Head of Scottsdale business reacts to Trump's decision to suspend immigration temporarily

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President Donald Trump, in a photo taken on February 7, 2020. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - On Tuesday, President Donald Trump revealed immigration for those seeking permanent residence is halted for the next 60 days.

The decision was announced Monday night. On Tuesday, the President said it was about preserving jobs and medical care for Americans.

Local company reacts

The head of a local company currently trying to finalize the immigration process on a new employee who graduated from Arizona State University (ASU) spoke about the new rule.

Phillips Smith said immigration status has been too confounding recently for them to handle it themselves, so they brought in a local immigration attorney to help out.

Smith, who is with Scottsdale-based Fionnachtain, is getting ready for a product that is expected to hit store shelves later in 2020, or in 2021. The $10 product is in development to test for COVID-19 or influenza at home.

As they consider moving into the Asian market, Phillips is hiring a recent ASU graduate who isn’t a United States citizen.

"She got her Bachelor and Master's Degree," said Smith. "She’s Taiwanese, speaks good English but fluent in Mandarin, which is important if we go to that market, and she’s doing an incredibly good job."

Smith hired immigration attorney Gabriel Vadasz to get the paperwork in order, but then came the President's announcement on halting immigration.

"Some of these people, they’ve been waiting ten plus years to get to this point," said Vadasz. "They’re at the tail end of their application. They’ve invested everything they have. Plenty of emotion involved with it. Now it’s all up in the air. We just don’t know what will happen next."

Back in March, United States embassies and consulates worldwide already suspended visa interviews.

Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar has released a statement on the decision.

"At a time when millions of Americans are facing unemployment, the very last thing we need to do is import additional foreign labor. I'm grateful to President Trump for halting immigration to the United States, this is a bold and necessary step that truly puts America first," the statement read.

Vadasz says fears of new immigrants taking jobs don’t track.

"To get a job as an immigrant, most employers have to demonstrate they tried hiring somebody in the United States and they weren’t successful in doing so," said Vadasz.

The order from Trump will last 60 days. After that, he says it will be reassessed to see where the economy stands.

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