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