The Trump administration’s plan to halt “high-skilled” legal immigration through H-1B visas in response to a coronavirus-fueled recession could have disastrous economic consequences for three central reasons: It limits a pipeline of entrepreneurial and innovative workers, stymies the development of new technologies that generate growth and increase wages over time, and eliminates other employment opportunities that high-skilled jobs and workers tend to create for local economies, Giovanni Peri and Chad Sparber write in a policy brief for the UC Davis Global Migration Center. “Economic evidence shows that the long-term consequences of these actions on reduced GDP and productivity growth are potentially disastrous,” they conclude. Meanwhile, other countries are competing for the talent the U.S. is turning away: “America’s economic competitors are also updating their own immigration systems. They recognize, as one of China’s leading venture capitalists recently put it in an interview with the South China Morning Post, that ‘while the U.S. is driving talent away, it is the perfect time for us to race to bring them back,’” Zachary Arnold and Tina Huang write in the MIT Technology Review.

The administration’s latest visa ban is also facing a major lawsuit on behalf of families with pending visa requests, reports Stuart Anderson for Forbes. The suit was filed on behalf of 174 Indian nationals, including seven children, in the U.S District Court of Columbia. “The proclamation justified the new visa restrictions with little economic data,” Anderson explains. “More important, from a legal perspective, the proclamation overturns key provisions of U.S. immigration law.”

Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes. Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].

REVERSAL – The Trump administration yesterday rescinded its policy requiring international students to attend in-person classes or leave the country, settling a lawsuit filed by Harvard and MIT and bowing to several additional lawsuits alongside pressure from major companies, including Twitter and Microsoft. Michelle Hackman, Melissa Korn and Andrew Restuccia report for The Wall Street Journal that the policy “already had a practical impact on some students: In several court filings, universities reported that U.S. immigration officers blocked students’ entry to the U.S. at airports because they were coming to attend universities that are planning to teach remotely.” As Reuters’ Ted Hesson pointed out on Twitter, “DHS is still deciding whether to treat students already in the United States differently than students seeking to enter the country for the first time.”

SAVING DACA – Amid rumors of his renewed attempts to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), President Trump indicated in the Rose Garden yesterday he may in fact keep the program alive, promising a “very, very big merit-based immigration action” — though he failed to provide further details. As I wrote in an opinion piece for Fox News, a solution that allows 650,000 DACA recipients and other Dreamers to stay in the U.S. is not only in the country’s best interest, but also in Trump’s own political interest. By ending DACA, the president would further isolate moderate and suburban voters who swung the election for him in 2016 and who largely support a solution for Dreamers. “Expelling these young people from the U.S. would be an act of cruelty, harmful to our national interest, and harmful to Trump’s reelection campaign.”

INHUMANE – At the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Farmville, Virginia, at least 267 of 360 detainees have tested positive for COVID-19 with 80 still awaiting results, making Farmville the detention center hardest hit by the pandemic to date. While detainees face the major public health threat with little support from Farmville staff — 22 of whom have also tested positive — they’ve also been subject to violent crackdowns from guards in response to their peaceful protests against the conditions, Spencer Ackerman reports for The Daily Beast. “They put us in here to let us die,” one detainee told The Daily Beast. “This is inhumane. You don’t treat humans like this. You don’t treat dogs like this.”

“STUNNED AND SADDENED” – Nene Bah is a mother of two, former biology teacher, West African migrant, and now U.S. citizen enjoying her life in Maryland with her family. But under President Trump’s newly proposed asylum restrictions, her life in the U.S. would not have been possible — and she and her family would have continued to face violence and the threat of female genital mutilation that plagued Nene and her daughter in their home country. In a piece for Ms. Magazine written with Lindsay M. Harris, she writes, “My heart sank earlier this month when I learned that other women and girls may not have the same access to safety that we did. … The more I learn about these policy changes, the more stunned and saddened I am. It’s staggering to think that under these new rules, gender-based violence would not count — as if it’s not important enough to matter.”

Thanks for reading,

Ali