According to sources the US Citizenship and Immigration services (USCIS), the agency which administers the US visa process, will place around 13,400 people (over 70% of its workforce) on furlough, or unpaid leave, for three months starting august 3. The decision is expected to severely slow processing times of visas and green cards.
During the 2016 US presidential campaign, Donald Trump shocked the public when he suggested that he would ban muslims from entering the US. The remark was widely condemned even by members of his own party. Within a week of his inauguration in january 2017, trump announced a broad ban on the entry of people from a number of countries in the Middle East. He used an obscure provision on the Immigration and Nationality Act called 212(f) which allows the President to bar the entry of groups of immigrants deemed to be detrimental to the interests of the United States.
Once trump had his Muslim Ban upheld, he felt emboldened to use it in a number of other circumstances. Since the pandemic began, he’s banned multiple groups via proclamation. Two of those bans have collectively affected hundreds of thousands of people seeking immigrant and nonimmigrant visas. The april 22nd ban stopped immigrant visas from being issued and the june 22nd ban targeted workers coming to the US in the H-1B, H-2B, J-1 and L-1 Visa categories. The justification – the US unemployment rate which has spiked to over 13% as companies across the US locked down in response to the pandemic.
