Trump tightens work permits for migrants, expanding crackdown on legal immigration

By forcing immigrants to renew their work permits more often, the government will have more opportunities to re-vet them, said Joe Edlow, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency which handles most legal immigration applications.

Edlow framed the change, which reverses a Biden-era policy, as the latest action by the administration to crack down on legal immigration in response to the shooting last week in Washington, D.C., of two National Guard members. Federal officials allege the shooting was carried out by an Afghan national.

“It’s clear that USCIS must enforce more frequent vetting of aliens," Edlow said in a statement. “All aliens must remember that working in the United States is a privilege, not a right."

In the past week, Trump has called for a broad “reverse migration" of legal immigrants in the U.S., including from countries such as Afghanistan. A day after the shooting, Trump posted to his Truth Social platform that he planned to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries," and his administration is working on expanding the list of countries subject to a travel ban.

The shortened expiration dates for work permits will primarily affect immigrants seeking asylum or other forms of humanitarian protections, including refugees, immigrants who have won their asylum cases, or who have another form of deportation relief known as withholding of removal.

The policy was expected to go into effect Thursday, and only apply to new work permits for the time being.

The change likely will impact hundreds of thousands of people. For example: to staff their plants, meatpacking companies have relied on people who received legal work authorizations after applying for asylum in the U.S.

Most work visa categories, such as the H-1B, don’t require a separate work permit.

The Trump administration’s change is likely to raise significant concerns among immigrant advocates and employers, especially in industries that tend to hire refugees or asylum seekers. Citizenship and Immigration Services has long been stretched thin amid ever-growing legal immigration backlogs. Meanwhile, the administration has announced other initiatives to reopen old immigration cases for re-vetting, which will divert more immigration officers away from reviewing new applications.

The Biden administration initially extended the expiration dates on work permits to five years from two in 2023. At the time, faced with an influx of asylum applicants from the southern border, the government had so many work permits to process that it couldn’t issue renewals before people’s existing permits expired. As a result, tens of thousands of immigrants were laid off or temporarily furloughed while their work authorizations lapsed, including many working in more traditionally high-paying industries such as tech or finance.

The Biden-era policy presented trade-offs.

The longer expiration dates offered immigrants and their employers peace of mind that work was less likely to be interrupted. But it also created new complications. With longer expiration dates, companies were more likely to face a scenario in which their employees held valid work permit documents, but weren’t authorized to work anymore because they had lost their asylum or other immigration cases.

“Shortening the validity period of work permits is bad for everyone," said Conchita Cruz, co-executive director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, a membership organization of asylum seekers. “With shorter validity periods, work permit processing backlogs will grow longer, and force asylum seekers out of the workforce, hurting their employers, their coworkers, and the communities that rely on them throughout the U.S."

Write to Michelle Hackman at michelle.hackman@wsj.com