Unemployment is down, the economy is growing and companies have a need for recently graduated skilled workers. Some of those recent hires are foreign students who have applied for H-1B visas. But now, thanks to a change in Trump’s immigration policy, they can’t start working. That’s bad for the economy, bad for the workers, and a terrible policy for the country.

Previously, recent graduates who had applied for an H1-B visa could stay in the country and start working. The new policy changes mean that those individuals can stay, but they can’t work — if they do, they could be barred from the U.S. long-term.

The problem with this is that staying in the U.S. without a job is really, really expensive.

It didn’t have to be this way. These workers had already applied for the visa, and those with expired student visas or recent tech graduates had been given an extension until Oct. 1 that meant they could keep working.

That deadline has passed without those applications being processed. Adding to the pain is the fact that the option of paying a little more for expedited processing has also been also been suspended by the Trump administration.

Instead, companies are shorthanded, willing workers are left without jobs, and the only option seems to be to wait while U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services tries to process applications.

This might seem like a small problem. It’s not.

For one thing, it means that U.S. companies lose out on already-hired talent as their employees wait around for authorization. For another, it means that foreign students who want to work and contribute to the growth and profit of U.S. businesses and the economy cannot do so. That may push them to look elsewhere. Additionally, a failure to process visas in a timely fashion likely discourages students who expect employment after graduation from attending U.S. schools, which have come to depend on international students for their tuition dollars.

These are serious consequences and should be easily avoided. Trump’s crackdown on immigration shouldn’t come at the expense of students, companies, and the economy.