Stephen Miller Claims Immigration Pause is Part of a Long Term Plan

The Hill reported that Senior White House adviser Stephen Miller allegedly told supporters in an off-the-record call on April 23, 2020 that President Donald Trump’s temporary order to suspend immigration is part of a broader strategy to reduce all forms of immigration.

The Washington Post was able to obtain the audio of the call where Miller said that “the most important thing is to turn off the faucet of new immigrant labor” and that the temporary ban would restrict “chains of follow-on migration.”

Trump signed the order on April 22, which suspended the entry of some green card applicants for 60 days.

That said, the order has exemptions for prospective immigrants, which includes “essential workers, spouses and young children of U.S. citizens, investor visa beneficiaries and service members.”

After the executive order was unveiled, mass migration advocates could tell that Miller’s influence was all over it.

“Stephen Miller somehow, someway convinces President Donald Trump to constantly go to immigration as an issue, regardless of the policy matter we’re trying to address,” Democrat Congressman Tony Cárdenas told The Hill on April 24.

Certain migration restriction groups have criticized Trump’s executive order for not containing more restrictions, such as moratoriums on guest worker visas.

Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, declared in a statement that “corporate lobbyists and other immigration expansionists in the White House persuaded the President to significantly water down” his order.

In a piece titled Piercing Illusion of Trump’s ‘Immigration Ban’, Michelle Malkin described Trump’s order as “all moratorium hat and no cattle.”

She listed the following reasons why the order failed to meet America First standards:

 

• All new green card applications and routine visa processing were already suspended on March 20.
• Refugee resettlement was already suspended the same week and is scheduled to be frozen until at least May 15 (although more than 1,000 Afghan refugees were flown in over the past month while the rest of us have been ordered shut in our own homes).
• Foreign travelers from China and Europe, plus Canada and Mexico, were already barred from entering (though thousands of H-2A and H-2B agricultural and seasonal workers got in and some 35,000 more expect a green light despite virus outbreaks at Chinese-owned meat plants packed with foreign laborers).
• The annual H-1B lottery for Chinese and Indian tech workers was completed last month and a total of 475,000 H-1Bs are safe while untold thousands of American STEM students, graduates and workers lost their livelihoods.
• Despite massive layoffs of H-1B workers in tech, there is no move to send them home. Instead, immigration lawyers are outrageously advising H-1B and other temporary visa holders (including those in the L-1, B-1 and R categories) that they are eligible for stimulus checks.
• More than a million F-1 foreign student visa holders remain in the country, including nearly 400,000 from China, as do hundreds of thousands of foreign students who secured Optional Practical Training work permits in STEM fields, displacing American workers.
• More than 4,000 J-1 foreign health worker visas were freed up earlier this month while American medical professionals lost their jobs. The American Medical Association, which has artificially suppressed the supply of doctors for decades to inflate wages, is whining about shortages and pressuring to relax J-1 rules and time limits even further.

All in all, this order was a big dud.

America First advocates must continue holding President Trump’s feet to the fire.

When push comes to shove, America First will need both chambers — House and Senate — to have solid America First Republican majorities.

That way, migration restriction legislation can be sent to President Trump’s desk, without having to rely on just the executive branch — which has proven reluctant to act on the issue — to get migration restriction to move forward.