Contact: Armando Carmona, 951-966-6500, [email protected]
Los Angeles - Today, President Trump extended and amended his executive order issued on April 22, 2020, seeking to limit legal immigration under the excuse to protect “US workers” during the Pandemic. This executive order follows the implementation of a rule to make it even more difficult than what it already is for asylum seekers to obtain a work-permit during the lengthy and burdensome asylum process that will harm immigrant communities.
Megan Essaheb, Director of Immigration Advocacy at Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC:
“Trump continues to advance his xenophobic agenda to divide the country and scapegoat immigrants. He’s used every moment of crisis, every failure of his as an opportunity to expand his nativist policies and prevent hardworking families from reunification . It’s hypocrisy to utilize COVID-19 as an excuse as the U.S has more than 2 million infections and millions of jobs have been lost because of it. This action not only separates families it will hamper our nation's ability to fully recover.
Despite these efforts to divide us, immigrants and refugees are working alongside every American towards overcoming the COVID-19 virus and also defeating the plague of racism. Now, it’s up to Congress to ensure that the family-based green cards don't get lost and force hundreds of thousands of immigrants to wait an extra year to reunite with their families after decades of waiting. We must ensure that the family-based visas rollover into Fiscal Year 2021 so that the millions of long backlogs do not continue to increase.”
Alvina Yeh, Executive Director of Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, AFL-CIO:
“Our communities across the country and the world are suffering from COVID-19 due to the failures of leadership by elected officials and greedy corporations Who are not doing their part to ensure the safety of their workers.Instead of building infrastructure for testing, contact tracing, and PPE that would diminish the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump Administration is going after immigrants and foreign workers in a bid to distract from its immense failures. The Administration has already killed more than 100,000 Americans due to their inaction on COVID-19: they are seeking to bring harm upon thousands more families with this immigrant ban. We condemn this executive order and will keep organizing to protect the most vulnerable workers.