In part one of this podcast series, Jim Plunkett (shareholder, Washington, D.C.) and Meagan Dziura (of counsel, Raleigh) discuss the significant impacts of immigration policies during President Trump's second term. The speakers delve into the administration's use of executive orders, the heightened scrutiny on student visas, and the broader implications for employment-based immigration, providing listeners with a comprehensive update on the evolving landscape and what to expect moving forward.
Transcript
Announcer: Welcome to the Ogletree Deakins podcast, where we provide listeners with brief discussions about important workplace legal issues. Our podcasts are for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. You can subscribe through your favorite podcast service. Please consider rating this podcast so we can get your feedback and improve our programs. Please enjoy the podcast.
Meagan Dziura: Hi everyone, and welcome to a special immigration
podcast episode, addressing immigration impacts under the Trump
presidency. I'm Meagan Dziura. I am of counsel out of the
Raleigh, North Carolina, office, and I have here Jim Plunkett, who
is out of our D.C. office. He is one of our government affairs
shareholders, and I invited him here to do a follow-up to our
pre-election podcast, where we looked at the two different
potential administrations, what we thought would happen with
immigration if either one was elected, and now we're
here.
It's been a long four years; we're only 140 days in. And
we're just going to do sort of a quick update on what's
been going on in immigration and hopefully hit all the sort of
notes that have been going on. So, since Trump won the election, I
had a baby. Trump was sworn in; he did some executive orders. So,
Jim, from your side, are you feeling the impacts from the first 140
days, or is it just relating to immigration that I'm really
feeling a lot of impacts?
Jim Plunkett: No, I mean, feeling the impacts would be a little
bit of an understatement, Meagan, and thank you for having me back.
I think this is a great opportunity to revisit that discussion that
we had several months ago because we plan so much, and we sort of
looked into the crystal ball, and I think a lot of what we talked
about has sort of come to fruition, but like everything else in the
D.C. policy world, the devil is in the details. And I don't
think really any of us really anticipated the scope and the breadth
and the speed at which a lot of these changes have occurred.
So hopefully, our brief discussion today will provide our listeners
with a little bit of a nice background as to where we've been,
and where we are, and where we're going. And yeah, before we
started talking, I said one of the things that I wanted to mention
very briefly at the outset is the use of executive orders. And this
has become a favorite tool of presidents in previous
administrations, right? It's not just the Trump administration.
We remember President Obama famously said, "I've got a
pen, and I've got a phone."
The DACA order was an executive action, so it's not executive
orders—obviously—didn't start with Trump, but he
has really leaned into them quite a bit as a favorite tool for his
policy-making agenda. And in particular, he's used them quite a
bit in the immigration space. And we saw literally on the first
day, multiple executive orders dealing with immigration. Now, most
of these dealt with or concern illegal immigration, the southern
border, asylees, refugees, that sort of sphere, and the immigration
policy world. There is the enhanced vetting there, the executive
order that he issued right there at the beginning. And we'll
talk a little bit about that, how that's sort of coming into
play these days.
I think with regard to students, most specifically, but it really
demonstrates the use of the executive orders really demonstrates, I
think President Trump's preference for enacting policy changes
this way. We will talk a little bit about the regulatory process in
a few minutes, and Congress, do they still have a role to play at
all? But the executive order, the use of executive orders is
clearly a favorite tool of President Trump. And so, because of
that, it sort of puts us all on edge as to what's going to come
next, and the idea that that can happen at any time. Legislation
takes a while; it percolates; it goes through hearings; there's
amendments; it goes through the House; it goes through the Senate.
Same thing with a regulatory process.
It's a lengthy process with notice and comment rulemaking. But
when these executive orders or executive actions like terminating
TPS or the CHMV program, and those can sort of happen spontaneously
without warning and have a pretty immediate effect, it puts
stakeholders on edge. And I think we're going to be on edge for
the remaining four years. Travel bans, that's another thing.
When is the travel ban? Are there going to be travel bans
happening? So that's just something, and then unfortunately, I
don't have a good advice for you or for our listeners on how to
handle that or respond to that, but it just is what it is that
we're always on the brink of a new executive order that could
flip immigration policy on its head.
Meagan Dziura: Yeah, no, that's a really good point. And to
your point about we're not really sure what's coming, but
we have to be on our toes. I will say we have sort of a group
within the practice where as soon as one of these comes out, and it
doesn't have to be just an executive order, but something in
the executive branch, as soon as something comes out, we're
drafting up an alert and trying to really analyze and see what
impacts, if any, would have on our client's population.
So everyone is really sprung and ready when these things come down,
which is good. But of course, it just takes a lot of coordination
to really make sure that our clients are informed as soon as these
things happen.
Jim Plunkett: And it's pretty unique to our immigration
practice group now that I'm thinking about it, Meagan, that
because of what I just said about Congress and the regulatory
process, our colleagues in Ogletree who are in other practice
areas, of course, they're on their toes and they're ready
to respond and serve their clients quickly. But immigration is, I
think, uniquely positioned, but maybe it sounds a little bit too
positive, but is in this unique position that things can change on
a dime.
I've heard stories about the first Trump administration about
some of our colleagues running to the airport when some of the
travel bans were happening. So, I don't envy you, but as you
said, we've got these protocols and processes in place to make
sure that the clients get the information that they need as soon as
we get it.
Meagan Dziura: Yeah, I used to, in the first Trump presidency, I
was practicing, and I carried around G-28s in my car. In case G-28
is a form, you can enter an appearance as an attorney for someone
who's filing an immigration petition. I carried them around in
my car in case I need it at a moment's notice to enter my
appearance for someone who may be in trouble. I haven't started
that this time, but we'll see. Even though we are seeing these
immediate sort of everyone jump to try to figure out the impacts,
potential impacts, I will say not everything has had an actual
impact yet.
We are still seeing almost business as usual with approvals, and
with visas still being approved for the majority of our clients,
it's really just that things have become more difficult in the
process of getting that thing filed with the government. So
that's the good part, is we haven't seen a huge devastating
impact on the actual ability to keep people work authorized. I
think that could change. We'll talk a little bit about the
scrutiny on student visas, but at least with H-1Bs, we haven't
seen a huge impact or even L's transfers from, regardless of
the country of origin, right now. And not saying that couldn't
change, but so far, it's been still okay on that end.
Jim Plunkett: Yeah, I think it's a little bit, and I don't know if we talked about this on our previous podcast, Meagan, but I know that I've had other discussions with our colleagues about this and clients about this that we all sort of figured that the unlawful immigration policy initiatives would happen first, that that would be the sort first phase. And of course, yes, we're seeing impacts on employment-based immigration policy, which we'll talk about, but this sort of direct and immediate assault hasn't happened yet, but it very well could be. And we'll sort of wrap up our discussion talking about what we think might be happening in the future. But yeah, I agree with you about that sort of so far, so good, I guess, or everything's all relative, right? And so, relatively speaking, and knock on wood, so far so good.
Meagan Dziura: Yeah, just everyone's on their toes and I think prepping for the worst, which it's always good to be prepared for that, so.
Jim Plunkett: For sure.
Meagan Dziura: I'll just go over a little bit about what we
want to talk about today. We're going to talk about just legal
immigration impacts, and that'll include students, TPS
rollbacks. There's a recent DACA, a recent development in DACA.
I'll go over a little bit of enforcement. And then Jim's
going to talk about legislative actions regulatory agenda. And I
think throughout we're just going to talk about the future
outlook, but we can end with a discussion of that. Also, start with
the big things we're seeing in legal immigration, and I'll
mostly focus on employment-based immigration, what I work in, but
this is going to include students.
So, we've had some developments in the past, literally two days
for impacting F-1 students. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a
statement yesterday that said, under President Trump's
leadership, the U.S. State Department will work with DHS to
aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those
with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in
critical fields.
We'll also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all
future visa applications from the People's Republic of China
and Hong Kong. So, this is the latest in the screening on foreign
students. I have a whole timeline of how this has been building,
but I just want everyone to keep in mind this has a broader impact
than just students coming to the U.S. for say, a four-year
bachelor's degree or a master's degree, because the F-1 and
J-1, so that's the students and the exchange visitor visa,
because those are used by also Ph.D. researchers.
Those can also be used for postdocs. So, someone has a Ph.D. and
wants to remain as a researcher. This also could be just J-1
exchange researchers, often including professors, med students, who
use J-1 doctors who may be in residency or research, also use J-1s.
So that's just in the university setting. Outside the
university setting, F-1s can actually get work authorization with
employment in industry, and they can work after graduation for up
to three years, depending on their program of study.
And so these graduates, at least what we see, they're typically
working in these high-tech or research fields. So, by going after
these student visas, it's not actually just going to be limited
to universities. I think this actually will have a big ripple
through businesses. So right now, we're kind of preparing our
clients for the potential disruptions for, of course, Chinese
national students if they're going to start revoking work
authorization. But there could be significant delays in new student
visa processing everywhere for any student from any origin. And so
that's something that we're really looking at now.
We're not sure how far it's going to go or if this
additional scrutiny could expand to other visas that Chinese
nationals are holding in the U.S. So, this impact could be really,
really broad.
Jim Plunkett: Yeah, I mean is as you mentioned, Meagan, foreign
national students have been a target of the administration, I
think, in a way that many policy watchers didn't really expect.
Though we know that these kinds of programs are probably not going
to be favored by this administration. And I think the statement
from Rubio that dovetails with the news that broke earlier this
week, that also ultimately came from him, likely a cable to
consulates to say, Hey, don't bother scheduling anymore. Visa
interviews with folks who are planning on studying in the United
States, because we're going to be implementing some new social
media vetting protocols,
Which probably has its impetus in that enhanced vetting executive
order. I mentioned at the outset we've got a statement about
China, the statement about canceling. We're not scheduling new
interviews. And then just last week, Meagan, the President,
Trump's nominee to run USCIS, the US Citizenship and
Immigration Services, Joseph Edlow. He was at his confirmation
hearing at the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Michael Lee asked
him about Optional Practical Training, which you alluded to there
with the three-year extension. And Lee sort of gave him this
open-ended question about what Edlow would like to see if he were
confirmed as the director of USCIS.
And this is the quote from Edlow, and I've got it here in front
of me. And he said, what I want to see would be essentially a
regulatory and sub-regulatory program that would allow us to remove
the ability for employment authorizations for F-1 students beyond
the time that they are in school. Clearly, he's not a fan of
STEM OPT, and I think this could be sort of that first, or not
first glance know sort of an initial foreshadowing of that, of how
the employment-based immigration policy is going to be the new
focus or a new front that the administration is going to open up in
their immigration policy efforts.
Meagan Dziura: And this has been sort of a pattern since the
beginning of April. We started seeing ICE terminating SEVIS records
of F-1s and J-1s, and SEVIS is the program by which universities
sort of issue paperwork for F-1s and J-1s in order to study in the
U.S. It's not actually run by USCIS; it's run by Department
of State, and ICE oversees it. So, we actually started seeing, just
without warning, these records being terminated, and it was sort of
linked. People believe that students who may have been active on
social media or may have been in protests or may have had
disciplinary records, then there was a bit of an uproar.
These SEVIS records were then reinstated, and in some cases, the
Department of State revoked some actual visas for people to not be
able to travel on. F-1s, it's been a bit of a back and forth
with the F-1 visas, which really leads me to believe that they
really are trying to go after them. I think they're trying to
find the best way to do it, and the best way to do it may be
without some challenges.
Jim Plunkett: And I think, too, Meagan, that the university students sort of fit in this. If you picture a Venn diagram, the administration's policy priorities, and you've got immigration and diversity, equity, inclusion, anti-Semitism, know, combating anti-Semitism, and right in the middle of that Venn diagram is higher education and colleges and universities.
Meagan Dziura: And I think we could talk a lot about the student impact. We could talk a lot about, or we could go on for a while about the student impact.
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