“Using a coronavirus package to give more green cards to shady investors from the country where the virus originated would be Washington at its worst,” said RJ Hauman, government relations director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, who has been in touch with the White House and the Senate about the proposal. “If an immigration proposal doesn’t enhance public safety or protect American workers, it doesn’t belong in there. Period.”
The proposal comes as the Trump administration is putting temporary holds on other types of visas for lower-income immigrants — including agricultural workers, camp counselors and resort workers — as U.S. unemployment is expected to soar.
The administration is also considering reversing its recent decision to increase by 35,000 the number of nonagricultural seasonal workers the U.S. brings in each year, such as landscapers, crab-pickers and lifeguards, two people familiar with the situation say.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump made cracking down on immigration the centerpiece of his 2016 campaign and a top priority of his presidency. “Our country is full,” Trump warned in April, standing at the southern border in California.
He has implemented harsh travel restrictions on numerous majority-Muslim nations and cut refugee caps, but he has also backed proposals that would increase the number of immigrants and offer citizenship to some here illegally.
The EB-5 program was created in 1990 to boost rural areas and economically distressed urban ones. But in recent years developers have found ways to carve high-income areas into the locations.
Source: politico.com
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