Tag: visas
Over 60,000 Visas Revoked Since Trump’s Travel Ban Took Effect

Over 60,000 Visas Revoked Since Trump’s Travel Ban Took Effect

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – About 60,000 visas were revoked under U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order temporarily halting immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries, the State Department said on Friday, in one of several government communications clarifying how the order is being rolled out.

The revocation means the government voided travel visas for people trying to enter the United States, but the visas could be restored later without a new application, said William Cocks, a spokesman for consular affairs at the State Department.

“We will communicate updates to affected travelers following the 90-day review,” he said.

Earlier news reports, citing a government attorney at a federal court hearing, put the figure at more than 100,000 visas.

The government issued over 11 million immigrant and non-immigrant visas in fiscal year 2015, the State Department said.

The immigration executive order signed by Trump a week ago temporarily halted the U.S. refugee program and imposed a 90-day suspension on people traveling from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Trump said the measures would help protect Americans from terrorist attacks.

Under President Barack Obama, Trump’s predecessor, the United States added those seven countries as “countries of concern” under its visa waiver program, effectively toughening U.S. visa procedures for individuals who visited those places during the past five years.

Trump’s executive order was at least in part informed by those restrictions. The new president, who took office on Jan. 20, went further by temporarily barring passport holders from those seven countries.

The State Department first issued the guidance about revoking the visas on Jan. 27, the day Trump signed his executive order, according to a memo filed in a court case in Massachusetts.

But confusion about the roll out of the order sparked protests at airports across the country where people had been detained and led to a wave of lawsuits filed by individuals, states and civil rights groups.

To further clarify how the order should be applied, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) sent out a letter to all of its employees on Feb. 2, according to a copy of the memo seen by Reuters.

The memo said the agency was continuing to process all applications and petitions for people inside the United States regardless of their country of origin. It also said all applications for permanent residency and adjustment of status can move forward.

USCIS said they could not discuss internal employee communications.

The Department of Homeland Security had earlier clarified, after some initial back-and-forth, that the order would not apply to green card holders. Also people from the seven countries who hold dual citizenship are allowed to enter the United States on the passport of a non-restricted nation when eligible, according to Feb. 2 guidance posted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s website.

(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton in Washington and Mica Rosenberg in New York; Editing by Howard Goller and Lisa Shumaker)

IMAGE: Fadi Kassar (L) hugs his daughters Hnan, 8 and Lian, 5, for the first time in more than 2 years with his wife Razan (not pictured) looks on after the family was reunited following a flight from Amman, Jordan, at John F. Kennedy International airport in New York City February 2, 2017.  Bill Swersey/HIAS.org/Handout via REUTERS

Trump Has Broad Power To Implement Immigration Policies

Trump Has Broad Power To Implement Immigration Policies

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Donald Trump will be able to make many of his promised changes in immigration policy unilaterally by exercising the same kind of executive powers he criticized President Barack Obama for using.

But while most of the measures laid out in a ten-point immigration policy plan on Trump’s transition website could be set in motion without legislative approval, fully implementing them would require funding that Congress would have to approve, legal experts said.

Two core pieces of Trump’s plan, for example, involve removing more criminal immigrants who are in the country illegally and ending “catch and release” of those who cross the border illegally and are awaiting court hearings.

Shifting policy on both issues could be accomplished by putting out new enforcement directives to agents in the field from the Department of Homeland Security.

But the changes would be expensive, requiring a dramatic expansion of immigration courts and detention facilities used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said  Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law expert at Cornell Law School.

More deportations would require more staff at every level of the system to investigate, apprehend and process those targeted. Immigration courts already have a backload of more than 500,000 cases. Detention space is currently stretched to house 41,000 immigrants currently awaiting deportation or hearings and far more holding facilities would be needed if detainees were no longer released while awaiting court dates.

Even then, completely ending the release of immigrants awaiting hearings would be difficult: A recent court decision has prohibited detention longer than 20 days for adults and children migrating together, a demographic that surged to more than 77,000 in fiscal year 2016.

Trump’s transition team has not explained how the new president intends to implement his plans.

“The President-elect is very focused on naming his cabinet, building out his administration and preparing to hit the ground running on Inauguration Day,” said Jason Miller, a spokesman for the Trump transition team. “There will be plenty of time to discuss detailed policy specifics after the swearing-in.”

Democratic attorneys general and civil rights groups are already busy preparing legal arguments to try to stop Trump’s executive actions should he implement some of his proposals. The pushback will be similar to the challenges Obama faced from Republican attorneys general and conservative groups when he acted alone to try to shield nearly 5 million immigrants from deportation.

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Among the easiest immigration promises for Trump to fulfill will be his vow to reverse Obama’s executive orders. The president-elect could eliminate with a pen-stroke Obama’s 2012 policy allowing immigrants brought here illegally as children to apply for work permits, a program known as DACA that Trump has said he will end.

What would happen next is unclear. More than 740,000 people have been approved for deportation relief under the program, and many worry that their addresses and other identifying information could be used by the new administration to target them for deportation.

Steve Legomsky, former chief counsel at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said no laws would prevent the Trump administration from using program records for immigration enforcement, but the president-elect has not said he would do so.

Denying visas to people from countries “where adequate screening cannot occur,” another point on Trump’s immigration plan, could also be easily accomplished by the president.

Under current law, the administration can unilaterally suspend visas for any individuals or groups of people deemed “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

In the past, presidents have chosen to apply this statute narrowly – to keep out particular dictators or to deal with emergencies, for example. But the law is worded very broadly and could theoretically be applied to entire countries, said David Martin, emeritus professor of international law at University of Virginia School of Law.

Trump’s promise to make legal immigration better serve America and its domestic workforce would likely focus, at least initially, on temporary employment visas such as the H1-B, which are issued to specialized workers in fields such as technology.

While Congress sets the maximum number of visas that can be issued annually, Trump could ask the Department of Justice to step up investigations of companies using those visas, with a focus on whether they are discriminating against American workers. This could include banning more tech outsourcing firms, which are the largest users of H-1B visas, from the program if they violate the rules, said Ron Hira, a professor at Howard University.

“Employers are going to be caught up in the cross hairs,” said business immigration lawyer Matthew Dunn from the law firm Kramer Levin.

(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York and Julia Edwards Ainsley in Washington D.C., additional reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Sue Horton and Mary Milliken)

IMAGE: A young boy holds U.S. flags as immigrants and community leaders rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court to mark the one-year anniversary of President Barack Obama’s executive orders on immigration in Washington, November 20, 2015.REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque  

At Trump’s Resort, Guest Workers Favored

At Trump’s Resort, Guest Workers Favored

A huge centerpiece of Donald Trump’s HUGE presidential pitch is to bash U.S. immigration policy while promising more jobs for Americans.

Yet at Trump’s ultra-posh Palm Beach resort, foreign-born workers have a much better chance of being hired than locals who seek the same positions.

“Getting help in Palm Beach during the high season is almost impossible,” the Big Orange Trumpster grumped to MSNBC last fall. Cue the violins.

According to the New York Times, since 2010 at least 296 American workers have applied or were referred to Trump’s oceanfront Mar-a-Lago Club to fill openings for cooks, housekeepers and wait staff.

Only 17 U.S. applicants were hired, according to federal records. That’s slightly less than 6 percent. The rest of those Mar-a-Lago jobs were filled by foreign workers, many from Romania, for whom Trump’s club obtained legal visas.

Of those many Americans who didn’t get hired, Trump said: “The only reason they wouldn’t get a callback is that they weren’t qualified, for some reason.”

A few undoubtedly weren’t qualified, but out of nearly 300 there had to be way more than 17 who could make the cut. Otherwise it’s a harsh slam on the diverse hospitality trade in the Palm Beach area.

Maybe the Trumpster has different employment standards for his kitchen staff and waiters — for instance, they have to speak Romanian. That would definitely narrow, and whiten, the labor pool.

Or perhaps it’s just cheaper for Trump to hire and keep foreign workers than it is to pay Americans for the same jobs. This is exactly what he condemns other corporations for doing when they outsource.

The guest-worker program allows companies to bring in foreign labor when there is an insufficient supply of U.S. workers. It undeniably helps firms in places that have limited work-force populations.

But job-placement agencies in Palm Beach County (pop. 1.3 million) say there’s no shortage of qualified local applicants for seasonal openings at hotels, restaurants and even fancy clubs that charge a $100,000 member initiation fee, like Mar-a-Lago.

For big resorts, hiring foreign employees is more attractive because the U.S. Department of Labor sets a “prevailing wage” based on the type of job and the location.

Applicants from other countries are restricted to working only for the company that sponsors their entry. That means they can’t leave for higher-paying positions without securing new visas, which is often a time-consuming hassle.

Consequently, guest workers tend to stay with the same employer even if they don’t receive raises. The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office says guest workers are also less likely to complain about workplace conditions, because they fear losing their visa status and being sent home.

By contrast, American workers have been known to speak up.

Despite his spittle-flecked tirades against corporations that replace U.S. labor with foreign labor, Trump loves, loves, loves the guest-worker program.

Labor Department records show that, during the past five years, he has sought more than 500 H-2B visas to bring foreign workers to Mar-a-Lago. He has also used the same method to fill positions at his Virginia vineyard and golf resorts in Jupiter, West Palm Beach and New Jersey.

The H-2B visa is strictly for temporary, low-skill, non-agricultural jobs for which there aren’t enough “able, willing, qualified and available” U.S. workers. How many such visas have been granted to Trump properties is hard to ascertain, because final approval comes from the State Department and Homeland Security.

But, based on the known applications, fewer than six of every 100 American workers who seek jobs as waiters, cooks or housekeepers at Mar-a-Lago are hired.

Statistically, they’d have a better chance of getting into Harvard. For companies that really can’t fill all their jobs, there’s nothing wrong with recruiting foreign labor on temporary visas. It meets production needs and also benefits the workers, most of whom make enormous sacrifices to come here.

But Trump’s case for hiring visa workers instead of Americans is flimsy. South Florida has 6.2 million residents and a vast service industry — yet he goes all the way to central Europe in search of employees.

And this is the same self-righteous screamer who allegedly won’t eat Oreos because Nabisco cut jobs in Chicago to expand a facility in Mexico.

Hey, Trumpster. You care so much about the plight of American workers? Try hiring more of them.

(Carl Hiaasen is a columnist for the Miami Herald. Readers may write to him at: 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132.)
(c) 2016, The Miami Herald Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: A woman smiles after getting an autograph by U.S. Republican presidential candidate and businessman Donald Trump on her hat after he spoke at a campaign rally South Point Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada January 21, 2016. REUTERS/David Becker 

Companies Labor To Get Visas For Skilled Foreign Professionals

Companies Labor To Get Visas For Skilled Foreign Professionals

By Mila Koumpilova, Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (TNS)

MINNEAPOLIS — William Dinauer, president of laser maker LasX Industries, had no doubts about hiring Chinese-born Yahui Zhang this year.

She has a doctorate in industrial engineering and experience working for a larger device manufacturer. She was open to the posted salary, geared toward a candidate with a bachelor’s degree. Dinauer’s only misgiving: Can he keep her?

At the first opportunity, White Bear Lake, Minnesotta-based LasX recently applied for a three-year H-1B visa for Zhang — the most common type of work visa for college-educated professionals. Dinauer knew the company had to move fast. Five business days later, applications topped the annual limit for H1-B visas, and the government said it will once again hold a lottery to dole the visas out.

This spring, the H-1B program is the focus of intense debate in Congress and keen interest in Minnesota, where companies have come to rely more on the visas in recent years.

Supporters of the program say easing the annual rush on the visas would help employers find highly skilled candidates for hard-to-fill positions. Opponents counter many companies use the program for cheaper, more pliable labor, bypassing qualified American workers.

“This debate is very essential and a healthy one,” said Minneapolis immigration attorney Dyan Williams. “It’s not all black and white.”

In the past three years, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services stopped accepting applications five business days after the application season begins. Last year, the agency received more than twice as many applications as the 85,000 visas available under the cap; 20,000 of those are earmarked for applicants with advanced degrees from U.S. universities.

In recent years, Minnesota employers have made growing use of H-1B visas. In 2013, the most recent for which state data is available, they lined up more than 5,500 H-1Bs, a more than 40 percent increase in five years. Rochester-based Mayo Clinic — exempt from the cap as a nonprofit educational and research institution — has 400 H-1B employees from 66 countries out of 59,000 on its campuses nationwide.

LasX, which under government H-1B requirements did pay Zhang more than the bachelor-level salary it had posted, got nearly 40 applications for that job. Still, Dinauer says his 70-employee company competes with larger manufacturers in the Twin Cities and beyond for “that one top engineer.” Five years ago, LasX sponsored a Malaysian engineer who’s since helped design laser equipment to make a new medical diagnostic device.

“Having a lottery to select people seems silly to me if they want to live here and contribute to our economy,” he said.

At Duluth’s North Point Geographic Solutions, a digital mapping company, owner Carolyn Adams hired Chinese native Xue Gao in February after a six-month search that involved tweaking and reposting an opening that went unfilled. Adams says recruiting and training a new employee takes time, and the uncertainty of the lottery process is tough on small companies: “From a business perspective, this is really stressful.”

The H-1B program has long provoked debate in Congress, where lawmakers perennially ponder raising the visa cap or, on the flip side, putting new restrictions on the program. This winter, Mark Krikorian of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies thought this would be the year when Congress acts to increase the cap. To Krikorian, the prospect was troubling. He deems H-1B “a cheap labor program” that, because visa recipients are largely tied to their employers, yields “white-collar indentured workers.”

“I am yet to be convinced we should have an H-1B program at all,” he said. “If we do, it should be restricted to truly exceptional talent.”

An H-1B increase is tied up installed efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for immigrants without legal status. Bipartisan momentum was building to tackle the high demand for work visas and work-based green cards separately.

The I-Squared Act of 2015 would increase the H-1B cap to as many as 195,000 visas based on market demand, among other changes. The legislation drew key Republican backing and endorsements from the likes of Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. But it also met with major pushback in committee, where critics highlighted a study suggesting a relatively high number of U.S. science and technology graduates do not work in their fields as evidence there is no shortage of American job candidates.

A recent controversy involving Southern California Edison didn’t help: The power company planned to lay off hundreds of workers while enlisting Indian companies that supply workers to U.S. employers and snap up many of the available H-1B visas.

Attempts to compare salaries for H-1B workers and their American counterparts have yielded much conflicting research over the years. A recent study by the nonprofit American Institute for Economic Research found H-1B status accounted for no statistically significant difference in pay in occupations that draw the bulk of those visas.

Williams, the Twin Cities attorney, agrees — but she also sees the potential for abuse. She believes a debate about increasing the visas should come with a look at “checks and balances,” such as raising the prevailing wage, a state-by-state estimate of compensation earned by most workers in a given field, which H-1B ­sponsors must offer at a minimum to foreign employees.

“If you’re going to increase the cap,” Williams said, “you really need to look at whether you are indeed hiring the best and the brightest.”

Debjyoti Dwivedy, vice president of the advocacy group Immigration Voice and a Twin Cities data storage engineer, says his organization doesn’t support boosting visa numbers — unless there is a proportionate increase in work-based green cards, which allow workers the flexibility to switch employers and start their own companies.

Dwivedy, who earned a master’s from North Dakota State University, is allowed to work on his student visa for up to 27 months before lining up an H-1B — a longer period for technology grads like him. So after striking out in last year’s lottery, he gets a second chance to apply this spring.

“The U.S. government spent a lot of money on me,” said Dwivedy, who studied on a full scholarship. “Now it’s my turn to serve this country.”

Photo: Elizabeth Flores via Minneapolis Star Tribune/TNS