President Trump promised new executive actions on immigration, creating confusing statements about plans involving the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and regarding merit-based immigration intended to bring in highly skilled workers into the United States. President Trump made statements regarding immigration such as “Nobody will have done what I’m doing in the next four weeks.” This comes after the U.S. President announced “very big” changes to merit-based immigration and announcing that he would sign an immigration bill as an executive order to give a DACA recipients a path to citizenship.

President Trump said he would soon announce “a very good bill and merit-based bill” and that one of the focuses would be around DACA. The issue with this is, although DACA is within the purview of executive powers, merit-based changes will have to go through legislation, through the approval of the House of Representatives and Senate which will likely see challenges by the Democratic Party.

There are no exact details on the measures of this bill, but White House spokesman Judd Deere said the U.S. President would be “working on an executive order to establish a merit-based immigration system to further protect U.S. workers.” Trump added, he is willing to work with Congress on a negotiated legislative solution to DACA that could include citizenship, but not amnesty.

The Trump Administration has long challenged the immigration system in the United States saying that it should favor high-skilled immigrants admitted for “merit” instead of family connections. Currently, the administration has paused the issuance of green cards to many individuals living outside of the country, including relatives of permanent residents and suspending the diversity visa lottery for people from certain countries.

With the United States election coming up in November, it would be difficult to see a groundbreaking deal being struck between Democrats and Republicans.

As of date no details have been promoted by the Trump Administration in respect to what kinds of changes could occur in the merit-based immigration system. Past statements by the Trump Administration have included proposing a points system that brings in skilled labor depending on the skilled worker’s age, skills, talents and achievements. New immigrants and nonimmigrants could also face having to demonstrate financial self-sufficiency, knowledge of English, and passing a national civics exam prior to being granted a visa. These are all however speculative as no details have emerged yet about these proposed changes. Alternatively, the Trump Administration could increase requirements to obtain a visa through the merit-based system. This measure could affect a number of different visas most commonly seen in the merit-based and employment-based immigration applications such as the H-1B system as commonly used in the technology sector.

As we obtain more information, we will continue to provide our clients and dedicated readers with information as we learn about the immigration system in the United States. As always, if you have any questions, please contact your attorney or our helpful staff at International Legal and Business Services Group, LLP.

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