President Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday to restart the refugee resettlement program, after it was suspended for 120 days as part of the president’s travel ban issued earlier this year. The order will resume refugee admissions but will initiate a new 90-day review period for officials to conduct an “in-depth threat assessment” of eleven countries. While neither the executive order nor the White House named these eleven countries, Politico says that based on statements from senior administration officials these countries appear to include: Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, North Korea, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen—all majority-Muslim countries except for North Korea and South Sudan.
Read morePresident Trump Issues New Travel Restrictions for Nationals of 7 Countries
On September 24, 2017, President Trump issued a presidential proclamation that details new travel restrictions targeting nationals of seven countries, including Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, as well as places some travel restrictions or increases scrutiny for certain nationals of Venezuela and nationals of Iraq. Under this proclamation, most citizens of Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen will be banned from entering the US. Certain government officials from Venezuela who seek to visit the US will face restrictions and Iraqi nationals will face heightened scrutiny.
Read moreState Department Issues Guidelines for Revised Travel Ban
The State Department issued guidelines for the revised travel ban after the Supreme Court partially lifted orders blocking the revised ban earlier this week. The State Department announced that the partial ban would go into effect worldwide beginning at 8pm (EDT) on June 29, 2017. The travel ban affects nationals of six countries—Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen—but does not apply to any applicant who has a credible claim of a “bona fide relationship” with a person or entity in the US.
Read moreWashington Post: “A Muslim cook wanted to stop the hate. So she started inviting strangers to dinner.”
When Amanda Saab—a social worker, amateur chef, and practicing Muslim who wears a hijab—heard then-presidential candidate Trump’s call for a ban on Muslim immigrants to the US, she realized that a lot of Americans must not know any Muslims. “Have I played a part in that?” she asked herself. “Have I not reached out to people and given them an opportunity to meet me?” Her solution? Invite strangers to dinner.
Read moreThe Trump Effect
It’s only been a little over two months since President Trump was sworn in and already his immigration policies, executive orders, and implementation guidelines—not to mention his own anti-immigrant rhetoric—have had a wide-ranging impact on US businesses, educational institutions, international partnerships, industries, and, of course, immigrant communities. Through his interactions with foreign leaders, he is also altering the world’s perception of the United States. What exactly has he done? Here we highlight some areas in which the “Trump Effect” is being felt.
Read moreYahoo Finance: “Trump’s travel ban impacts air travel, threatens US tourism”
President Trump’s revised travel ban, which temporarily bars travel to the US for certain citizens of six-predominately Muslim countries and temporarily suspends the US refugee program, goes into effect this week on March 16. The travel bans, in addition to disrupting the lives of many innocent immigrants and refugees, have negatively impacted air travel to the US and threaten US tourism, many leading travel industry authorities and leaders say.
Read morePresident Trump Signs Revised Executive Order Banning Travel from Six Muslim-Majority Countries and Suspending the US Refugee Program
On Monday, March 6, 2017, President Trump signed a revised executive order temporarily banning travel to the US for certain citizens of six-predominately Muslim countries as well as temporarily suspending the US refugee program. The executive order, “Protecting The Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into The United States,” supersedes the original order issued January 27, and was revised to better withstand legal scrutiny in the courts (which his initial executive order had failed to do). According to Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, the order will “make America safer, and address long-overdue concerns about the security of our immigration system.” The travel ban and refugee resettlement suspension is set to go into effect on March 16, 2017.
Read moreA Narrow, Remarkable Experience
ABC News: "Without immigrants, the US economy would be a 'disaster,' experts say"
Economic experts tell ABC News that the US economy and workforce would be a "disaster" without immigrants. "If all immigrants were just to disappear from the US workforce tomorrow, that would have a tremendous negative impact on the economy," Daniel Costa, the director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, an economic research think tank based in Washington, D.C., tells ABC News. "Immigrants are overrepresented in a lot of occupations in both low- and high-skilled jobs. You'd feel an impact and loss in many, many different occupations and industries, from construction and landscape to finance and IT."
Although US-born workers could fill some of those jobs, Costa claims, there would nevertheless be large gaps in several sectors that would cause a decline in the economy. Immigrants earned $1.3 trillion and contributed $105 billion in state and local taxes and nearly $224 billion in federal taxes in 2014, according to the Partnership for a New American Economy and based on analysis of the US Census Bureau's latest American Community Survey. In 2014 immigrants had almost $927 billion in consumer spending power. "Immigrants are a very vital part of what makes the US economy work," Jeremy Robbins, the executive director of the Partnership for a New American Economy, a group of 500 pro-immigrant Republican, Democratic, and independent mayors and business leaders, tells ABC News. "They help drive every single sector and industry in this economy,” he says. “If you look at the great companies driving the US as an innovation hub, you'll see that a lot of companies were started by immigrants or the child of immigrants, like Apple and Google,” he notes, referring to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, whose biological father was a Syrian refugee, as well as Google (now Alphabet) co-founder Sergey Brin, who was born in Moscow.
Although immigrants make up about thirteen percent of the US population, they contribute almost fifteen percent of the country's economic output, according to an Economic Policy Institute 2014 report. "Immigrants have an outsized role in US economic output because they are disproportionately likely to be working and are concentrated among prime working ages," the EPI report says. "Moreover, many immigrants are business owners. In fact, the share of immigrant workers who own small businesses is slightly higher than the comparable share among US-born workers." David Kallick, the director of the Immigration Research Initiative at the Fiscal Policy Institute, says that immigrants do not “steal” jobs from Americans. “It may seem surprising, but study after study has shown that immigration actually improves wages to US-born workers and provides more job opportunities for US-born workers," he tells ABC News. "The fact is that immigrants often push US-born workers up in the labor market rather than out of it." Kallick adds that studies he has done found that "where there's economic growth there's immigration, and where there's not much economic growth, there's not much immigration."
Meg Wiehe, the director of programs for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, says undocumented immigrants also contribute a substantial amount in taxes. "Undocumented immigrants contributed more than $11.6 billion in state and local taxes each year. And if the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants here were given a pathway to citizenship or legal residential status, those tax contributions could rise by nearly $2 billion." Additionally, she says, the “vast majority” of undocumented immigrants pay income tax using the I-10 income tax return form.
To raise awareness and demonstrate the impact of immigrants in the American economy, many cities across the US last week held “A Day Without Immigrants” protests, when immigrants refused to go to work, attend school, and shop. The protests were held in response to President Trump’s anti-immigrant executive orders to increase deportations of undocumented immigrants, build a wall along the US-Mexico border, and conduct "extreme vetting" of immigrants from seven predominately Muslim countries. Hundreds of business owners in Washington, D.C., Austin, Texas, Boston, Philadelphia, and other cities participated. But not everyone supported the protesters. Jim Serowski, founder of JVS Masonry in Commerce City, Colorado, fired his foreman and thirty bricklayers who failed to show up for work. "If you're going to stand up for what you believe in, you have to be willing to pay the price," he tells CNN. Others feel that support for undocumented immigrants is misplaced. “Of course, nobody wants to do without immigrants—they are what made America,” Sarah Crysl Akhtar from New Hampshire tells the New York Times. “But there is a difference between legal immigrants and illegal aliens.” The latter, she says, “bring down the quality of life for everyone.”
While the economic impact of the Day Without Immigrants protest is not clear, many recent anti-Trump boycotts and protests have raised awareness and put pressure on lawmakers and the Trump administration. For Andy Shallal, an Iraqi-American entrepreneur who closed all six locations of his D.C.-area performance venue chain Busboys and Poets, it was a chance to call for "humanistic" immigration reform. "I want to make sure that immigrants, such as myself and others, don’t live in fear," he says. He adds: "There are times when standing on the sidelines is not an option. This is one of those times."