Graham, employers say Trump’s temporary ban on foreign workers will hurt economy

In a rare rebuke of President Donald Trump, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said he fears the president’s decision to temporarily halt new work visas for foreign workers seeking employment in the United States “will have a chilling effect on our economic recovery.”

Graham, who has been friendly to Trump and a vocal supporter of most of the president’s key initiatives, said on Twitter earlier this week that “Those who believe legal immigration, particularly work visas, are harmful to the American worker do not understand the American economy,”

The Republican senator added he fears halting the visa programs “will create a drag on our economic recovery.”

Trump said in his far-reaching order, which will last until at least the end of the year, that because of the COVID-19 pandemic these visa programs “pose an unusual threat to the employment of American workers” and expressed concerns that tens of millions of newly unemployed Americans will have to compete against recipients of these visas for jobs. The order is the latest measure in a long list of moves from the Trump administration to curb legal immigration.

Many business leaders from across the country and in South Carolina oppose Trump’s order, saying it will impact their ability to recruit and retain talent.

Included among the temporarily halted programs are H-1B visas. These visas allow employers to bring in “highly educated foreign professionals” — people possessing at least a bachelor’s degree — to work in “specialty occupations,” according to the left-leaning American Immigration Council. Jobs in engineering, tech and the medical sciences often qualify for the visas.

H-1B visas are utilized by companies throughout South Carolina, especially in Columbia, Greenville and Fort Mill, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor. In 2016, South Carolina companies requested 6,932 H-1B-supported positions with an average wage of a little more than $74,000. Only a small percentage of those requests were filled.

The University of South Carolina, Clemson University and the Medical University of South Carolina are among the frequent petitioners for H-1B visas in the state, according to data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Heather Woolwine, a spokesperson for MUSC, said the university is “still trying to understand the intricacies” of Trump’s order, and added that if the order is extended past December “it will have an impact on our ability to recruit and retain highly specialized physicians and researchers.

“While it is always our intent to hire within country whenever possible, for myriad and important reasons, there are often critical supply and demand issues related to certain skill sets and medical/biomedical expertise that make hiring those experts in country difficult or not possible,” Woolwine explained in an email to The State.

Joe Galbraith, a spokesperson for Clemson, said there are 17 university employees waiting for the issuance of their H-1B visas and another five who had just started the application process. Now, Galbraith said, “those currently outside of the United States will not be able to obtain the H-1B necessary to arrive and begin work before January.”

“These visas are used to support international faculty, [postdoctoral researchers], extension agents, research scholars and other positions at Clemson,” Galbraith wrote in an email.

Jason Zacher, senior vice president of business advocacy for the Greenville Chamber of Commerce, also expressed concerns about the potential long-term implications of Trump’s order.

“These visas are there because … there is a need in the market that [companies] are having a hard time finding citizens to deal with this,” Zacher told The State, adding that while the visa systems need to be reformed, “just blocking them like this is going to have a negative impact on the economy in general and specifically on a lot of these companies.”

Zacher said the skills that H-1B workers possess are needed for high-tech manufacturing and to grow the economy.

“Using this as an excuse that we’re going to bring Americans back to work because of the COVID-19 shutdowns doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Zacher said.

A spokesperson for U.S. Senator Tim Scott, R-South Carolina, said in an email that the senator “believes in a merit-based immigration system that ensures American workers have first access to any available jobs” but recognizes seasonal and temporary work visas are needed to help meet demand in industries “critical to South Carolina’s economy.”

“As the economic recovery from the pandemic moves forward, we must ensure not only that workers can get back on the job, but that employers have the manpower and resources necessary to reopen and thrive,” said Sean Smith, Scott’s communications director. “Any steps taken to limit their ability to do so are potentially harmful to the recovery, and must be monitored closely.”

“Like all Americans, I want to recreate the strong economy we had before coronavirus,” Graham said. “The policies which created that economy should be utilized today.”