The original executive order signed in April:

would temporarily suspends the issuance of new green cards, a limit on immigration he says will protect American jobs amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“In order to protect our great American workers, I have just signed an executive order temporarily suspending immigration into the United States,” Trump said at a White House briefing Wednesday.

“This will ensure that unemployed Americans of all backgrounds will be first in line for jobs as our economy reopens,” Trump continued. “It will also preserve our health care resources for American patients.”

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President Donald Trump signed an executive order temporarily halting work visas like the H-1B visa program for highly-skilled workers, cutting off a critical source of foreign labor for tech companies already complaining about tech talent shortages.

Visa-holders already in the U.S. and those applicants who have already received a visa are exempt from the ban. The restrictions are intended to last until the end of the year, which would disrupt the government’s typical process of awarding new visas at the beginning of the national fiscal calendar in October.

Officials from the Trump administration told the Wall Street Journal that the move is intended to protect American jobs, but executives in the technology industry have long warned that visa restrictions would hurt the nation’s ability to compete in industries that have both strategic and financial significance as engines of economic growth. More here.

The renewal of the April Executive Order applies to H-1B, L-1 and J visas. The goal is to protect an estimated 525,000 jobs where American citizens get first priority.

“President Trump has repeatedly promised that he would put American workers first, and to his credit, he did just that,” said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates for lower levels of immigration. FAIR had called on Trump to suspend guest worker visas.

“For the most part, the president withstood intense pressure from powerful business interests that continue to demand more cheap foreign labor, even as they have laid off an unprecedented number of American workers over the past three months ” Stein said.

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Sadly, it takes an executive order to protect American citizens and their jobs…

President Donald J. Trump Is Putting American Workers First as We Restore Our Economy to Greatness

LEADING AN AMERICA FIRST RECOVERY: President Donald J. Trump is extending and expanding the suspension of certain visas through the end of the year to ensure American workers take first priority as we recover from the economic effects of the coronavirus.

• President Trump is extending the pause on new immigrant visas through the end of the year to ensure we continue putting American workers first during our ongoing coronavirus recovery.
• President Trump is building on this measure with an additional pause on several job-related nonimmigrant visas—H-1Bs, H-2Bs without a nexus to the food-supply chain, certain H-4s, as well as Ls and certain Js—preserving jobs for American citizens.
• President Trump’s efforts will ensure businesses look to American workers first when hiring.
  • Many workers have been hurt through no fault of their own due to coronavirus and they should not remain on the sidelines while being replaced by new foreign labor.
• The Trump Administration has also finalized regulations to eliminate the incentive to file an asylum application for the primary purpose of obtaining an Employment Authorization Document.
• With some exceptions, we should not permit large numbers of foreign workers to enter the United States at a time when so many Americans are out of work.

MOVING TO A MERIT-BASED IMMIGRATION SYSTEM: The Trump Administration will reform our immigration system to prioritize the highest-skilled workers and protect American jobs.

• At President Trump’s direction, the Trump Administration is taking action to reform our H-1B immigration program.
• Under these reforms, the H-1B program will prioritize those workers who are offered the highest wage, ensuring that the highest-skilled applicants are admitted.
• The Trump Administration will also close loopholes that have allowed employers in the United States to replace American workers with low-cost foreign labor.
• These reforms will help protect the wages of American workers and ensure that foreign labor entering our country is high skilled and does not undercut the United States labor market.

WIDESPREAD SUPPORT FOR COMMONSENSE ACTION: The American people stand by President Trump as he takes commonsense action to preserve jobs for American citizens.

• Polls show that the overwhelming majority of Americans support pausing immigration as we recover as a Nation from the coronavirus pandemic.
  • A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found that 65% of those polled support pausing immigration into the country, including 61% of minority respondents.
  • A Pew Research Center poll found that 81% of Americans see mass immigration as a threat as we confront the challenges posed by the coronavirus.
• Democrats and liberal commentators used to support such commonsense efforts to protect American jobs.
  • Sen. Bernie Sanders: “You think we should open the borders and bring in a lot of low-wage workers, or do you think maybe we should try to get jobs for those [American] kids?”
  • Paul Krugman stated that “Immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants. That’s just supply and demand.”
  • Then-Sen. Barack Obama warned that mass migration “threatens to depress further the wages of blue-collar Americans and put strains on an already overburdened safety net.”