President Trump acted within his lawful powers when he imposed a $100,000 fee for some new guest workers under the H-1B high-skilled visa program, a federal judge has ruled.
Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama appointee to the court in Washington, said Congress has granted the president far-ranging powers to control foreigners who enter the country, both as immigrants or as visitors such as guest workers.
She said it also includes the power to impose conditions on those who enter.
“The parties’ vigorous debate over the ultimate wisdom of this political judgment is not within the province of the courts. So long as the actions dictated by the policy decision and articulated in the Proclamation fit within the confines of the law, the Proclamation must be upheld,” Judge Howell wrote in her ruling Tuesday.
The H-1B program is considered the main guest-worker program for high-skilled foreigners. It’s heavily used by tech companies and universities.
But it’s been criticized as a way for American firms to undercut U.S. workers by offering jobs at lower wages.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce had sued, arguing that the country has an economic need for the H-1B workers and that the president’s decision wasn’t well-reasoned, leaving him in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.
Judge Howell was sympathetic to the economic argument but said that’s a matter for the political branches to fight out. She said the president’s actions didn’t on their face run afoul of that procedural law.
Mr. Trump himself has expressed varied views on the H-1B program.
His wife, first lady Melania Trump, is reported to have used it at one point to enter the U.S. in the 1990s. And Mr. Trump has frequently said the U.S. needs the high-skilled workers.
“If you have to bring people to get those plants opened, we want you to do that, and we want those people to teach our people how to make computer chips and how to make other things,” Mr. Trump said last month.
He went on to declare being in favor of high-skilled guest workers consistent with his “America First” approach to governing.
“This is MAGA,” he said.
But just months earlier, he signed a proclamation declaring the H-1B program out of control, justifying the $100,000 fee.
He said the number of foreign science, technology, engineering and math workers in the U.S. doubled from 1.2 million in 2000 to 2.5 million in 2019, or twice the rate of job growth in STEM.
“And the key facilitator for this influx of foreign STEM labor has been the abuse of the H-1B visa,” he said.
The new $100,000 H-1B fee applies to potential workers who are not yet in the U.S.
Companies won’t have to pay to extend a current H-1B visa holder’s permit and it won’t apply to foreigners here under another status, such as students, seeking an H-1B visa.
The theory behind the fee is that it makes American workers more attractive, and only companies that cannot find a U.S. person to take the job will be willing to pay up.
Homeland Security has also proposed a rewrite of the H-1B rules to give preference to the highest-paying jobs, figuring those are least likely to undercut Americans because companies will be willing to pay more to get skills they cannot train for in the U.S.
Judge Howell, in her ruling, noted Mr. Trump’s statements of support for the foreign workers.
She said his actions remain lawful nonetheless.
