Trump's Stealth Attack on Skilled Migration
The Mother Jones Podcast
Mother Jones
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 4 December 2019
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
President Donald Trump has said he welcomes "brilliant" skilled immigrants to the United States. In this week's episode, Mother Jones senior data reporter Sinduja Rangarajan investigates the Trump administration's efforts to build a bureaucratic wall to keep out these very immigrants. As part of a 8-month collaboration with Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, she reports on how the administration has been rejecting record numbers of applications for coveted H-1B "tech visas," spreading confusion and panic among visa holders, some of whom have lived in the country for years. She also built a database that documents an unprecedented flurry of lawsuits alleging that the administration is applying the H-1B rules arbitrarily and in violation of the spirit of the law. Listen as Sinduja profiles an Indian immigrant who saw his life suddenly upended and as she talks about her own connection to the story.
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Mother Jones Podcast. |
| 0:03.0 | I'm Jamila King in New York. |
| 0:05.0 | On today's show, |
| 0:12.0 | on today's show, President Trump said he would make it easier for skilled immigrants to work in the United States. |
| 0:20.0 | But visa denials have skyrocketed, contradicting as promises. |
| 0:25.0 | Now skilled immigrants face a different kind of wall, a red tape. |
| 0:30.0 | This stealth immigration strategy explained. |
| 0:35.0 | Stick around. |
| 0:37.0 | This is really interesting reporting. |
| 0:44.0 | It all started when my mother Jones colleague, |
| 0:47.0 | Sindhooja Rangarajan, heard that immigration lawyers |
| 0:51.0 | were filing more and more H-1B lawsuits than ever before. |
| 0:55.0 | Sindhooja is a data journalist, so she started building a database. |
| 1:02.0 | The data she collected showed that H-1-1-1-1. So she started building a database. |
| 1:02.6 | The data she collected showed that H-1B visa denials |
| 1:06.4 | have skyrocketed under Trump. |
| 1:08.7 | So whose visas are getting denied? |
| 1:11.2 | Why? |
| 1:12.4 | And are those denials even legitimate? In this episode, |
| 1:16.4 | Sin Dutuja partnered with the team at Reveal, one of our very favorite podcasts |
| 1:20.9 | hosted by Al Lettson and produced by the Center for |
| 1:24.4 | Investigative Reporting and PRX to get to the bottom of Trump's crackdown on the |
... |
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