The White House is quietly making life hard for high-skilled immigrants

白宫悄然改变的政策让技术移民的生活更加艰难

723 words

WASHINGTON, DC

WHEN SURESH IYER, who designs trading technology for a large financial firm in New York, moved to America from Mumbai in 2013 he was not sure how long he would stay. But his career thrived, his wife moved to join him and soon they had a daughter. The family put down roots and decided they would like to settle permanently. But it is not easy. Mr Iyer—a pseudonym—is on anH1B visa, a temporary permit for highly-skilled workers. He and his wife qualify for green cards (and their daughter is an American citizen). But thanks to a new annual cap on the number of cards available to Indian workers, they could be waiting decades to get them. Mr Iyer’s feels his life is on hold. “It is getting crazier and crazier,” he says.

2013年, Suresh Iyer从孟买搬到了纽约，为一家大型金融机构设计交易系统，当时并不确定他会在美国待多久。随着他的事业蒸蒸日上，Iyer将妻子也接了过来，不久之后他们的女儿诞生了。背井离乡的一家人决定在美国永久居住，但这并非易事，Iyer（化名）和妻子拿的是H1B签证，为高级技术人员提供的一种临时许可证；虽然他们夫妻有绿卡资格（女儿是美国公民），但由于每年对印度移民发放的绿卡数量有规定限额，他们可能要等上几十年才能轮到。Iyer觉得自己的生活停滞不前，他说“事情变得越来越难办了”。

Since long before his election in 2016 Donald Trump has attacked undocumented immigrants, whom he sees as criminals coming to sell drugs, commit crimes and steal jobs. His signature policy, to build a wall on the Mexican border, has been fitfully effected, though without the alligator moat he reportedly wanted. When Mr Trump first promised to construct the wall, he said it would have a “big beautiful door” to let in legal migrants. In fact, under his administration, legal migrants are finding themselves shut out too. It is not only those banned by the president’s more dramatic executive orders; families like Mr Iyer’s are being affected by the grinding of sand into the wheels of the immigration system. The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), an industry group, calls this the president’s invisible wall.

fitfully adv. 断断续续地；发作地

早在2016年Donald Trump当选之前，他就已经开始打击非法移民了，他把移民看作是来美国贩毒的罪犯，抢夺工作机会。Trump在美墨边界建立隔离墙的标志性政策断断续续地进行着，虽然他反复说要建一条鳄鱼护城河的愿望没有实现。一开始Trump说要建隔离墙的时候，还说墙里会开一扇“美丽的门”让合法移民进入美国，结果在他的领导下，合法移民现在也进不来了。被政策拦住的移民不仅是政府认为的那些人，还有像Iyer的家庭一样被老鼠屎坏掉的粥。

Waiting times for almost all sorts of visas, permits and renewals have shot up. Applying for a green card while in the United States took six and a half months in 2016; it now takes almost a year. Work permits, typically issued to the spouses of certain foreign workers, which used to take two months to process, now take almost twice that on average. Overall the “adjudication rate”, or the share of applications processed in a given year, has fallen sharply, from 72% in 2015 to 56% last year. The number of visa forms outstanding is at its highest level ever, with 5.7m outstanding.

各种签证、许可、更新的等待时长都延长了，2016年申请美国绿卡只需要6.5个月，如今几乎要等一年才能发放。工作许可，尤其是签发给外国务工人员配偶的许可，以前只需要2个月的时间就能处理完成，现在平均要4个月。总体来说，一年内的“判决率”或者说申请处理率骤降，从15年的72%下降到19年的56%。而被评委杰出的签证表格比以往任何时候都多，达到了570万份。

Is this gumming up of the system deliberate? It is hard to prove that, says Sarah Pierce, of the Migration Policy Institute, a think-tank. But several policies seem perfectly designed to lengthen queues. All employment-based green-card applicants must now have a face-to-face interview, which swallows up officials’ time. More and more applicants for work visas are being asked to provide supporting documents to show what their job will involve or prove their qualifications. Before Mr Trump took office, at most a fifth of workers were asked for extra evidence. In the final quarter of last year, three-fifths were.

是政府有意在拖延办理时间吗？移民政策研究所（一个智库）的Sarah Pierce说这很难证实，但很多政策已经能看出有意延缓进度的端倪—所有以雇佣关系为基础的绿卡申请者现在都需要面对面谈话，这非常耗时。越来越多工作签证的申请者被要求出示相关证明文件，证明他们的具有该工作相关的能力。Trump上台之前，只有五分之一的人需要出示额外的证明资料，截止到19年第四季度，这个比例上涨到了五分之三。

And it is getting more expensive. Applying for a marriage-based green card, which costs $1,760 now, will rise to $2,750. Becoming a citizen will go from $640 to $1,170. Some people would even have to pay $50 to apply for asylum. Yet staffing is not increasing. In fact, as Greg Chen ofAILA points out, some of the agency’s budget has even been directed towards Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency responsible for deportations.

美国移民律师协会（American Immigration Lawyers Associations）

除此之外，申请费用也变高了。婚姻关系绿卡将从目前的1760美元上涨到2750，成为公民身份从640上涨到1170，有些人甚至还要为申请庇护多付50美元。然而员工人数却没有增加，美国移民律师协会的Greg Chen指出，一些机构的预算拨给了移民和海关执法局，用以开展驱逐出境和遣返工作。

When somebody was refused an extension to their visa in the past, they were usually trusted to leave the country (and most did). These days they are thrown straight into immigration courts for deportation, says Mr Chen. Many of these people probably qualified for a visa, and simply made a mistake in filling in their applications.

Chen说，以往要是有人不愿延长签证，可以自行离开美国（大部分人是这样），如今这些人会直接被送上移民法庭驱逐出境。他们中大部分人符合签证资格，可能只是填写申请表的时候犯了小错而已。

Some groups have been singled out. In April 2017 Mr Trump signed the “Buy American, Hire American” executive order. That tightened rules on theH1B visas, the one Mr Iyer uses, most of which go to Indian tech workers. Since Mr Trump’s executive order, denial rates have shot up, particularly at large Indian-owned consultancies. In 2016 Infosys, one such company which is the largest single recipient ofH1Bs, was allowed 14,000 visas. Just 3% of applicants were rejected. By last year, the figure had fallen to just 3,200 and 36% of applicants were rejected. Consultancies are being told to provide evidence of exactly which clients their workers would be serving, for the three-year length of their visas. So much for that big beautiful door.■

2017年4月Trump签署了行政命令，要求“买自己的产品，请自己的人”，这将一些团体排除在外，这也使得H1B签证和Iyer这样的印度技术工人处境更加艰难。自从命令签署以来，拒绝率飞快上升，尤其是大型的印资咨询企业。2016年Infosys（持有H1B签证员工最多的公司）有14000个签证名额，只有3%的申请者被拒绝。但去年，名额下降到了3200，因此36%的申请者遭到了拒绝。咨询公司还要提供证据，证明他们的员工为期三年的签证将为哪些客户提供服务。这扇大门可真是太漂亮了。