US Immigration News & Commentary

Contact your local representative to show your support for the Dream Act so we can get it passed this year!

In a trend that tracks the economic realities of the moment the USCIS has announced that they have only received about 1/2 of the number of petitions that would count towards the cap. There will be no lottery for any petition unless it is filed on the day that the USCIS receives enough to meet the cap.

The Master’s cap has nearly been reached however, and this also reflects the need for highly skilled and specialized workers.

Clearly the market works and there is no need for a cap at all.

The Department of Justice is investigating Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, known for parading immigrants in chains to his “tent city”, for racial profiling.

The DOJ is investigating whether or not deputies are engaged in “patterns or practices of discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures.”

(how could they not be if pretty much the only people they stop are folks who look “Hispanic” and they do their “sweeps” in Hispanic neighborhoods?)

Calls for an investigation from officials such as Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon and some Democratic lawmakers, as well as justifiable outrage by immigrant rights groups, likely led to the investigation – described as the first of its kind related directly to immigration.

The sheriff vows to fight the federal government – of course.

Good luck with that Joe!

read more here

Office of Communications
Fact Sheet Feb. 24, 2009
PREMIUM PROCESSING SERVICE FOR CERTAIN
FORM I-140 PETITIONS BEGINS MARCH 2, 2009
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will expand Premium Processing Service for designated Forms I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker to include alien beneficiaries who have reached or are reaching their limitation of stay in H-1B nonimmigrant status. Currently, only certain alien beneficiaries who are in H-1B nonimmigrant status at the time of filing may request Form I-140 Premium Processing Service.
Starting on March 2, USCIS will accept the Form I-907, Request for Premium Processing Service, for Forms I-140 filed on behalf of alien beneficiaries who, as of the date of filing the Form I-907:
•
Are the beneficiary of a form I-140 petition filed in a preference category that has been designated for premium processing service;
•
Have reached the 6th year statutory limitation of their H-1B stay, or will reach the end of their 6th year of H-1B stay within 60 days of filing;
•
They are only eligible for a further H-1B extension upon approval of their Form I-140 petition as prescribed by American Competitiveness in the Twenty-first Century Act (AC21) provisions 104(c)1; and
•
Are ineligible to extend their H-1B status under AC21 §106(a)2.
Under the Premium Processing Program, USCIS may place such conditions of availability for the Premium Processing Program. The petitioner must establish that the Form I-140 for which the Form I-907 is filed satisfies these conditions. To facilitate USCIS’s determination of whether a particular filing meets the conditions, petitioners can submit:
•
Copies of all Forms I-94, Arrival/Departure Record and I-797 H-1B or L approval notices that have been issued on his or her behalf;
•
A copy of the relating Form I-140 petition receipt notice if the form was previously filed; and,
•
A copy of the labor certification approval letter issued by the Department of Labor, if filing under the EB-2 or EB-3 classifications.
1 Public law known as the American Competitiveness in the Twenty-first Century Act of 2000 (AC21) permits up to a three-year extension of stay for an H-1B nonimmigrant alien, provided he or she is the beneficiary of an approved Form I-140 petition and otherwise eligible for lawful permanent resident status except that the employment-based preference visa is unavailable.
2 USCIS grants an H-1B extension of stay pursuant to §106(a) of AC21, in one-year increments, until such time as a final decision has been made to (1) deny the application for labor certification, or, if the labor certification is approved, to deny the employment-based immigrant petition that was filed pursuant to the approved labor certification; (2) deny the employment based immigrant petition, or; (3) grant or deny the alien’s application for an immigrant visa or for adjustment of status.
Form I-907 Premium Processing Service requests that do not clearly meet the conditions will be rejected and returned with the I-907 fee. The Form I-140 petition will be processed according to standard, non-premium processing procedures if the Form I-907 is:
•
Submitted without documentation establishing the conditions for availability noted above;
•
Incorrectly submitted concurrently with a Form I-140 petition at a USCIS office without geographic jurisdiction over the Form I-140 petition; or
•
Submitted to request Premium Processing Service for a Form I-140 petition filed for an alien beneficiary who is eligible to extend his or her H-1B nonimmigrant status under AC21 §106(a) as of the date that the Form I-907 is received by USCIS.
USCIS will accept Form I-907 either together with the Form I-140 petition or after the filing of the Form I-140 petition through the mail or delivery service only. E-filing for Form I-907 will not be available. USCIS expects that adding other classifications to Premium Processing Service at this time would exceed USCIS’ capacity to provide timely Premium Process Service. USCIS will continue to evaluate whether it is able to process other groups of cases beyond this limited classification of petitions and will provide notification of any further availability of Premium Processing Service for Form I-140

On 11/25/2008, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates signed a memorandum allowing the Army, Navy, Air Force, to recruit non-citizens and non-residents.

Titled “Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest” (MAVNI), the program allows some non-citizens who are legally present in the United States to join the military. Based on joining the military the individuals can then immediately apply for citizenship without ever becoming a permanent resident.

The program is limited in its duration and scope at this time. The military will only recruit 1000 people and the program will only last 12 months.

Individuals in the following statuses are eligible:

Asylee, refugee, Temporary Protected Status (TPS), or, E, F, H, I, J, K, L, M, O, P, Q, R, S, T, TC, TD, TN, U, or V.

The individual must have been in valid status in one or more of those categories for at least two years
immediately prior to the enlistment date and must not have had any single absence from the United States of
more than 90 days during the two year period immediately preceding the date of enlistment in the military.

The military is looking for physicians and nurses as well as individuals with language skills/cultural knowledge.

The military is looking for individuals with the following language skills/cultural association:

Languages

• Albanian
• Amharic
• Arabic
• Azerbaijani
• Bengali
• Burmese
• Cambodian-Khmer
• Chinese
• Czech
• Hausa
• Hindi
• Hungarian
• Igbo
• Indonesian
• Korean
• Kurdish
• Lao
• Malay
• Malayalam
• Moro
• Nepalese
• Persian [Dari &
Farsi]
• Polish
• Punjabi
• Pushtu (aka Pashto)
• Russian
• Sindhi
• Sinhalese
• Somali
• Swahili
• Tamil
• Turkish
• Turkmen
• Urdu
• Yoruba

Individuals who are out of status or here without authorization are NOT eligible.
[PDF}Fact Sheet on the Program

[PDF]More important information on the program

A story in the Washington Post exposes the Immigration and Customs Enforcement National Fugitive Operations Program – a program that received over $600 million from congress – as a federally funded racial profiling operation.

The program which, as it is named, is intended to be used to round up fugitives, is an abject failure by that measure. In 2007 nearly 1/2 of the people arrested were not fugitives from the law. The USICE says that number is going down but since they specifically allow non-fugitive arrests to be counted towards the quota that’s nonsense. In fact, it should be zero if they are only going after specific fugitives not stopping minorities at random. Clearly the USICE is simply going up to brown people and asking for their papers – and the video footage in the story supports exactly that conclusion.

In fact, according to the Post, some employees say that they were specifically directed to arrest non-fugitives to boost their arrest numbers. The USCIS and USDHS have declined to actually investigate the claims. That makes sense since it’s official policy.

The video evidence makes it clear the USICE officers were simply stopping men of Hispanic descent without reasonable cause or suspicion. The men detained included, Ernest Guillen, who was merely stopping for a cup of coffee on his way to be with his US citizen son who was receiving chemotherapy at John’s Hopkins and another man who was detained for 18 days even though he was in the United States legally.

The questions for the Obama administration are: 1) are you going to maintain a policy of racial profiling? 2) If you do believe racial profiling to be effective and are going to continue it will you expand it to include other agencies not related to immigration?

Or perhaps it’d be a better idea to use that muscle of yours to get comprehensive immigration reform passed.

Newly appointed Secretary of the DHS, Janet Napolitano (on NPR), shows that there will be little change between the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration with regards to immigration policy.

She’s for a border fence – in places where physically appropriate – but thinks the border needs to be more militarized (more boots on the ground) and also more technologically advanced (more expensive web cams).

She has no view (and probably little understanding of) the push factors that cause people to risk death to come to the US for work and only addresses the pull by saying that she’ll deport more people more quickly and punish employers more harshly.

As far as immigration procedures and policies, she will leave that up to Congress and offers no opinion at all.

Looks like more of the same unless Congress implements comprehensive immigration reform some time soon.

As an aside, someone might want to point out to Secretary Napolitano that the path isn’t from undocumented immigrant to citizen but from undocumented immigrant to permanent resident. It really sounds like she doesn’t know that.

Tom Friedman has an op-ed that may seem counterintuitive to some.

Referencing a statement by Shekhar Gupta of the Indian Express..

“All you need to do is grant visas to two million Indians, Chinese and Koreans. We will buy up all the subprime homes. We will work 18 hours a day to pay for them. We will immediately improve your savings rate — no Indian bank today has more than 2 percent nonperforming loans because not paying your mortgage is considered shameful here. And we will start new companies to create our own jobs and jobs for more Americans.”

Mr. Friedman points out that our economy was built through the power of migrant labor and that our status as technology leader is directly tied to our recent immigration patterns so more, not less, immigration is a good idea. In other words, protectionism, at least in some forms, will harm not help us.

Congress recently bought false [PDF] right-wing spin about H1B visas and banks using TARP funds and voted to numerous jobs and our rate of patents goes up with the rise in tech immigrants.

The workers are going to ply their trade somewhere and if not in the US it will be in their home countries meaning that those countries will reap the benefits of workers trained in our excellent educational system.

This is not a path that allows America to remain competitive in the future.

Some state & local governments are having second thoughts about trying to control immigration through the use of local laws as the cost has proven to be prohibitive and the measures a PR nightmare.

An example of some of the thinking that should have been done beforehand:

“Republican state Rep. Stephen Clark, author of one proposal, wants to delay the bill for a year to study the economic impact of illegal immigrants on the state.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., a Republican, supports a delay, says spokeswoman Lisa Roskelley.

“We are in the process of making major cuts all across the board in government, including public education,” says Clark, who puts the cost of implementing the immigration law at $1.7 million. “We believe now is not the time to invest that money into this issue, especially when we don’t know whether illegal immigration is a financial plus or minus to the state.”

This isn’t surprising as these are merely red-meat election issues not measures that can actually affect migration patterns in any significant measure and it’s not unreasonable to believe that pushing undocumented workers out of your area can have an adverse impact on the local economy either through loss of labor or because the locality is shunned or even sued for discrimination.

A smart comprehensive plan or even something simple like raising visa caps and eliminating the 2A visa category would do a lot to reduce “illegal” immigration if that’s your goal. If your goal is simply to keep the brown people out (as the Americans in the past wanted to keep out the Irish, the Jews, the Italians, etc..) then that boat has sailed.

It probably comes as little shock to anyone paying attention that the prison system in the US is big business.

It’s quite profitable and growing every day. It even has it’s own lobbyists.

It’s not just US citizens who are being used as cash cows, immigrants are being sucked into this business as well.

According to a recent article in the Boston Globe, jails all over the nation -including smaller facilities – are taking advantage of the shortage of space and the federal government’s willingness to pay by the body and are raking in millions in profits.

There are many ways that an immigrant can find their way into a detention facility. One common way it works is that when an immigrant fighting his case is either unable to pay bond is subject to mandatory detention (or who the DHS claims is subject to mandatory detention) he may sit in jail for months or even years while pursuing a remedy with the assistance of their immigration attorney, perhaps all the way through the appellate stages.

Many times these immigrants are being removed for non-violent offenses such as minor, personal, drug possession and have no other record. However, Congress has mandated that they be detained for the duration of their proceedings – even if they aren’t dangerous. This needlessly leads to job loss and family disruption as many of these immigrants have been here for decades, have relief available, and will ultimately not be deported.

For example, an immigrant who was convicted of possession of a controlled substance other than a small amount of marijuana may be eligible for relief known as “cancellation of removal” but is also subject to mandatory detention.

This means the have to stay in jail the entire time they’re fighting their case. A case that takes 6 months earns the jail on average $16,000.00 dollars. If the immigrant is denied at the immigration court level and chooses to appeal the profit for the jail increases greatly. Oddly many cases which should be approved are denied at the immigration court level and the Board of Immigration Appeals – both administrative agencies of the executive branch rather than independent tribunals.

There appears to be little incentive to let these folks go even if they’re not dangerous.

In this business model everyone wins – except the families of course.