Good Luck Recruiting Top Talent, America

The Trump White House has devoted much of its first year to putting America first, cracking down on who can come into this country--from promising a wall along the US-Mexico border and the deportation of thousands of undocumented immigrants, to numerous attempts at a travel ban blocking entrance for people from several Muslim-majority countries. But under the America First banner, the administration has been quietly but vastly increasing hurdles in another area: for foreign nationals looking to live and work legally in the US. Since the spring, the Trump administration has introduced a number of administrative changes aimed specifically at increasing scrutiny on work visa applications. Issued through policy memoranda from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency tasked with handling and adjudicating work and citizenship applications, the revisions have largely flown under the radar, as many of them have been incremental or seem innocuous on the surface. What's more, because a large number of the changes are adjustments to existing department policies or guidance, many have been able to go into effect immediately, without needing to undergo a formal rule proposal process or public comment period.