Immigration Blog

As the Center for Immigration Studies reported on Thursday, June 29, 2017, the House of Representatives:

[P]assed two significant immigration enforcement bills addressing sanctuary policies and public safety.

A few days ago, a Reuters article published in various media outlets noted that the consulting firm Insigniam had conducted a review and issued a report for Secretary of State Tillerson suggesting that Department of State functions having to do with issuance of visas and passports should be transferred from the Department of State (DOS) to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The recommendation was made after surveying thousands of employees online.

Between 2012 and 2014, the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) administered a test of English literacy to over 8,000 American adults. The results have been revealing. Using scores from the PIAAC test, my CIS Backgrounder from last month showed that the magnitude and persistence of low English literacy among immigrants is a serious concern, and that immigrants' subjective assessments of their English ability tend to understate the problem.

The Department of Homeland Security is considering an increase in the number of H-2B visa holders allowed into the country. The primary argument for doing so is that there are not enough workers for seasonal jobs that require modest skill levels. If such workers really were in short supply, wages should be rising rapidly in these occupations as employers struggle to recruit new workers or retain the ones they already have. In economics, the price of anything — steel, wheat, or workers — rises if demand outstrips supply and, of course, the price of workers is primarily wages.

If the Trump administration is really interested in preserving good jobs for U.S. residents (citizens and green card holders), it should push its contractors to avoid hiring H-1Bs. And the Department of Homeland Security should lead the way.

This thought struck me as I was reading another one of those articles about how DHS is buying technology (belatedly) that would allow us to keep track of arriving and departing aliens. That's a task that Fiji — little Fiji — accomplished more than 30 years ago, a subject to which I will return.

It's been nearly six months since Donald Trump took office, and some families with illegal aliens get food stamps (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) while identical all-citizen families of the same size and with the same income do not receive them.

Currently a rich alien can get a family-sized bunch of conditional green cards for $500,000 in the Immigrant Investor (EB-5) program; Homeland Security has suggested raising the minimum (set a quarter of a century ago) to $1.35 million.

Both our Department of State, and the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, had golden opportunities to make an impact on their own nations' immigration problems last week in Washington, and both wasted them. Trump's State Department presumably wants to decrease illegal immigration; Modi's government wants to increase Indian migration to the States. For a few minutes, it looked like the Department of State had done the right thing with the oft-abused K visa (for fiancées of citizens); it initially declared that the six-nation travel ban should cover aliens (largely women) arriving with this visa, and then, a few minutes later, State decided that the fiancées fell into the category of those "who have a credible claim of a bona fide relationship" here.

One of the Center's Board members, Jan Ting, recently penned an interesting blog concerning the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which, despite its reputation for doggedness where citizens' tax filings are concerned, appears to be more than willing to permit certain aliens to get away with violating the law.

In my June 29, 2017 post, I detailed how the Trump administration was preparing to begin implementation, in accordance with limitations in a June 26, 2017, Supreme Court decision, of Executive Order 13780, "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry