It’s filled with white supremacists and sadists who understandably don’t think there are any limits on or accountability for their behavior. Burning (metaphorically) the whole thing to the ground is the only way.
—Atrios on ICE.
I’m not sure how, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has become a deeply and ineluctably evil organization.
I agree with Mr. Black: You cannot fix this organization by making small changes around the periphery.
Pro Publica has looked into the activities of Kris Kobach, and it discovers that he has made huge bank off of failed lawsuits for draconian anti-immigrant laws that he he has encouraged various municipalities to adopt:
Kris Kobach likes to tout his work for Valley Park, Missouri. He has boasted on cable TV about crafting and defending the town’s hardline anti-immigration ordinance. He discussed his “victory” there at length on his old radio show. He still lists it on his resume.
But “victory” isn’t the word most Valley Park residents would use to describe the results of Kobach’s work. With his help, the town of 7,000 passed an ordinance in 2006 that punished employers for hiring illegal immigrants and landlords for renting to them. But after two years of litigation and nearly $300,000 in expenses, the ordinance was largely gutted. Now, it is illegal only to “knowingly” hire illegal immigrants there — something that was already illegal under federal law. The town’s attorney can’t recall a single case brought under the ordinance.
“Ambulance chasing” is how Grant Young, a former mayor of Valley Park, describes Kobach’s role. Young characterized Kobach’s attitude as, “Let’s find a town that’s got some issues or pretends to have some issues, let’s drum up an immigration problem and maybe I can advance my political position, my political thinking and maybe make some money at the same time.”
Kobach used his work in Valley Park to attract other clients, with sometimes disastrous effects on the municipalities. The towns — some with budgets in the single-digit-millions — ran up hefty legal costs after hiring him to defend similar ordinances. Farmers Branch, Texas, wound up owing $7 million in legal bills. Hazleton, Penn., took on debt to pay $1.4 million and eventually had to file for a state bailout. In Fremont, Neb., the city raised property taxes to pay for Kobach’s services. None of the towns are currently enforcing the laws he helped craft.
“This sounds a little bit to me like Harold Hill in ‘The Music Man,’” said Larry Dessem, a law professor at the University of Missouri who focuses on legal ethics. “Got a problem here in River City and we can solve it if you buy the band instruments from me. He is selling something that goes well beyond legal services.”
Kobach rode the attention the cases generated to political prominence, first as Kansas secretary of state, and now as a candidate for governor in the Republican primary on Aug. 7. He also earned more than $800,000 for his immigration work, paid by both towns and an advocacy group, over 13 years.
………
But in addition to his growing name recognition, Kobach’s bank account also benefited from his immigration work. Records obtained by ProPublica and the Kansas City Star show that since 2005 Kobach has made at least $800,000 through this advocacy. At least $150,000 of that was paid during Kobach’s time as secretary of state. (Kansas law permits government officials to moonlight.)
So, he’s on a crusade that also makes him a f%$# load of money at the expense of tax payers and officials by exploiting their fears and naivety.
This sequence of events evokes the Simpsons‘ Monorail episode:
Michelle Wolf just cut ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)a new asshole, and it is beautiful:
It has been revealed that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has been hacking its own risk assessment software so that it can detain everyone it catches.
This organization is fatally flawed, and while its function is essential, the culture is beyond fixing.
Fire all of them and pull their security clearances, and prosecute those who have abused their power:
One of the more fascinating and horrible details in Reuters’ thoroughly fascinating and horrible long-form report on Trump’s cruel border policies is this nugget: ICE hacked the risk-assessment tool it used to decide whom to imprison so that it recommended that everyone should be detained.
………Prior to ICE’s changes to its risk assessment software that result in mandatory detention for all apprehended immigrants, the only immigrants that would automatically be detained were those with serious criminal histories. According to the most recent data released by ICE cited in the Reuters report, the most serious crime committed by nearly half of arrested immigrants during the first 100 days of the Trump administration were traffic violations, which didn’t include drunk driving.
I’m beginning to think that ICE sees sadism as an essential requirement for new hires.
Maria and her 12-year-old daughter surrendered to Customs and Border Protection agents immediately after crossing the Rio Grande on a raft near McAllen, Texas, in the first week of June. It was the final step of their journey from Guatemala, where both of them had been subjected to years of physical abuse by Maria’s husband. They wanted asylum in the United States.
Because Maria had committed a misdemeanor offense by crossing the border, she and her daughter were sent to a processing center where a CBP officer allegedly gave Maria a stark choice. (Maria is a pseudonym to protect her identity.) If she gave up her asylum claim and returned to Guatemala, she and her daughter would remain together. If she applied for asylum, on the other hand, Maria would be thrown in jail for a year and her daughter would be put up for adoption. Maria would never see her daughter again.
Maria recounted this story last week to Edgar Saldivar, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Texas.
“She was very distraught,” Saldivar told The Daily Beast on Tuesday. “Her mind was a bit scattered, but after spending quite a bit of time talking with her, she regained her composure and talked to me.”
Her story of being threatened with the forced adoption of her daughter shocked Saldivar.
“We’ve heard of the history of CBP officers using lies and misinformation to pressure people into signing voluntary departures,” he said. “But in this specific context, where they’re threatening to take a child away and adopting them out to an American family, that was something I had not heard before.”
I am sure that this CBP agent was ordered to get people to leave voluntarily, and I’m sure that he was just following orders.
The term I use for this sort of person is, “Good German.”
Hanna Arendt would call this, “The Banality of Evil.”
European leaders are frantically holding meetings to try to save Merkel’s political career, which threatens to implode over the immigration issue.
If I were in the meetings, I would toss her an anvil, but I’ve never been a fan.
Also, there is the whole “Symmetry” thing: She has been instrumental in applying EU pressure to bring down a number of EU governments, particularly in Italy and Greece, and now she is attempting to rely on the same institutions to preserve her government and her career.
Her problems are largely an artifact of her own political decisions, and bailing her out should not be a priority for the EU.
American immigration policy exists to sow racial division. Immigrants are not the reason your pay is low, and your healthcare costs are high, capitalism is
— Metro DC DSA (@mdc_dsa) June 22, 2018
Solidarity, Brothers and Sisters.
Trump blinked, and issued an executive order changing the asylum policy to something marginally less heinous.
Ironically enough, it appears to be very similar to Obama’s 2014 policy:
President Trump caved to enormous political pressure on Wednesday and signed an executive order meant to end the separation of families at the border by detaining parents and children together for an indefinite period.
“We’re going to have strong — very strong — borders, but we are going to keep the families together,” Mr. Trump said as he signed the order in the Oval Office. “I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.”
But ending the practice of separating families still faces legal and practical obstacles. A federal judge could refuse to give the Trump administration the authority it wants to hold families in custody for more than 20 days, which is the current limit because of a 1997 court order.
………
The president’s four-page order says that officials will continue to criminally prosecute everyone who crosses the border illegally, but will seek to find or build facilities that can hold families — parents and children together — instead of separating them while their legal cases are considered by the courts.
………
Justice Department officials said the legal authority to end family separation relies on a request they will make in the coming days to Judge Dolly M. Gee of the Federal District Court in Los Angeles, the daughter of immigrants from China who was appointed by President Barack Obama. She oversees a 1997 consent decree, known as the Flores settlement, which prohibits immigration authorities from keeping children in detention, even if they are with their parents, for more than 20 days.The 1997 case imposes legal constraints on the proper treatment of children in government custody, which stopped Mr. Obama after his administration began detaining families together during a similar flood of illegal immigration several years ago.
“It’s on Judge Gee,” said Gene Hamilton, the counselor to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. “Are we going to be able to detain alien families together or are we not?”
As for those of you who are wondering why I’m bringing up the contemptible policies of the Obama administration, it is because Trump’s even more despicable policies did not spring fully grown out of his head: They were a logical progression of Obama’s eager embrace of his role as, “Deporter-in-Chief.”
The past is prologue, here, and it is not by accident.
Fundamentally, the issue of illegal immigration is driven to a large demand for low cost labor, and if we were to aggressively target employers, and increase the perceived risk and perceived cost to potential employers, our immigration enforcement system would be both more humane and more effective.
Ian Welsh has come across how Barack Obama’s truly horrific immigration policies led directly to Trump’s even more contemptible child snatching:
So, you’ve all heard about this by now.
It is, obviously, a terrible crime. And yeah, evil.
It is an extension of Obama’s policy of holding families (without splitting them up, but still in terrible conditions). If you want to understand the link, read this Twitter thread.Thread: How did we get here?
In 2015, I shook President Obama’s hand, thanked him for DACA, and asked him to reverse course & close the for-profit baby jails (also known as “family detention centers”) he opened in Dilley & Karnes City, Texas. What he said shook me to my core 1/ pic.twitter.com/K5vi6S2RPj— R. Andrew Free (@ImmCivilRights) June 19, 2018
It is rather telling that (read the whole tweet storm) it is clear from the exchange that putting families in detention was intended as a deterrent by the Obama administration, because they thought that no one but a few immigration lawyers would care.
Sounds familiar.
Trump’s immigration policies are not an abberation, they are a natural progression from prior administrations.
After years of deliberations, the Israeli Interior Ministry has resolved not to grant recognition to the Jewish community of Uganda, Haaretz has learned.
Its decision was revealed in a response to the first and only request thus far by a member of the 2,000-strong Ugandan Abayudaya community, who sought to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return.
The response, obtained by Haaretz, notes that the applicant’s “conversion is not recognized for the purpose of receiving status in Israel” and that, therefore, he must leave the country by June 14 or risk deportation.
When Haaretz asked the ministry about its decision, a spokesperson said, “This is a matter of principle regarding conversions in this community – it is not about one specific applicant.”
………
The application was submitted by Kibita Yosef, who has been living on Ketura – a kibbutz affiliated with the Conservative movement – over the past year.
The response said that Yosef is entitled to challenge the decision in the High Court of Justice.
Converts are eligible to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return, regardless of what movement they are affiliated with, provided they come from recognized Jewish communities. But through its response, the ministry clarified that it does not regard the Abayudaya as a recognized Jewish community.
The Abayudaya began practicing Judaism about 100 years ago, but were only officially converted in recent years. The Jewish Agency considers them to be a recognized Jewish community, but the Interior Ministry has the final say on such matters.
………
Last December, a member of the community, who had been accepted into a program at the Conservative yeshiva in Jerusalem, was detained upon arrival at the airport and deported the following morning. The incident sparked international rage and accusations of racism.
Yet another reason why I want that corrupt hate-monger (Netanyahu) out of Israeli politics forever.
She could not really reverse the policy, or blaming her predecessor, so she has been a political punching bag for the past few weeks.
Then, this Friday, the Guardian got its hands on a memo proving that she was enforcing arbitrary deportation quotas, something that she had categorically denied:
Amber Rudd’s insistence that she knew nothing of Home Office targets for immigration removals risks unravelling following the leak of a secret internal document prepared for her and other senior ministers.
The six-page memo, passed to the Guardian, says the department has set “a target of achieving 12,800 enforced returns in 2017-18” and boasts that “we have exceeded our target of assisted returns”.
It adds that progress has been made on a “path towards the 10% increased performance on enforced returns, which we promised the home secretary earlier this year”.
The document was prepared by Hugh Ind, the director general of the Home Office’s Immigration Enforcement agency, in June last year and copied to Rudd and Brandon Lewis, the then immigration minister, as well as several senior civil servants and special advisers.
………
The issue has become particularly toxic because of coverage of the Windrush generation – many of whom have been made destitute, homeless and denied benefits and healthcare because of the Home Office’s “hostile environment” policy towards those it deems to be lacking appropriate documentation to be in the UK.
It appears that this latest revelation was enough to force her out:
Amber Rudd has dramatically resigned as home secretary, after repeatedly struggling to account for her role in the unjust treatment of Windrush generation migrants.
The home secretary was forced to step down after a series of revelations in the Guardian over Windrush culminated in a leak on Friday that appeared to show she was aware of targets for removing illegal migrants from Britain.
The pressure increased late on Sunday afternoon as the Guardian revealed that in a leaked 2017 letter to Theresa May, Rudd had told the prime minister of her intention to increase deportations by 10% – seemingly at odds with her recent denials that she was aware of deportation targets.
Rudd was facing a bruising appearance in the House of Commons on Monday. Downing Street sources said that in preparing for her statement, new information had become available which convinced Rudd she had inadvertently misled parliament – and she had therefore phoned the prime minister on Sunday to tender her resignation.
More significant than Rudd’s departure is the fact that she was a distraction from Theresa May’s role in creating and enforcing the “hostile environment” policies of the Home Office when she was Home Secretary.
Amber Rudd stumbles toward total ineptitude over Windrush
Amber Rudd is in a no win situation, of course.
This cock-up was created by her predecessor at Home Secretary, probably deliberately, but seeing as how the prior Home Secretary is one Theresa May, now Prime Minister, and as such is Rudd’s boss, (for a while, at least), she is precluded from pointing at the person who created the problem in the first place.
Hopefully, this takes both Rudd and May down.
The Home Office destroyed thousands of landing card slips recording Windrush immigrants’ arrival dates in the UK, despite staff warnings that the move would make it harder to check the records of older Caribbean-born residents experiencing residency difficulties.
A former Home Office employee said the records, stored in the basement of a government tower block, were a vital resource for case workers when they were asked to find information about someone’s arrival date in the UK from the West Indies – usually when the individual was struggling to resolve immigration status problems.
Although the home secretary, Amber Rudd, has promised to make it easier for Windrush-generation residents to regularise their status, the destruction of the database is likely to make the process harder, even with the support of the new taskforce announced this week.
The former employee (who has asked for his name not to be printed) said it was decided in 2010 to destroy the disembarkation cards, which dated back to the 1950s and 60s, when the Home Office’s Whitgift Centre in Croydon was closed and the staff were moved to another site. Employees in his department told their managers it was a bad idea, because these papers were often the last remaining record of a person’s arrival date, in the event of uncertainty or lost documents. The files were destroyed in October that year, when Theresa May was home secretary.
A person’s arrival date is crucial to a citizenship application, because the 1971 Immigration Act gave people who had already moved to Britain indefinite leave to remain.
She then followed up with her hostile environment policy, which, much like Donald Trump’s, “Self-Deportation,” rhetoric was a policy of deliberately terrorizing immigrants.
The inevitable conclusion was that this was a deliberate series of actions:
Theresa May was two years into her job as home secretary when she made her strategy explicit, telling the Telegraph in 2012 her aim “was to create here in Britain a really hostile environment for illegal migration”.
The outcry over the treatment of the Windrush generation of migrants in Britain legally, but sometimes without the paperwork to prove it, has exposed the scale of that strategy.
The hostile environment created by new legislation and regulation has meant migrants do not face border officials only when they enter the country for the first time, but as a constant part of daily life. They must prove their immigration status whenever they try to rent a property, open a bank account or access the health services. Landlords and employers become immigration enforcers – or risk hefty fines.
At the Home Office, May was tasked with delivering David Cameron’s election promise that immigration would be reduced to the tens of thousands, a pledge that has still yet to be realised.
………
Teather, who is now the director of the Jesuit Refugee Service, said: “Theresa May was determined to transform things. She was proud of wanting to generate a really hostile environment.
“The Home Office has a culture of enforcement and disbelief which runs deep into the walls, but it is politically led. It’s a culture from the top, and it has been a bit rich for the home secretary, Amber Rudd, to blame civil servants. When you’ve had a Conservative home secretary that long, you cannot moan when civil servants deliver those policies.”
Before this metastasized into a political catastrophe for the Tories, Theresa May, and her hand picked successor at the home office, were congratulating themselves over their mindless brutality.
The fact that this happened to an immigrant population that is almost entirely black is no accident.
They are a bunch of racist rat-f%$#s, period, full stop.
A vegan nut-job* activist in Switzerland has been denied citizenship in for a campaign against cowbells:
A longtime resident of Switzerland has been refused a passport because of her outspoken campaign against cowbells. Vegan animal rights activist Nancy Holten, who was born in the Netherlands but has lived in Switzerland since she was eight years old, has been labelled a “big mouth” by the resident committee in her village that has rejected her citizenship application twice.
Holten’s argument? Wearing heavy metal bells around their necks is causing Switzerland’s roaming cows physical pain and distress. Switzerland’s argument? Cows look damn good in bells, especially when they’re roaming around in the picturesque alps. Also, tourists are charmed by them.
In Switzerland, citizenship applications are partially assessed by a committee of residents who live in the same district as the applicant. It would appear that Holten is unpopular among some in her village of Gipf-Oberfrick, with a local representative of the Swiss People’s Party Tanja Suter telling the Swiss media that she “annoys us and doesn’t respect our traditions.”
Cow bells aren’t the only cause on Holten’s mind. The self-described freelance journalist, author, model and drama student has staged multiple campaigns against other beloved national pastimes like hunting and piglet racing. According to Swiss news site The Local, the sounds of church bells irritate her too. Does this woman even eat Lindt balls?
You know, cow bells would not be my choice for a hill to die on, but whatever.
*The nut job has nothing to do with being a vegan, and everything to do with freaking out over f%$#ing cowbells.
The United States Department of Homeland Security’s Citizenship and Immigration Services has released new and strict rules for H-1B visas, the permit used by many-a-tech-company to bring skilled workers to the USA from abroad.
President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to restrict use of the visas, which he claimed are used to import workers who are paid less than locals and therefore make it harder for US citizens to get a job. Trump was also uncomfortable with outsourcers’ use of the visa, saying they displaced American workers. Labour hire agencies also sought the visa, bringing in people and then finding them jobs after they arrived.
The USA’s recently cracked down on employers who use the visa, with more inspections to make sure they’re not being abused.
Now a new Policy Memorandum (PDF), released late last week, revealed the Trump Administration’s plans to make H-1B visas harder to obtain by requiring extensive documentation about exactly what workers will do, why they’re needed and where they will work.
Now, if you’re familiar with the H1-B program, but have not followed it closely, you are probably asking yourself, “Wait, this is supposed to be for workers who are unavailable inside the US, why weren’t they already required to provide, ‘Extensive documentation about exactly what workers will do, why they’re needed and where they will work,’?”
If you have followed it closely, you know that the program has NEVER really been about finding unique and special talents that cannot be found in America. It has ALWAYS been about getting cheap labor to keep wages down, particularly in the tech industry.
Applicants will now need to demonstrate they are already an employee of a stateside organisation, while businesses who hire H-1B holders must provide signed “detailed statements of work or work orders” and a letter detailing “… the specialized duties the beneficiary will perform, the qualifications required to perform those duties, the duration of the job, salary or wages paid, hours worked, benefits, a detailed description of who will supervise the beneficiary and the beneficiary’s duties, and any other related evidence.”
Ummm ……… If you do not already know the duties required and the other details listed above, then your H1-B application is fraudulent.
I understand that this policy likely is more driven by a general hostility to immigration than it is a concern about fair wages for skilled workders, and I expect this to be walked back significantly under pressure from tech lobbyists and the cheap labor crowd, but it’s a good start.
3 days, and the Democrats cave on the government shutdown.
They shave 1 week off the stop gap, and the Dems get nothing.
Yes, a government shutdown started at midnight.
This should be basically invisible until Monday, so right now we are getting political theater, with Trump demanding his wall, and the Dems demanding an extension to DACA.
I would be very surprised if we this isn’t resolved by Wednesday or so.
The only wild card is the White House, where the incompetence of Trump, and the incoherent and conflicting agendas of both him and his staff.
Still, that is one f%$# of a wild card.
It appears that private prison operators are coercing “voluntary” labor out of immigration detainees, in violation of the 13th amendment, which reads, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.“
Apparently, the Constitution of the United States of America is not something that concerns the Department of Homeland Security:
Officials at a privately run Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in rural Georgia locked an immigrant detainee in solitary confinement last November as punishment for encouraging fellow detainees to stop working in a labor program that ICE says is strictly voluntary.
Shoaib Ahmed, a 24-year-old who immigrated to America to escape political persecution in Bangladesh, told The Intercept that the privately run detention center placed him in isolation for 10 days after an officer overheard him simply saying “no work tomorrow.” Ahmed said he was expressing frustration over the detention center — run by prison contractor CoreCivic — having delayed his weekly paycheck of $20 for work in the facility’s kitchen.
Those in ICE custody often work for as little as $1 per day and cannot legally be compelled to work.
Ahmed’s account adds to a growing chorus of ICE detainees who allege that they have been forced to work in for-profit ICE facilities or else risk punishment with solitary confinement — a harsh form of captivity that, if prolonged, can amount to torture. Late last month, ICE detainees at a CoreCivic-run facility in California sued the private prison contractor, alleging that they had been threatened with solitary confinement if they did not work. In October, The Intercept reported that officials had placed another detainee in solitary confinement for 30 days for “encouraging others to participate in a work stoppage” at the same privately run facility where Ahmed was disciplined, the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia.
CoreCivic has said that its practices of segregating detainees in individual cells are humane and has disputed the term “solitary confinement,” arguing that its harsh connotation does not apply to the publicly traded firm’s practices. “Use of the term in your coverage with regard to Stewart would give readers a false impression of the reality of restricted housing at the facility,” CoreCivic spokesperson Jonathan Burns said in an email.
But over the course of two interviews with The Intercept over a fuzzy detention center phone line, Ahmed used rudimentary English to describe being subjected to the isolating conditions of solitary confinement as it is generally understood. “The room is at all times locked,” Ahmed said. “If you talk, the sound does not go outside. And nobody comes to talk with us.”
“Sometimes I think I will be mentally sick,” Ahmed said of his time in isolation. “I feel pain in my head.”
In addition to severe isolation, Ahmed spoke of being subjected to restrictive treatment in segregation that might be more expected for a violent and volatile criminal than for an immigration detainee under punishment for encouraging a work stoppage.
………
In recent years, current and former ICE detainees have filed class-action lawsuits alleging forced labor against private prison contractors in Washington state, California, and Colorado. Across the country, detainees and advocates have said that the ICE contractors used solitary confinement as a cudgel to force work, and allege that the for-profit facility operators are profiting off the bonded labor.
“These big corporations are circumventing the traditional labor market,” said Lydia Wright, an attorney at the Burns Charest law firm who represents current and former ICE detainees suing CoreCivic in California. “If they weren’t requiring detainees to work for $1 per day, they would have to hire cooks and janitors at minimum wage.”
In an October response to a suit from detainees in Colorado, major private prison contractor GEO Group appeared to echo this point. “Were a court to conclude that GEO must pay thousands of detainees a minimum wage, it would significantly affect the prices that GEO would have charge for its services,” stated a GEO Group court filing. The Colorado class-action suit, which demands that detainees be paid minimum wage for their labor, “poses a potentially catastrophic risk to GEO’s ability to honor its contracts with the federal government,” the firm stated in a separate filing.
One obstacle such suits against ICE’s private contractors may face: Many of the immigrant plaintiffs are only fleetingly in the country before often being deported, making it potentially difficult, for instance, to find former detainees who may be entitled to back wages.
How convenient.
It appears that la Migra is targeting a prominent insustry, convenience stores, specifically there has recently an aggressive series of immigration sweeps of 7 Eleven stores:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents blitzed dozens of 7-Eleven stores before dawn Wednesday to interview employees and deliver audit notifications, carrying out what the agency said was the largest operation targeting an employer since President Trump took office.
ICE said its agents showed up at 98 stores and made 21 arrests, describing the operation as a warning to other companies that may have unauthorized workers on their payroll.
“Today’s actions send a strong message to U.S. businesses that hire and employ an illegal workforce: ICE will enforce the law, and if you are found to be breaking the law, you will be held accountable,” said Thomas D. Homan, the agency’s top official, in a statement.
Homan characterized the operation as a new front in the Trump administration’s broader immigration crackdown and its effort to increase deportations. ICE agents have made 40 percent more arrests in the past year.
This is not an immigration cracking down, this is an immigration crackdown for stupid people.
This is theater for people who are upset that a brown person is manning the register when they buy their extra large Slurpee and chicken taquito, otherwise known as the Neanderthal the Republican base.
I think that their primary purpose is to depress wages through labor arbitrage.
That being said, the visa does have a path to permanent residency and Donald Trump is looking at making this a truly sadistic process:
The Department of Homeland Security is considering new regulations that would prevent H-1B visa extensions, according to two U.S. sources briefed on the proposal. The measure potentially could stop hundreds of thousands of foreign workers from keeping their H-1B visas while their green card applications are pending.
The proposal, being drafted in memos shared between DHS department heads, is part of President Donald Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” initiative promised during the 2016 campaign.
The administration is specifically looking at whether it can reinterpret the “may grant” language of the American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act to stop making the extensions. The act currently allows the administration to extend the H-1B visas for thousands of immigrants, predominantly Indian immigrants, beyond the allowed two three-year terms if a green card is pending.
“The idea is to create a sort of ‘self- deportation’ of hundreds of thousands of Indian tech workers in the United States to open up those jobs for Americans,” said a U.S. source briefed by Homeland Security officials.
The problem with H-1B visas is not the (usually) South Asian programmers, it’s Google, and Facebook, and Tata, and Infosys, and IBM, not the poor schlubs who work under near slavery conditions for those companies.