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Law360 (June 23, 2020, 9:11 PM EDT) -- Tech giants are blasting the Trump administration's decision to stop issuing certain work visas for the rest of the year, including the H-1B specialty occupation visa that the tech industry relies on so heavily.
Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft have all put out statements decrying President Donald Trump's decision to block new foreign citizens from coming to the U.S. on a handful of different work visas.
Together, the five tech companies were approved to employ more than 10,000 new H-1B visa recipients in 2019. When visa extensions are factored in, that number balloons to more than 25,000 — a figure that doesn't include employees in the three-year period between renewals.
Slamming the decision as "short-sighted," Amazon — which was granted permission to hire more new H-1B visa workers than any other company last year — came out firmly against the president's contention that the pause would help the country recover from the damage wrought by the coronavirus pandemic.
"Welcoming the best [and] the brightest global talent is critical to America's economic recovery," the company said in a statement. "We will continue to support these programs [and] efforts to protect the rights of immigrants."
Apple CEO Tim Cook took to Twitter Tuesday morning to say he was "deeply disappointed" by the president's proclamation.
"Like Apple, this nation of immigrants has always found strength in our diversity, and hope in the enduring promise of the American Dream. There is no new prosperity without both," he said.
Twitter said the policy decision "undermines America's greatest economic asset: its diversity."
The tech industry in particular relies on the H-1B visa program to help it bring in employees highly skilled in fields that are in short supply in the United States, and make up the bulk of the top H-1B visa employers.
The administration has lauded the freeze as a way to free up more than 500,000 jobs for Americans, but immigration experts are skeptical that there will be a significant shift away from immigrant workers who have already gone through the hiring process.
Slated to take effect Wednesday, the moratorium on new H-1B visas for highly skilled workers, H-2B guest-worker visas, J trainee visas and L intracompany transferee visas will only affect people outside the country who don't already have a visa lined up.
The changes come as Trump calls for a massive overhaul of the H-1B system, one that would abolish the annual lottery that doles out the 85,000 specialty occupation visas in favor of a system that gives the visas to the applicants who had been offered the highest salary. The idea behind the proposal is that such a system would free up more entry-level positions for Americans, according to an official.
Most immigration services are just beginning to reopen after being largely closed for months due to the pandemic.
The administration has already closed the U.S. land borders to all nonessential travel and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has invoked its power under public health law to order border officials to turn away all migrants seeking to enter the country without proper documentation, including children and asylum-seekers.
--Additional reporting by Suzanne Monyak. Editing by Bruce Goldman.
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