our country safe. There are over 40 different countries worldwide that are majority Muslim that are not affected by this order. We will again be issuing visas to all countries once we are sure we have reviewed and implemented the most secure policies over the next 90 days. I have tremendous feeling for the people involved in this horrific humanitarian crisis in Syria. My first priority will always be to protect and serve our country, but as President I will find ways to help all those who are suffering.

          – Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America, January 29, 2017

        3. To repeat, Obama had a list of countries where you cannot get a visa without a face-to-face interview. Trump made it impossible for anyone born in one of those countries to enter the United States at all, even if they are a legal permanent resident of our country or a citizen of one of our allies. Not the same thing.

          The 2011 Iraqi ban was the response to a specific event. Two refugees were implicated in a plot to send bombs back home for use in the insurgency. The pause was designed to cross-check the fingerprints of Iraqi refugees against those found on recovered IEDs in Iraq. Again, not the same thing.

          This ban targets everybody, including children and respectable American residents. I will note that the UK Foreign Office has released a statement based on consultations between Boris Johnson and U.S. officials that would alleviate many of my concerns, but what the statement says and what is actually going on currently are irreconcilable.

        4. TFB.

          90 days to finally get it right.

          In 8 days, Trump has done more work that Obama did in 8 years.

          1. Presidency
          2. Senate
          3. House
          4. Supreme Court

          Again, if you don’t like it, I welcome you and your kind to shove it up your asses… sideways. God knows, it’s highly likely that you and your ilk can accommodate pretty much anything up there anyway.

        5. I’m sorry, but I am neither foreign nor gay, so your xenophobia and homophobia are wasted on me. For the record, I’m a white male Republican, so don’t even bother with racism, sexism, or political name-calling. I am reminded of what Dr. Johnson said, “[False] patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Or, as F. Lee Bailey often said, “If you don’t have the facts, pound on the law. If you don’t have the law, pound on the facts. If you don’t have either, pound on the table.”

        9. Tell your sob story to the families and friends of Robert Adams, Isaac Amanios, Bennetta Betbadal, Harry Bowman, Sierra Clayborn, Juan Espinoza, Aurora Godoy, Shannon Johnson, Larry Daniel Kaufman, Damian Meins, Tin Nguyen, Nicholas Thalasinos, Yvette Velasco, Michael Raymond Wetzel, Patrick Baccari, Amanda Gaspard, Nicholas Koahou, Anies Kondoker, Kevin Ortiz, Denise Peraza, Jennifer Stevens, and Julie Swann-Paez.

        10. I really don’t want to continue this, but you continue to spread “alternative facts.”

          Which of the people you name was shot by anybody who had ever set foot in one of the seven countries on the list? Most of them were killed by a U.S. citizen and the rest by his wife, a U.S. permanent resident of Pakistani origin. In fact, there has never been an American terror incident involving a citizen of six of the seven countries. Of roughly 70 Islamist terrorist incidents (mostly foiled plots) in America since 2001, only three involved people from the seventh country, Somalia.

          Tell YOUR sob story to the half-million Syrian dead and the almost eleven million forced from their homes, mostly due to your guy’s pal Putin and his pal Assad.

          Oddly enough, Trump Enterprises does not have any business ties to any of the seven countries, as opposed to the unaffected Muslim countries where all the actual terrorists have come from.

          Rather than spend billions of dollars to make America a foreigner-free zone, the money might better be spent on programs that would actually make us safer and wealthier. This approach will just generate more home-grown terrorists.

  10. Here is the simple way to make a correct visa program. Apple needs 10 employees from various other countries that hold specific skill sets they claim they cannot find from the United States. Fine they get a work visa for those 10 employees. At the end of their work Visa Apple shows that they have returned those citizens to their rightful country. And Apple will get another 10 visas, or whatever Apple petitions is necessary for the next batch. They don’t return those 10 they don’t get 10 more. They say they don’t know where they went, that’s Apples tough luck. Only five can be verified they have returned to their country? Then apple only gets five new visas, not 10. That would stop this low-wage game in a hurry.

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  11. You might want be a little bit more liberal (or generous if you don’t like that word) with your use of apostrophes. A paragraph or two wouldn’t go amiss as well.

    As far as I know the President hasn’t moved on restricting the use of punctuation or grammar so just go for it.

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  13. Trump is nothing but pouring oil on the fire (like G.W.Bush did to get the 11th happen). He’s playing terrorists game by giving them good reasons to hate America even more the before.

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