Transcription
This week, the Trump administration was sued for a sweeping positive immigrant visa processing for people from 75 companies. The freeze was aimed at the nation's administration, said whose migrants take welfare from the American people at unacceptable rates. This comes on travel. Liz Landers has more on the impact.
Liz: The travel bans and visa suspensions have upended routine work and marriage family visa processing, giving many U.S. citizens across the country in limbo. Over the last two weeks, we have spoken with some of them. He worries that might affect his resilience.
>> My name is Ashley Ramos. I recently remarried three years ago to my husband. I'm a public school teacher.
>> My entire family is originally migrated here in the late '80s and early '90s. I have enjoyed the fruits of their labor and their working hard and going through the citizenship process and doing everything they can to achieve their own version of the American dream.
>> I went on my first trip to Nigeria in 2021 and I've been trying to visit every country in the world. We had stayed in touch as our relationship developed, we decided to get married in May 2024. We immediately filed our petition and we are currently waiting on our visa for her to come join me in the United States.
>> I met my husband on a language exchange app. He just became part of my everyday life. I have been to see him four times, and going again in about two weeks. He is the most emotionally supportive partner you could ever ask for and we have been waiting a long time and we thought we were almost done.
>> I'm totally responsible for caring for our 25-year-old special-needs daughter. My daughter is completely dependent and she will be her entire life. We have a 27-year-old son slightly on the autism spectrum. We got services through a direct care support provider. She had worked with us from mid-June 2025 up until last Friday. She is from the country of Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone is on the Trump administration's ban list.
>> I'm a U.S.-born citizen. My husband is a Brazilian citizen. We met at a bar. When we decided to get married, we wanted to make sure we did everything legal. We wanted to make sure we did everything right.
>> I think the average American doesn't really know what this process is. And this right here is what I've given in support of our case. This is to show the relationship, but also to prove my financial standing, his ability and potential to have gainful employment when he comes. It is very expensive.
>> We expected it to take about two years and probably getting a visa in May of this coming year but now that looks like it is in detriment. Our visa won't get denied, but it will be on hold, it will not be processed. We are sitting here without any idea.
>> It was honestly a shock. Folks are really terrified because they are like, "I don't know when I'm going to be able to see my family next? I don't know if I'm going to be able to move freely within this country." Like people who are citizens feel like just because they have an accent or that they look a little bit different.
>> It really felt like the door slamming shut. There is no information or instruction. There is just a blanket thing saying there is going to be a pause.
>> Finding a replacement is much harder than most people would realize. The load is tremendous. It is a struggle to continue eating well because that is critical. It is not just my daughter and my son, I take care of myself in order to take care of them.
>> You feel like it is this punitive policy that doesn't really go about doing what it says. If you need to vet people more, then vet people more. If you say, "We won't even take a look," it is a real gut punch.
>> When people see the pause, they assume it is protecting us in some way from foreign invaders or stopping illegal immigration, and that is not the case. This is preventing families from being together.
>> My plan was to bring my family to the United States and build. That is the worst feeling. You should never feel punished for loving someone.
Liz: For more, we are joined by the director of immigration studies from the Cato Institute. Let's start with what that report showed. It is obvious this is impacting a wide range of Americans. Has the United States seen policies like this before?
>> We have seen policies like this before, during the first Trump administration when he basically shut down all visa processing in 2020. That created a huge backlog of people who had to be processed under the Biden administration and put people in very similar situations. I encountered people who moved out of the United States to be with their loved ones in another country, and we are seeing similar decisions being forced upon people today. If you look at the totality of it, half of all legal, permanent emigration from abroad has now been banned by these policies. One out of every two immigrants, if you look at African immigrants in particular, legal immigrants. It is almost 70% of legal immigrants when you are looking at the statistics from 2024 have now been banned by this administration. Over 100,000 of the 300,000 or so now affected by this policy are the spouses and minor children of legal permanent residents and U.S. citizens. Very close relations. We haven't seen anything. We haven't seen anything as severe as this restriction.
>> The State Department has cited concerns that some of the immigrants were at high risk of becoming a drain on the welfare system. How feted are these immigrants, and is there evidence that that is a problem?
>> Absolutely not. You have to have a financial sponsor in the United States who will take ownership of you. You are banned from accessing any benefits for the first five years you are in the United States. There is both a restriction on accessing the benefits and you have someone who has to prove their ability to financially support you. And if you look at the immigration system as a whole, we have estimated that the immigrant population over the last 30 years has reduced the deficits by $14.5 trillion over that 30-year period. Legal immigrants coming here, coming to work, coming to support themselves are a benefit to the United States, reduce deficits, and alternately support the American system of government.
>> The visa policy is currently being challenged in court. What do you make of the legality of the government's blanket policy?
>> If you look at the Immigration and Nationality Act, one of the fundamental questions to resolve for almost four decades from the 1920s was whether we would discriminate based on nationality. They put a provision in that law that says, you cannot discriminate based on their nationality. The administration is openly flouting that and basically daring the Supreme Court to strike it down and say that this is illegal. They already sort of got the Supreme Court's OK on part of the ban because the president signed an executive action proclamation saying he is ordering them. It is just effectively the Secretary of State's tweets. I think the litigants here will have a stronger case because it is not a formal policy adopted in any kind of formal manner.
>> You recently wrote for Cato that President Trump is leading the most anti-legal immigrant administration in American history. How so?
>> Not only are we banning emigrants, we have shut down a refugee program for about 125 individuals that would have otherwise been able to immigrate legally from abroad. He has shut down the Diversity Visa Lottery, which is basically the only way that many people without family connections can immigrate legally to the United States. He has shut down, in addition to those actions, the legal ways for people to apply for asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border and enter the country legally. Overall, he has reduced illegal immigration far more than he has reduced illegal immigration in his first year in office.
>> Thank you so much for joining us.
>> Thank you for having me.
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