President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will eliminate a loophole in the asylum system that gives out work permits to about 50,000 border crossers every year.
As part of a broader effort to reduce illegal and legal immigration while more than 30 million Americans are unemployed, DHS will issue a regulation that prevents border crossers from quickly obtaining work permits to take American jobs without securing asylum.
DHS Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli said more than 50,000 work permits are issued annually to border crossers who have not filed for asylum, had their asylum claims adjudicated, or who have committed crimes.
The regulation, Cuccinelli said, eliminates “the incentive to file asylum applications for the purpose of getting a work permit. … We’re closing a tremendous number of loopholes in that system.”
Border crossers will no longer be able to secure work permits “unless and until your asylum claim is actually adjudicated and you’re found to be an appropriate asylee.”
The administration expects wage and job gains for America’s working class by closing the loophole, as most of all the jobs held by this group of foreign nationals are in blue-collar industries.
Before the Chinese coronavirus crisis, Trump had successfully driven down illegal immigration through a legal wall that helped secure month-after-month wage hikes for working-class Americans.
In December 2019, just a couple of months before the crisis, the tightened labor market helped the bottom 25 percent tier of American workers get the largest wage hike compared to all other wage earners.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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