Immigration in the News 3/15/2021
"Migrant President" Biden, public charge rule is abandoned, TPS for Venezuelans and Burmese
Commentary
With the passage of the COVID relief bill, this week probably marks the point at which the immigration debate will begin in earnest. The growing crisis on the border seems to have put immigration front and center on the policy agenda. Signs that a piecemeal approach will be the way forward are now too many to count, so expect to see more intense messaging on that front. The DACA issue, in particular, will be very prominent over the next few months and I expect to see some kind of legislation put forward, possibly adapted from prior bills passed by the House in recent years.
The death of the public charge rule involves many facets. There is the “elections have consequences” angle, as this legislation would likely have survived and been ensconced in USCIS policy had Trump won another term. There is also the “pointless waste of time” perspective, as there were undoubtedly hundreds if not thousands of hours wasted developing this policy, shepherding it through the agency review process, getting public comments, etc. Not to mention the at times hilarious and at times sad procession of implementations followed by halts as it worked its way through the courts. Finally, there are the people who find this kind of policy reasonable (after all, many countries have something similar) who are left wondering why it is out-of-bounds in the United States to ask the fairly basic question of whether a potential immigrant can support themselves. When such questions are infused with politics and robbed of a considered and objective decision making process, outcomes like this are predetermined.
This week’s TPS expansions are largely positive, though it does bear mentioning that the recipients of these proclamations seem to have gone from those suffering some kind of natural disaster or other “act of god”-type calamity to those suffering some kind of political unrest the U.S. is sympathetic toward. One wonders if this approach will really be meted out fairly, as it is highly likely there are many people in countries that are going through U.S.-inspired “instability” that would like such generous immigration-related benefits. At the very least one wonders why recent developments in Hong Kong haven’t inspired such an action on behalf of those who bravely stood up to tyranny from the Chinese government.
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Big Topics this Week:
Biden and the border
Public Charge rule abandoned
TPS expanded to Venezuela and Burma
Undocumented Immigrants
Department of Homeland Security/Department of State
Refugee and Asylum Policy
How new immigration legislation would fit into an already complex system
Biden’s bill, which also contains other immigration-related provisions, is unlikely to pass. Democrats hold thin majorities in both chambers of Congress, and Republicans do not support a broad path to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants. But the bills with narrower protections are an opportunity for bipartisan compromise. Democrats hope this piece-by-piece approach to immigration will offer a better chance of success.
Good explainer from Wapo with some very nice graphics. Love to see deep dives like this in the major papers.
Biden and the border
Exclusive: 'Migrant president' Biden stirs Mexican angst over boom time for gangs
One Mexican official familiar with migration developments, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said organized crime began changing its modus operandi “from the day Biden took office” and now exhibited “unprecedented” levels of sophistication.
That includes briefing clients on the latest immigration rules, using technology to outfox authorities, and disguising smuggling operations as travel agencies, assessments showed.
“Migrants have become a commodity,” the official said, arguing they were now as valuable as drugs for the gangs. “But if a packet of drugs is lost in the sea, it’s gone. If migrants are lost, it’s human beings we’re talking about.”
The cartel element of the trafficking problem at the border is a problem no one seems to be able to get their arms around.
The House is about to start piecemeal immigration reform
The bills narrowly address immigrant populations perceived as sympathetic by members of both parties. They represent Democrats’ best chance of passing immigration reform at this point, with a comprehensive immigration reform bill backed by Biden unlikely to attract the Republican votes necessary to proceed in the Senate for now. They can also bypass the sometimes lengthy committee markup process and go straight to the floor for a vote because they previously passed the House, unlike the Biden bill.
“We want to achieve a breakthrough in the next few months," said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, and the organization's “strategy is to push for the things that can pass in the House.” If those bills pass, it could create momentum to take up the full comprehensive immigration reform proposed by Biden, he said.
Cornyn Says Situation At The Border Could Derail Bipartisan Work On Broader Immigration Reform
In Laredo, the Republican Senator and Laredo Democrat stressed bipartisan solutions to the broad immigration system, but Cornyn warned that the current situation at the border could threaten efforts such as those to create permanent protections for DACA recipients brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
“I've finally come to the opinion that we should quit using them as a pawn,” he said. “But if we don't get control over what's happening at the border now, this is going to blow any chance we have to make reasonable progress on immigration reform.”
Public Charge rule
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said his department had halted the implementation of the 2019 "public charge" regulation following the reinstatement of a federal court order blocking the Trump-era policy. Earlier on Tuesday, the Justice Department notified courts across the country, including the Supreme Court, that it would no longer defend the Trump administration's public charge regulation.
Biden Administration Halts Public Charge Rule
Green card applicants filing on or after March 9 will no longer need to include Form I-944 (officially called the “Declaration of Self-Sufficiency”) when applying from within the United States. For those applying from outside the United States, Form DS-5440 (“Public Charge Questionnaire”) was already blocked by a preliminary injunction, and USCIS will likely also do away with that form.
Dropping Public Charge Rule, DHS Announces Return to Previous Policy to Determine Admissibility
This signals the end of close to two years of confusion over the Trump public charge rule. That rule, criticized as a “wealth test,” made it harder for low-income immigrants and non-immigrants, who might use even non-cash welfare benefits, to obtain admission to the United States. The rule was subject to litigation in various jurisdictions. There were injunctions and stays of injunctions. One month the rule was in effect in some jurisdictions, the next it was not, and then the next, it was in effect again. Applicants for adjustment of status or nonimmigrants were never quite sure if the rule would apply to their applications.
Biden Decision to Cancel Immigration Public Charge "Sticks it to Taxpayers," Says FAIR
"The principle that immigrants be self-sufficient predates our republic, and has been codified into law since 1882. But none of that, nor the burdens placed on the American people, matters one whit to an administration that is hell-bent on eliminating all rational rules and enforcement where it comes to immigration.
I can already picture future law school and public policy courses on how this debacle was handled and then played out. There’s a right way and a wrong way to create policy, ladies and gentlemen. This is exhibit A.
TPS expanded
Biden offers temporary legal status to 300,000 Venezuelan immigrants living in U.S.
The TPS designation, which was first reported by the Los Angeles Times, applies to undocumented Venezuelan immigrants who have been living in the U.S. as of Monday, March 8. Senior officials said an estimated 320,000 Venezuelans would be eligible for the relief, and fees associated with the application process total $545. Applications are due within six months.
Biden administration grants humanitarian protection for Burmese in US
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas designated Myanmar for Temporary Protected Status, a humanitarian protection, for 18 months.
"Due to the military coup and security forces' brutal violence against civilians, the people of Burma are suffering a complex and deteriorating humanitarian crisis in many parts of the country," Mayorkas said in a statement, using the country's former name.
Undocumented Immigrants
EXCLUSIVE: 16-year-old survivor speaks about California crash that killed 13
“Some of the people in that car ran and insisted on getting into ours and we took off,” he said.
By then, the Expedition Martinez was riding in was carrying 25 passengers.
“I asked my friend next to me if he was OK, and he said he felt really cramped. I told him to stick it out,” Martinez said.
The 16-year-old from the state of Guerrero in Mexico says he doesn’t remember much after that.
The Expedition was hit by a semi truck at the intersection of Highway 115 and Norrish Road in Holtville, Calif. Thirteen people died; 12 others in the SUV survived including Martinez.
Immigrant victims of crime hope Congress eases visa hurdles
But the program is broken, immigrant advocates say, leaving applicants waiting years for a decision — sometimes without permission to work or protection from deportation. After the Trump administration made it easier to deport U visa applicants, they’re hoping for help from President Joe Biden, who's backing changes to the program in major immigration legislation poised for House debate this week.
U.S. Stimulus Is Delivering the Cash to Mexicans That AMLO Won’t
Remittances surged to a record, as Mexican expats received stimulus checks and sent some of the money home. And exports also hit an all-time high, because the things Americans wanted to buy in the era of lockdowns and work-from-home –- like new televisions or computer gear –- were a good match for Mexico’s manufacturing industry.
The upshot is that U.S. stimulus added about 3.5 percentage points to Mexico’s gross domestic product in 2020 -- seven times as much as the fiscal measures taken by the country’s own government, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. calculations. This year’s numbers may be similarly lopsided.
Immigrant living in church for years wins temporary reprieve
A Guatemalan woman who has been living in a Massachusetts church for more than three years to avoid deportation has been granted a reprieve to remain in the country for now.
Maria Macario was issued a one-year stay of her deportation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials during a meeting at its Burlington office earlier this week, according to Rev. John Gibbons of the First Parish church in Bedford.
Steve Guest, a communication adviser for Cruz, conceded in an email that Cruz misspoke when he said "every illegal alien in America" would get a check under the American Rescue Plan Act. Guest said Cruz intended to say a check would go to "every illegal alien in America who has a Social Security number." (Guest said it's important to note that Cruz's Senate misstatement came during the second morning of a marathon meeting that had kept senators up all night voting, and that Cruz had only one minute to speak on a complex subject.)
Illegal Immigration In America Has Continued To Decline
While Donald Trump railed against illegal immigration from Mexico, it turns out demographics and economic conditions in Mexico had already addressed the issue. “The undocumented population from Mexico declined so much in the past decade that its share dropped to less than half of the total population,” according to new research from Robert Warren, a demographer and senior visiting fellow at the Center for Migration Studies. “From 2010 to 2019, the undocumented population from Mexico declined by about 1.9 million, and the undocumented population from the rest of the world increased by about 500,000.”
Bill Could Undo Local 'Sanctuary City' Immigration Rules
A New Hampshire bill that would require authorities to detain suspected undocumented immigrants for federal immigration authorities could destroy police reform adopted by two Upper Valley communities last year, municipal officials say.
The bill, referred to as the “Anti-Sanctuary Act” by supporters, would require local and state police to comply with federal immigration enforcement, Valley News reported.
In addition, it would bar municipalities from “adopting policies that prohibit, restrict, or discourage the enforcement of federal immigration law.”
A Profile of Immigrant Women in the Workforce
The top five industries for immigrant women in the workforce are health care and social assistance; accommodation and food services; educational services; retail trade; and manufacturing. This workforce includes women such as Teresa, a member of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Healthcare 1199NW in Washington state, who works as a hospital registrar. She checks in patients—many of whom have COVID-19—who are coming to see an emergency physician. She recognizes that her own experience as an immigrant from the Philippines has allowed her to connect and better serve patients and their families who also immigrated to the United States.
Lots of breadth on the coverage here, the stranded in church for years” stories are surprisingly common. Churches and faith groups are deeply involved with the immigrant community, it would be nice to see that fact recognized more at the level of the national debate on immigration.
DHS/DOS
Held in grim steel-and-concrete cells built for adults, these young people are spending an average of 107 hours awaiting transfer to an HHS-run shelter, well over the 72-hour legal limit, the data shows. The largest number of unaccompanied minors held this way during the Trump administration was about 2,600 in June 2019, according to congressional testimony and two former Customs and Border Protection officials who were involved in handling that crisis.
Facing Pressure, Biden Administration Scrambles to Shelter Migrant Children
In the scramble to find additional space for the children, the Biden administration is considering housing them at unused school buildings, military bases and even a NASA site, Moffett Federal Airfield in Mountain View, Calif., according to a memo obtained by The Times. The NASA site would “remain unoccupied but available for use if H.H.S. has an urgent need for additional shelter space,” the memo said.
The Biden administration said Friday it would rescind a 2018 policy that discouraged caregivers from picking up migrant children in custody at the border, its latest move to overhaul the hardline immigration system Trump implemented over the past four years.
ICE has no clear plan for vaccinating thousands of detained immigrants fighting deportation
“ICE has no plan to provide vaccines on a systemwide basis,” said Melissa Riess, a staff attorney for Disability Rights Advocates in California, one of several nonprofits that filed a federal lawsuit in California seeking the release of detainees with high-risk health conditions. “That’s having horrendous consequences. It seems like they’re doing nothing.”
Frankly, the most extraordinary thing you can do for the artist visa is be able to pay for it. At the time of my latest O-1 renewal in 2020, the application fee was $460. In order to have the decision expedited so as not to risk overstaying my current visa, I paid a "premium processing" fee of $1,440. My lawyer's fees, which were on the more affordable end, ran me around $4,000.
Children packed into Border Patrol tent for days on end
The lawyers interviewed more than a dozen children Thursday in Donna, Texas, where the Border Patrol is holding more than 1,000 people. Some of the youths told the lawyers they had been at the facility for a week or longer, despite the agency’s three-day limit for detaining children. Many said they haven’t been allowed to phone their parents or other relatives who may be wondering where they are.
500 U.S. immigration agency jobs to return to Kansas City
"This will not only be a boon to workers in Kansas City, but will also help to address the agency's backlog in immigration applications," Cleaver said in a statement.
"Restoring these critical jobs at the National Benefits Center in the Kansas City region will help support the local economy and the nation, as these employees work to process immigration applications," Moran said.
The Link Between Immigration Enforcement and Babies’ Health
"Regardless of how you feel about immigration policies, it's important to realize that there may be other effects that perhaps weren't intended, but nevertheless have real consequences,” says Christina Gibson-Davis, a professor of public policy at Duke University and one of the authors of the peer-reviewed study. “Health at birth has real downstream effects — it's related to lower earnings and worse health for adults.”
Special Report: How Trump administration left indelible mark on U.S. immigration courts
The administration filled two-thirds of the immigration courts’ 520 lifetime positions with judges who, as a whole, have disproportionately ordered deportation, according to a Reuters analysis of more than 800,000 immigration cases decided over the past 20 years.
Judges hired under Trump ordered immigrants deported in 69% of cases, compared to 58% for judges hired as far back as the administration of President Ronald Reagan. Because hundreds of thousands of immigrants have cases before the court each year, that 11 percentage-point difference translates to tens of thousands more people ordered deported each year. Appeals are rarely successful.
Immigration arrests have fallen sharply under Biden, ICE data show
The Biden administration has issued temporary guidelines to ICE officers narrowing their enforcement priorities to focus on national security threats, recent border-crossers and criminals with aggravated felony convictions who pose a threat to public safety. Officers must seek permission from senior supervisors in writing before attempting to arrest fugitives who do not fit those categories, a change that Biden officials say will make better use of the agency’s resources.
H-1B Electronic Registration: Employer Q&A With Corporate Immigration Partners
Now, employers no longer must prepare and file a full petition ahead of the lottery—they will instead electronically register foreign nationals they wish to sponsor by submitting basic information about their organization and the employee after creating an online account through the myUSCIS portal. For each employee or candidate that an employer registers, there is a mandatory, nonrefundable $10 USCIS fee. USCIS will use this information to conduct the lottery and notify employers and their selected employees, who then will need to submit a full H-1B visa petition to USCIS.
No articles about it, but the USCIS hiring freeze was lifted this week for everyone except the Field Office Directorate (FOD). This is notable because it is likely that refugee/asylum operations (RAIO) are going to ramp up, creating the exact opposite dynamic that existed in the Trump years where many refugee officers fled RAIO to the FOD. Processing times for major benefits like green cards and citizenship may be affected by this phenomenon.
Refugee/Asylum Policy
Biden restarts program to help migrant children fleeing violence in Central America
But a senior White House official had a key message to individuals who might see this as a sign to come to the U.S.-Mexico border: "La frontera está cerrada" — or "the border is closed."
"I want to be clear, neither this announcement nor any of the other measures suggest that anyone, especially children and families with young children, should make the dangerous trip to try and enter the U.S. in an irregular fashion," Roberta Jacobson, special assistant to the president and coordinator for the southern border, said at a press briefing Wednesday. "The border is not open."
Messaging on this is a mess. As a side note, I’m always sympathetic toward USG efforts to get their messaging out in Spanish for their target audience, but it takes more than a standard press conference. People in the communities that are sending folks up to the border aren’t watching CNN.