Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Homeland Security announces steps against H1B visa fraud

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Department of Homeland Security emblem is pictured at the National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) located just outside Washington in Arlington, Virginia September 24, 2010. REUTERS/Hyungwon Kang

By Julia Edwards Ainsley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced steps on Monday to prevent the fraudulent use of H1B visas, used by employers to bring in specialized foreign workers temporarily, which appeared to fall short of President Donald Trump’s campaign promises to overhaul the program.

A White House official said Trump may still do more on the program.

Trump had promised to end the lottery system for H1B visas, which gives each applicant an equal chance at 65,000 positions each year.

Lobbyists for businesses who rely on H1B visas, commonly used by the tech sector, had expected Trump to upend the lottery in favor of a system that prioritized workers who are highly skilled and would be highly paid in the United States.

The lottery for fiscal year 2018 opened on Monday without changes.

The start of the lottery was seen by those watching the issue as the unofficial deadline for the Trump administration to enact H1B visa reform, and the failure to meet that deadline signals that Trump’s promised overhaul of the system may be off the table or long delayed.

“More oversight is a good start, but employers can still use the program legally to depress wages and replace American workers. That falls short of the promises President Trump made to protect American workers,” said Peter Robbio, a spokesman for Numbers USA, a Washington-based group that advocates for limiting immigration into the United States.

The Trump administration has taken other steps to crackdown on H1B visa abuse, such as issuing a Justice Department warning to employers and announcing plans to increase transparency on applicants.

“These are important first steps to bring more accountability and transparency to the H1B system,” a White House official said. “The administration is considering several additional options for the president to use his existing authority to ensure federal agencies more rigorously enforce all aspects of the program.”

Tech companies rely on the program to bring in workers with special skills and have lobbied for an expansion of the number of H1B visas awarded.

Proponents of limiting legal immigration, including Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller, have argued the program gives jobs that Americans could fill to foreign workers at a less expensive cost.

The measures announced by DHS on Monday focus on site visits by U.S. authorities to employers who use H1B visas.

In future site visits, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agents will investigate incidents where an employer’s basic business information cannot be validated; businesses that have a high ratio of H1B employees compared with U.S. workers; and employers petitioning for H1B workers who work off-site.

(Editing by Matthew Lewis)

Caterpillar shuts plant in Aurora, Illinois, that employs 800

A Caterpillar corporate logo is pictured on a building in Peoria, Illinois, U.S. March 19, 2017. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

By Gayathree Ganesan and Akankshita Mukhopadhyay

(Reuters) – Caterpillar Inc <CAT.N> said on Friday it will shut its Aurora, Illinois, plant, costing about 800 employees their jobs as the world’s largest construction and mining equipment maker shifts production to other U.S. facilities.

Caterpillar was among companies that met with President Donald Trump in February to talk about job creation, at a time when about 2,300 U.S. workers at five major manufacturing companies stand to lose their jobs within the next two years as a result of offshoring.

The company said it will transition its large wheel loaders and compactors to its plant in Decatur, Illinois, and medium wheel loaders to North Little Rock, Arkansas.

“Out of about 800 production positions, about 500 positions would likely be added to Decatur and about 150 positions would be added in North Little Rock,” Caterpillar spokeswoman Lisa Miller told Reuters.

The company has already slashed its workforce by more than 16,000 to cope with a slumping economy and had said it would take another $500 million in restructuring costs in 2017.

Caterpillar said, in January, that it was considering closing two major production facilities, including the one in Aurora, Illinois, where it makes large-wheel loaders and compactors.

The plant closure is expected to be completed by the end of 2018, Caterpillar said in a statement.

The company in January forecast 2017 profit sharply below analysts’ estimates, hurt by sluggish demand in the construction and energy industries.

Caterpillar had about 95,400 full-time employees of whom 54,500 persons were located outside the United States as of Dec. 31, according to a regulatory filing.

(Reporting by Gayathree Ganesan and Akankshita Mukhopadhyay in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

China downplays tensions with U.S. as Xi prepares to meet Trump

Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump. REUTERS/File Photos

By Ben Blanchard and David Lawder

BEIJING/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Beijing sought to play down tensions with the United States and put on a positive face on Friday, as the U.S. administration slammed China on a range of business issues ahead of President Xi Jinping’s first meeting with President Donald Trump.

Trump set the tone for what could be a tense meeting at his Mar-a-Lago retreat next week by tweeting on Thursday that the United States could no longer tolerate massive trade deficits and job losses.

Trump said the highly anticipated meeting, which is also expected to cover differences over North Korea and China’s strategic ambitions in the South China Sea, “will be a very difficult one.”

Ahead of the meeting, Trump will sign executive orders on Friday aimed at identifying abuses that are causing massive U.S. trade deficits and clamping down on non-payment of anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties on imports, his top trade officials said.

Separately, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, controlled by the White House, said Beijing’s industrial policies and financial support for industries such as steel and aluminum have resulted in over-production and a flood of exports that have distorted global markets and undermined competitive companies.

Seeking to downplay the rift, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang reiterated a desire for cooperation on trade.

“With regard to the problems existing between China and the United States in trade relations, both sides should in a mutual respectful and mutual beneficial way find appropriate resolutions, and ensure the stable development of Sino-U.S. trade relations,” he told a daily news briefing.

The leaders of the world’s two largest economies are scheduled to meet next Thursday and Friday for the first time since Trump assumed office on Jan. 20.

Speaking earlier at a briefing on the Xi-Trump meeting, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang acknowledged the trade imbalance, but said it was mostly due to differences in their two economic structures and noted that China had a trade deficit in services.

“China does not deliberately seek a trade surplus. We also have no intention of carrying out competitive currency devaluation to stimulate exports. This is not our policy,” Zheng said.

CONCILIATORY TONE

State news agency Xinhua also struck a conciliatory tone.

“Of course, it would be naive to believe that the two sides can bridge their differences in a single diplomatic meeting,” it said in an English language commentary on Friday.

“Yet as long as the two nations can maintain their good faith, which they have shown recently, to talk and to make concessions based on mutual respect, then no difference would be too difficult to iron out.”

Trump has frequently accused China of keeping its currency artificially low against the dollar to make Chinese exports cheaper, and “stealing” American manufacturing jobs.

The yuan fell 6.5 percent last year in its biggest annual loss against the dollar since 1994, knocked by pressure from sluggish economic growth and a broadly strong U.S. currency.

Trump has resisted acting on a campaign promise to declare China a currency manipulator on his first day in office, but tensions have persisted over how his administration’s China policy would evolve.

While apprehensive about a trade war, the American business community in China has grown more vocal.

Fear of retaliation had once made business lobbies eschew more forceful U.S. trade policies toward China, but such groups have increasingly urged the Trump administration to take targeted action to address market access imbalances.

Zheng said domestic consumption in China will increase as it pursues economic reforms, helping to raise demand for foreign goods and services, including those from the United States.

“This also helps ameliorate the trade imbalance between China and the United States,” he said.

The trade imbalance could be resolved by improved cooperation, Zheng said, urging Washington to lift restrictions on civilian technology exports to China and create better conditions for Chinese investment in the United States.

The USTR report, however, accused China of using a range of measures to engineer the transfer of foreign technology to local firms. It said these include denying financial or regulatory approvals to companies using foreign-owned intellectual property or that do not conduct research or manufacture products in China.

The report also brought up longstanding complaints about online piracy of movies, books, music, video games and software in China as well as a ban on U.S. beef that has been in place since 2003.

(Additional reporting by Christian Shepherd and Michael Martina in BEIJING; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

China’s Xi to meet Trump in Florida next week

China's President Xi Jinping attends the opening session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing. REUTERS/Jason Lee

BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese President Xi Jinping will travel to the United States to meet President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida on April 6-7, China’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday, its first official confirmation of the highly anticipated summit.

It will be Xi’s first meeting with Trump, whose presidency began on Jan. 20, and comes as the two sides face pressing issues, ranging from North Korea and the South China Sea to trade disputes.

Ministry spokesman Lu Kang made the announcement at a daily news briefing.

He did not give any more details of the meeting agenda, but spoke of the need to see the big picture while fostering mutual interests in trade relations.

“The market dictates that interests between our two countries are structured so that you will always have me and I will always have you,” Lu said.

“Both sides should work together to make the cake of mutual interest bigger and not simply seek fairer distribution,” he said in response to a question about trade frictions.

Beijing had previously said that preparatory work for the meeting was underway. But it had not yet confirmed the trip, despite western media reports on a scheduled meeting and an announcement by the Finnish government that Xi would make a brief stop in Finland on April 5.

The summit will follow a string of other recent U.S.-China meetings and conversations aimed at mending ties after strong criticism of China by Trump during his election campaign.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ended a trip to Asia this month in Beijing, agreeing to work together with China on North Korea and stressing Trump’s desire to enhance understanding.

China has been irritated at being repeatedly told by Washington to rein in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and by the U.S. decision to base an advanced missile defense system in South Korea.

Beijing is also deeply suspicious of U.S. intentions towards self-ruled Taiwan, which China claims as its own.

During his election campaign, Trump accused China of unfair trade policies, criticized its island-building in the strategic South China Sea, and accused it of doing too little to constrain North Korea.

Trump also incensed Beijing in December by taking a phone call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and later saying the United States did not have to stick to the so-called “one China” policy.

He later agreed in a phone call with Xi to honor the long-standing policy and has also written to Xi since seeking “constructive ties.”

(Reporting by Christian Shepherd; Writing by Michael Martina; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Federal judge in Hawaii extends court order blocking Trump travel ban

Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin (R) arrives at the U.S. District Court Ninth Circuit to seek an extension after filing an amended lawsuit against President Donald Trump's new travel ban in Honolulu. REUTERS/Hugh Gentry

HONOLULU (Reuters) – A federal judge in Hawaii indefinitely extended on Wednesday an order blocking enforcement of President Donald Trump’s revised ban on travel to the United States from six predominantly Muslim countries.

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson turned an earlier temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit brought by the state of Hawaii challenging Trump’s travel directive as unconstitutional religious discrimination.

Trump signed the new ban on March 6 in a bid to overcome legal problems with a January executive order that caused chaos at airports and sparked mass protests before a Washington judge stopped its enforcement in February. Trump has said the travel ban is needed for national security.

In its challenge to the travel ban, Hawaii claims its state universities would be harmed by the order because they would have trouble recruiting students and faculty.

It also says the island state’s economy would be hit by a decline in tourism. The court papers cite reports that travel to the United States “took a nosedive” after Trump’s actions.

The state was joined by a new plaintiff named Ismail Elshikh, an American citizen from Egypt who is an imam at the Muslim Association of Hawaii and whose mother-in-law lives in Syria, according to the lawsuit.

Hawaii and other opponents of the ban claim that the motivation behind it is based on religion and Trump’s election campaign promise of “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

“The court will not crawl into a corner, pull the shutters closed, and pretend it has not seen what it has,” Watson wrote on Wednesday.

Watson wrote that his decision to grant the preliminary injunction was based on the likelihood that the state would succeed in proving that the travel ban violated the U.S. Constitution’s religious freedom protection.

Trump has vowed to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is currently split 4-4 between liberals and conservatives with the president’s pick – appeals court judge Neil Gorsuch – still awaiting confirmation.

(Reporting by Hunter Haskins in Honolulu; Additional reporting and writing by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Paul Tait)

Seattle sues Trump administration over threat to ‘sanctuary’ cities

FILE PHOTO: The skyline of Seattle, Washington, U.S. is seen in a picture taken March 12, 2014. REUTERS/Jason Redmond/File Photo

By Tom James

SEATTLE (Reuters) – The city of Seattle sued U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday over its executive order seeking to withhold federal funds from “sanctuary cities,” arguing it amounted to unconstitutional federal coercion.

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray told reporters the Constitution forbade the federal government from pressuring cities, “yet that is exactly what the president’s order does. Once again, this new administration has decided to bully.”

“Things like grants helping us with child sex trafficking are not connected to immigration,” Murray said, adding: “It is time for cities to stand up and ask the courts to put an end to the anxiety in our cities and the chaos in our system.”

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions threatened on Monday to strip Justice Department grants from cities and other local governments that choose to shield illegal immigrants from deportation efforts.

Trump, who made tougher immigration enforcement a cornerstone of his campaign, directed the government in his Jan. 25 executive order to cut off funding to sanctuary jurisdictions. That order has yet to be put into effect, but Sessions’ announcement seemed to be the first step in doing so.

Trump administration officials say the immigration crackdown is focused on illegal immigrants convicted of serious crimes.

Responding to the Seattle lawsuit, a U.S. Justice Department representative said in a statement: “Failure to deport aliens who are convicted of criminal offenses makes our nation less safe by putting dangerous criminals back on our streets.”

Seattle’s action was the latest legal salvo over the Trump immigration order from local governments across the country, including the city of San Francisco and California’s Santa Clara County.

Police agencies in dozens of “sanctuary” cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, have barred their officers from routinely checking on immigration status when making arrests or traffic stops. They have also refused to detain people longer than otherwise warranted at the request of federal agents seeking to deport them.

Supporters of the policy argue that enlisting police cooperation in rounding up immigrants for removal undermines communities’ trust in local police, particularly among Latinos.

Murray said the goal of Seattle’s lawsuit was to have the courts declare that federal authorities “cannot force our local police officials to be involved in federal immigration activities.”

(Editing by Patrick Enright and Peter Cooney)

Ryan opposes Trump working with Democrats on healthcare

House Speaker Paul Ryan speaks during his news conference after Republicans pulled the American Health Care Act. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, the top Republican in Congress, said he does not want President Donald Trump to work with Democrats on new legislation for revamping the country’s health insurance system, commonly called Obamacare.

In an interview with “CBS This Morning” that will air on Thursday, Ryan said he fears the Republican Party, which failed last week to come together and agree on a healthcare overhaul, is pushing the president to the other side of the aisle so he can make good on campaign promises to redo Obamacare.

“I don’t want that to happen,” Ryan said, referring to Trump’s offer to work with Democrats.

Carrying out those reforms with Democrats is “hardly a conservative thing,” Ryan said, according to interview excerpts released on Wednesday. “I don’t want government running health care. The government shouldn’t tell you what you must do with your life, with your healthcare,” he said.

On Tuesday, Trump told senators attending a White House reception that he expected lawmakers to reach a deal “very quickly” on healthcare, but he did not offer specifics.

“I think it’s going to happen because we’ve all been promising – Democrat, Republican – we’ve all been promising that to the American people,” he said.

Trump said after the failure of the Republican plan last week that Democrats, none of whom supported the bill, would be willing to negotiate new healthcare legislation because Obamacare is destined to “explode.”

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert and Eric Beech; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Trump tells lawmakers he expects deal ‘very quickly’ on healthcare

U.S. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump host a reception for Senators and their spouses at the East Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., March 28, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump told a group of senators on Tuesday that he expected lawmakers would be able to reach a deal on healthcare, without offering specifics on how they would do it or what had changed since a healthcare reform bill was pulled last week for insufficient support.

“I have no doubt that that’s going to happen very quickly,” Trump said at a bipartisan reception held for senators and their spouses at the White House.

“I think it’s going to happen because we’ve all been promising – Democrat, Republican – we’ve all been promising that to the American people,” he said.

A Republican plan backed by Trump to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system was pulled on Friday after it failed to garner enough support to pass the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

Trump, a Republican, did not mention that failure at the reception nor did he offer specifics on how he planned for lawmakers to reach a consensus on a healthcare bill that would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, familiarly known as Obamacare.

Trump told lawmakers at the reception that he would be talking about infrastructure and investing in the military, without offering a time frame or details.

“Hopefully, it will start being bipartisan, because everybody really wants the same thing. We want greatness for this country that we love,” he said.

(Reporting by Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by Leslie Adler, Toni Reinhold)

California immigration forum highlights state’s red-blue divide

People protest outside before the start of a town hall meeting being held by Thomas Homan, acting director of enforcement for ICE, in Sacramento, California, U.S., March 28, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

By Sharon Bernstein

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) – Supporters and critics of President Donald Trump’s deportation policy packed a gymnasium in California’s heartland on Tuesday, trading jeers and ridicule during a raucous town hall meeting attended by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief.

Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, a pro-Trump Republican who enjoys strong backing in the region’s conservative suburbs, invited acting ICE Director Thomas Homan to address the public forum in the state capital.

The gathering got off to a boisterous start, with Jones’ opening remarks interrupted by shouts and heckling as he warned that spectators who continued to disrupt the meeting, attended by about 400 people, would be ejected.

About a dozen people were eventually escorted out of the hall.

Homan, whose agency has drawn fire for what some civil liberties advocates have criticized as heavy-handed tactics in rounding up and deporting illegal immigrants, insisted ICE was acting in a targeted fashion against those with criminal records.

He said ICE was also focused on individuals who have violated final deportation orders or have returned after being removed from the country.

“We don’t conduct neighborhood sweeps,” he said over cat-calls. “I don’t want children to be afraid to go to school. I don’t want people to be afraid to go to the doctor.”

Still, he warned that ICE intended to “enforce the laws that are on the books.”

Democratic officials in the Sacramento area, home to about 2 million people in California’s Central Valley some 90 miles (145 km) east of San Francisco, have opposed the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and are leading a charge in the state legislature to fight his policies.

The division illustrates the complicated politics of the capital region, straddling jurisdictions where the predominantly liberal California coast bleeds into the more conservative interior of the state.

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, a former top Democrat in the heavily blue state legislature, said at an earlier protest rally that ICE had failed to earn the community’s trust.

He called on Jones to end a county agreement with U.S. authorities in which jailed immigrants sought by federal agents for deportation are kept incarcerated beyond their scheduled release to allow ICE to take them into custody.

Among members of the public who spoke was Bernard Marks, 87, a Holocaust survivor, who said: “I spent 5 1/2 years in a concentration camp because we picked up people. Mr. Jones, history is not on your side.”

Another elderly participant, who identified himself only by his first name, Vincent, suggested those entering the United States illegally violated more than just immigration laws.

“How can an illegal alien get a job unless they’ve stolen a Social Security number,” he asked, visibly shaking with emotion after protesters yelled at him while he spoke.

Jones said earlier the town hall was an attempt to “find common ground by reducing conflicting information, eliminating ambiguity and reducing fear by presenting factual information.”

So many groups vowed to protest at the event that it had to be moved to a larger venue than originally planned.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Steve Gorman, Cynthia Osterman and Paul Tait)