30 | JULY 16 • 2020
Visa Freeze
President’
s proclamation to have a negative
economic impact, Jewish experts say.
LOUIS FINKELMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Jews in the D
B
usinesses that count
on temporary workers
from the federal VISA
program face uncertainty after
President Donald Trump issued
a proclamation June 22 chang-
ing the rules for many classes of
visa for the rest of this year.
The president said that
allowing foreign nationals to
seek permission to work in the
United States would “present a
risk to the U.S. labor market.
”
The visa freeze impacts two
classes of visa widely used
in U.S. high-tech industries,
where employment
remains relatively
robust. According
to Eli Maroko of
the Southfield-
based law firm
Jaffe Raitt Heuer
& Weiss, blocking these visas,
H-1B and L-1, is largely sym-
bolic, not an effective way to
protect jobs.
H-1B visas apply to highly
educated professionals with spe-
cialty occupations. Most of the
applicants, Maroko said, “are
already here, typically having
recently either completed their
university degrees or a post-de-
gree training period.
” Even for
those now abroad, “[the] start
date for work would be pushed
back only from Oct. 1 to Jan. 1,
just three months,
” he added.
L-1 visas apply to time-lim-
ited transfers within multi-na-
tional companies. Stopping
corporate transfers, Maroko
observed, “seems likely to have
the effect of disrupting planning
without benefitting anyone and
without improving hiring.
”
Joe Marton, who provides
relocation services at German-
based Daimler, agrees: “We
bring specialized engineers and
experts to the U.S. to help with
the company’
s projects,
” he said.
Marton said the company can
find Americans for only a small
percentage of those specialized
roles. For “all the other tasks,
if we could not bring the right
person here, we would have to
send someone from America to
work with the right person at
another hub.
”
Two other visa programs
frozen by the president typically
provide U.S. firms with less spe-
cialized workers, often in lower
economic professions.
Ruby Robinson, manag-
ing attorney at the Michigan
Immigrant Rights Center, helps
nonprofits obtain
H-2B visas for
temporary workers
in non-agricultur-
al work (such as
landscaping and
hospitality) and J
visas (for exchange
workers, such as camp counsel-
ors, interns and trainees).
Robinson sees the freeze as
ominous in the context of initia-
tives to limit legal immigration,
to refuse refugee status and to
rescind protection for residents
brought to the U.S. as children.
“The systematic dismantling,
reinterpretation and weaponiza-
tion of immigration laws over
these past few years accom-
plishes and furthers these racist
goals of reducing brown and
Black immigration at all levels,
”
he said.
The visa freeze also promises
to impact corporate relocation
services, a huge industry. When
a corporation
brings a foreign
worker to the
United States, it
calls on a network
of professionals to
handle the details.
Eve Avadenka
of Huntington Woods, who
has worked in this industry
for more than 20 years, said
Fortune 500 companies hire a
relocation management compa-
ny to subcontract every aspect
of the move. That company
then hires a destination services
company, like Dwellworks,
where she is a director.
“
At the destination point, a
foreign citizen needs a home,
a Social Security number, a
school placement for the chil-
dren and similar arrangements
… a driver’
s license, a bank
account and orientation to the
local area to better understand
the local culture, how/where to
shop, the medical system, how
to connect to the community
and so forth,
” she said.
The coronavirus has already
slowed the relocation industry;
the proclamation may impede
the industry’
s recovery, she
added.
“The USA has been a world
leader in innovation, in drawing
talent from around the world
and at home, and in synthesiz-
ing new ideas,
” Maroko said.
“This success [has] been fed
by immigration policies that
allowed creative, highly edu-
cated people and entrepreneurs
globally to bring their talents
and energies to benefit the U.S.
”
Steve Tobocman, executive
director of Global Detroit, has
long maintained
that increasing
immigration is key
to the economic
health of Michigan.
Tobocman said
that “this procla-
mation will have
a real and negative impact on
local economy and jobs.
”
The issue does not stop at the
economy for Tobocman.
“Jewish people need to care
for and address issues of justice
and equity for all people, not
just Jewish people,
” he said. “
As
the grandson of Morris and
Anna Tobocman, who fled
in the decade before the U.S.
restricted immigration from
other Jews, I consider a critical
part of my Jewish identity to
work on building a more wel-
coming and inclusive America.
”
Robinson agreed. “Freezing
the issuance of visas on such a
broad scale offends not only our
Jewish history and tradition, but
also our imperative to pursue
justice (tzedek tzedek tirdof) as
many of these individuals are
coming to the United States to
learn and help their communi-
ties across the globe when they
return.
”
Eli Maroko
Ruby
Robinson
Eve
Avadenka
Steve
Tobocman