Legal Immigration

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., today exposed that USCIS halted naturalization ceremonies and stopped accepting new citizenship applications after it learned that its computerized case management system had not run FBI background checks on certain citizenship applicants. Earlier this year the DHS Inspector General revealed that the system had issued hundreds of green cards to incorrect names and addresses, sparking national security fears.

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has created two interactive maps of H-1B dependent employers and H-1B employers who have been debarred or declared a willful violator. CIS created the maps using data from the Department of Labor.

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released a new report that reveals that the immigrant population has reached a record high of 42.4 million immigrants (legal and illegal). The report uses Census Bureau data to show the impact this increase has had on the U.S.

A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies uses data from the 1990 and 2000 Censes and 2010-2014 the American Community Survey (ACS) to show how the adult immigrant population (illegal and legal) has grown from 1990 to 2014 at the county level. The analysis shows that in 232 U.S. counties the number of adult immigrants has quadrupled in 14 years.

The EB-5 investor visa program is set to expire on September 30, unless Congress can agree on how to reform the program that has become riddled with fraud and abuse. While most of the lawmakers agree that the program needs to be reformed they are gridlocked on what those reforms should be and when the reforms should be enacted.

Last week Pres. Obama used a provision called “humanitarian parole” to give temporary status to immigrant entrepreneurs, historically this parole has only been used during a time of emergency.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is proposing a rule that relies on the agency’s parole authority to give foreign nationals temporary permission to be in the United States to “start or scale their businesses.” Current law allows USCIS to use parole authority in dire, individual humanitarian cases, not to benefit broad categories of beneficiaries. As such the proposal, like the court-blocked DAPA/extended DACA amnesty, directly challenges the limits of agency discretion under immigration law.

Cisco Systems, Inc., a giant tech company, plans on laying off 5,500 employees or about 7% of its global workforce starting in the next few weeks. The Cisco company has been a champion for increasing H-1B visas and is currently the 28th biggest user of H-1Bs in the U.S.

India says it will contest a bill to reform the H-1B and L-1 visa programs, if passed, saying it would violate international trade agreements. Last week, Reps. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-N.J.) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) introduced the H-B and L-1 Visa Reform Act of 2016 that would prevent companies from misusing these visas to replace American workers.

The House Appropriations Committee adopted an amendment that would extend the H-2B visa increase that was passed in last year’s omnibus bill. The extension would be for one year and could quadruple the number of foreign, H-2B visa workers.

As the trend of replacing American workers with cheaper, foreign labor through H-1B visas continues to escalate, the New York Times has found some workers who are willing to speak out about how it affects their job opportunities and wages. In some cases, the American workers were forced to train their replacements for months in order to receive their severance pay when they were eventually laid off.

Expert witnesses told a Senate panel on Wednesday that there is no evidence to support the idea that H-2B visa workers fill in labor shortages for jobs that employers claim "Americans will not do". The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest held the hearing to discuss how the H-2B visa impacts American job opportunities and wages before a likely debate over the issue in Congress this summer.

A new investigative report showed that Tesla Motors’ contract company, Eisenmann, paid a smaller Slovenian company, Vuzem, to hire foreign workers through the B-1 visa program. The companies misrepresented the foreign workers in order to obtain the visas so they could import cheaper, foreign labor instead of hiring American workers.

Nine House Members, headed by Rep. Billy Long (R-Mo.), sent a letter to the Appropriations Subcommittee for Homeland Security asking them to continue the increase of H-2B visas that was approved in the omnibus spending bill last year.

According to the annual report released by the Migration Policy Institute the number of nonimmigrant visas issued by the U.S. Dep. of State (DOS) increased by 10% in 2015 compared to 2014. The DOS issued 10.9 million nonimmigrant visas in 2015 up from 9.9 million visas issued in 2014.

The Justice Department announced a settlement agreement with Barrios Street Realty Inc. concerning claims that the Lockport, Louisiana-based company discriminated against Americans by hiring foreign H-2B workers. Of the settlement, a department spokesperson Gupta said, “Federal law prohibits employers from discriminating against U.S. workers in hiring.

The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest held a hearing yesterday to discuss the impact that high immigration levels have on U.S. workers. The hearing, led by Chairman Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), discussed how high levels of immigration decrease wages and diminish job opportunities for American workers.

DHS released the final OPT STEM extension rule on Wednesday, the rule is set to be published in the Federal Register on Friday, and extends the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program for foreign STEM students to 36 months.

Breitbart News reports on Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo’s interview with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., during which he admitted immigration limitations are not part of the 2016 Republican job-centric “pro-growth” agenda. “We’re not going to be talking about visa caps in our agenda,” Ryan said. This runs contrary to recent Pew polling which found that 67 percent of Republican voters want immigration reduced while only seven percent want more.

Center for Immigration Studies Director of Research, Steven Camarota, used wage data provided by the American Community Survey (ACS) conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, as evidence that there is no labor shortage in H-2B visa occupations, which were increased in the recently passed omnibus spending bill.

President Obama issued a new executive action that would grant work permits to foreign workers who are in the country on temporary work visas and have applied for employment-based green cards if implemented. The action would also extend the length of work permits for foreign STEM students who participate in the Optional Training Program (OPT).

The Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) released their annual SEVIS (Student and Exchange Visitor Information System) by the Numbers report that shows the number of foreign students enrolled in U.S. has risen by eight percent since 2014. According to the web-based system SEVIS there are 1.2 million international students using the F-1 (academic) or M-1 (vocational) visas in the U.S.

The Optional Practical Training (OPT) program’s 17-month extension for foreign STEM students will expire on February 12, 2016 unless the Department of Homeland Security asks a federal district court for an extension. The program allows foreign students to work in the United States for a short period of time after graduation to gain experience before returning to their home country, but the extension was put on hold by a federal court earlier this year.