It's the Brian Larry Show on WNYC.

Good morning again, everyone.

Today we turn to news of the Trump administration's crackdown on legal immigration. Earlier this month,

President Donald Trump signed an executive order upending two categories of worker visas.

The H-1B visa is the United States' largest visa category for workers with specialized skills.

We'll get into some details on what skills. Employers petition,

it's the employers, on the behalf of workers for specialty occupations that require

at least a bachelor's degree or the equivalent, and that presumably there aren't enough Americans

to fill those jobs. The annual limit of visas is currently 85,000, that's 85,000 per

year, set all the way back in 1990 when the program began, that stat according to a recent New York

Times article. Now, in recent years from fiscal 2017 to 2022, for example, that five-year period, the largest number of H-1B petitioners

were based in New York City, 372,100 H-1B visa petition approvals. That's 15% of all H-1B visa

petition approvals in the country are in New York.

According to the nonprofit, nonpartisan American Immigration Council, we'll talk to someone

from there in a sec.

But the Trump administration has long held that these H-1B recipients displace American workers,

particularly those who work in fields like software engineering,

research, and other kinds of engineering. The new executive order imposes a $100,000 fee, a $100,000

fee for new applicants. In addition to that category, the Trump administration has replaced the

EB1 and EB2 visa categories. Those used to go to people of, quote, exceptional value to the

United States, vaguely defined in that way. In place of that, the administration has rolled

out a $1 million, quote, fast track for wealthy foreigners to live and work in the United

...