Presumptive Democratic president nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden decried President Donald Trump’s recent executive order to restrict many employee-related visas, saying he would instantly end the restrictions upon taking office.
Saying Trump ended H-1B visas for skilled temporary workers for the rest of the year, Biden declared in an NBC townhall-style discussion on Saturday with former Guam governor and Trump surrogate Eddie Baza Calvo: “That will not be in my administration.”
“The people coming on these visas have built this country,” Biden said.
The remark drew an immediate rebuke from NumbersUSA, an organization that advocates for reduced immigration.
“He said the H-1Bs built this country? So the country didn’t exist before 1990? That is interesting,” NumbersUSA Policy Director Rosemary Jenks told Breitbart.com.
At issue was Trump’s order on June 21 to extend a ban on green cards issued outside the United States until the end of the year and adding many temporary work visas to the freeze, including those used heavily by technology companies and multinational corporations.
The reason cited was to lower unemployment among Americans thrown out of work due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. The move is expected to free up to 525,000 jobs for Americans.
The H-1B program was created in the 1990s as a method to help American firms deal with labor shortages in rapidly growing fields that demand specialized skills, such as research, engineering and computer programming.
However, many critics have characterized the program as a loophole to allow companies fill positions with lower-wage foreigners that displace Americans.
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