How Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Is Shaping M&A and Wall Street Staffing

Investors and dealmakers may not be the obvious targets of Donald Trump’s immigration policies — but the impact on Wall Street is already being felt.

For firms that rely on talent from abroad and travel across borders to strike deals, the stakes are high. While no one’s been grounded yet, anxieties are mounting in some corners, leading to more cautious travel plans and cross-border hiring pivots. It’s also changing the M&A landscape, with more dealmakers scrutinizing immigration compliance before agreeing to buy a US company.

Business Insider spoke to lawyers, executives, and investment leaders to understand how stepped-up border security and other immigration policies are changing daily life in finance — and what might come next. Here is what we learned, from staffing to M&A to business travel.

Dealmaking

Trump’s immigration crackdown is forcing investors to examine the employee base of US companies they may be looking to acquire more closely, said Ted Chiappari, partner and head of immigration at the law firm Duane Morris.

“We’re working on one merger acquisition now, and that’s their phase one,” said Chiappari. “They want to check out the staffing first to make sure that their I-9s are in order before they go forward with the rest of the deal.”

Federal law requires that anyone hired to work in the US fill out a I-9 to verify their identity and employment authorization. Chiappari said it’s long been a required piece of M&A due diligence but that many investors treat it as an “afterthought.”

“If they even considered it at all, they would just sort of shrug their shoulders and say, ‘Look, if we get hit with a I-9 audit, we’ll pay whatever penalties there are,'” he said.

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He added that Trump’s policies are prompting firms to move the 1-9 due diligence component up the priority list. Failure to do so could mean getting stuck running a company without enough employees.

“They’re concerned because that really affects the viability of the business if they end up losing 25% of their workforce or end up having to pay a lot more money to find replacements,” he said.

Travel

Isha Atassi, a partner with the law firm Fragomen in New York, said her financial clients are largely taking a “business as usual” approach to travel — even as other sectors take a more aggressive stance, issuing advisories or tightening guidance around international travel.

Anxieties over travel are on the rise, however.

Mark Dowding, chief investment officer of RBC’s BlueBay unit, said neither he nor his team has slowed their travel. However, the British citizen is more worried than before about being turned away at the border, in part because he writes a weekly note that has occasionally been critical of Trump’s policies.

“I know I’m taking a personal risk, but I’m putting myself out there,” he said, adding, “If they say I can’t come in, then I can’t come in. So be it.”

Concerns over border crossing are also leading to more conversations about travel visas and how to talk to border agents.

“We have seen a lot more efforts to educate as to what should be said or what can be done,” said Chiappari. He pointed, as an example, to a professional coming to the US for a business meeting or conference. While it’s technically work, it’s not “producing something in the US,” he said, which might mean avoiding calling it “work” when talking to border agents.

“We generally avoid the W word” at the border, he said.

Hiring and staffing

Companies outside the US are viewing the US crackdown as a potential poaching opportunity. For example, Danny Yong, chief investment officer of Dymon Asia, a Singapore-based hedge fund with offices across Asia, said his firm is targeting immigrant portfolio managers based in the US who might be interested in returning home.

Immigration lawyers said they’re seeing little to no slowdown in the financial industry’s appetite for foreign labor, however, although the process is taking longer than before.

“There is an understanding that the process may take longer and may be met with more challenges by way of requests for evidence or denials, and we are helping to manage timing expectations and flagging high-risk cases,” said Atassi of the Fragomen law firm.

One reason is that financial firms tend to have a lot of overseas offices, so if a firm hires someone who doesn’t get the right US visa, they can just park them in a non-US office for a few years.

“They have money, and so if they’ve got a superstar on their team, transferring someone to the London office for a year or two is just not going to make or break,” said Chiappari. “It’s a rounding error for these companies.”

Wall Street stars also have more visa options than, say, the average data scientist, Chiappari said. He pointed to O-1 visa, which is reserved for people who have reached national or international acclaim and sit at the top of their fields.

“It’s just a lot easier for a Morgan Stanley or a JPMorgan to say, ‘This person’s exceptional,'” he said, especially if they are responsible for “frontpage deals that everyone’s heard about.'”