Visa Overstays are a Bigger Issue then the Border Wall

Posted on March 21, 2017March 21, 2017 by Denise Simon

Primer: If you overstay your visa for 180 days or more (but less than one year), when you depart the U.S. you will be barred from reentering the U.S. for three years. If you overstay your visa for one year or more, when you depart the U.S. you will be barred from reentering the U.S. for ten years.

Image result for visa overstay

Related reading: Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), reports on 30 countries that refuse to take back their criminals. He appeared on CSpan and Full Measure explaining the issue. The Washington Times reports under federal law, the U.S. government can refuse to issue visas to nationals of countries that refuse to take back their citizens who have been ordered deported from the United States. But according to Cuellar, the government is not enforcing the law.
***

TruthRevolt reports in part: The Center for Migration Studies reports that “two-thirds of those who arrived in 2014 did not illegally cross a border, but were admitted (after screening) on non-immigrant (temporary) visas, and then overstayed their period of admission or otherwise violated the terms of their visas.” This is a trend, far above illegal crossings, which is anticipated to continue climbing from now on.

“That’s because, incredibly, the U.S. doesn’t have an adequate system to assure the foreigners leave when they’re supposed to,” Judical Watch reports. “This has been a serious problem for years and in fact some of the 9/11 hijackers overstayed their visa to plan the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil. More than a decade and a half later little has changed. Securing the famously porous southern border is essential to national security but so is a reliable system that cracks down on visa overstays.”

According to the CMS study, there have been 600,000 more overstays than illegal border crossings since 2007. Mexico leads in both overstays and EWIs, or entries without inspection. Here are the breakdowns:

California has the largest number of overstays (890,000), followed by New York (520,000), Texas (475,000), and Florida (435,000).
Two states had 47 percent of the 6.4 million EWIs in 2014: California (1.7 million) and Texas (1.3 million).
The percentage of overstays varies widely by state: more than two-thirds of the undocumented who live in Hawaii, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania are overstays. By contrast, the undocumented population in Kansas, Arkansas, and New Mexico consists of fewer than 25 percent overstays. More here.

*** So who is responsible for control of this? ICE holds all accountability, which reports to the Department of Homeland Security. What about Congress you ask?

Check this out…

Well, there was a bill introduced in 2013, 2015 and again in January of 2017. Yup. The current bill was only introduced and has a 1% chance of passing. It is only a 2 page bill to amend current law noted as H.R. 643. This bill would make it a crime for visa overstays with defined penalties. It is the U.S. State Department, Bureau of Consular Affairs that is responsible for issuing visas and waivers in the case of denials. If you can stand reading the steps and caveats to this process, go here.

For context on how DHS under Secretary Jeh Johnson at the time packaged the report, here is a sample:

DHS conducts the overstay identification process by examining arrival, departure and immigration status information, which is consolidated to generate a complete picture of an individual’s travel to the United States. The Department identifies two types of overstays – those individuals for whom no departure has been recorded (Suspected In-Country Overstay) and those individuals whose departure was recorded after their lawful admission period expired (Out-of-Country Overstay).

This report focuses on foreign nationals who entered the United States as nonimmigrant visitors for business (i.e., B1 and WB visas) or pleasure (i.e., B2 and WT visas) through an air or sea port of entry, which represents the vast majority of annual nonimmigrant admissions. In FY 2015, of the nearly 45 million nonimmigrant visitor admissions through air or sea ports of entry that were expected to depart in FY 2015, DHS determined that 527,127 individuals overstayed their admission, for a total overstay rate of 1.17 percent. In other words, 98.83 percent had left the United States on time and abided by the terms of their admission.

The report breaks the overstay rates down further to provide a better picture of those overstays that remain in the United States beyond their period of admission and for whom CBP has no evidence of a departure or transition to another immigration status. At the end of FY 2015, the overall Suspected In-Country Overstay number was 482,781 individuals, or 1.07 percent.

Due to further continuing departures by individuals in this population, by January 4, 2016, the number of Suspected In-Country overstays for FY 2015 had dropped to 416,500, rendering the Suspected In-Country Overstay rate as 0.9 percent. In other words, as of January 4, DHS was able to confirm the departures of over 99 percent of nonimmigrant visitors scheduled to depart in FY 2015 via air and sea POEs, and that number continues to grow.

This report separates Visa Waiver Program (VWP) country overstay numbers from non-VWP country numbers. For VWP countries, the FY 2015 Suspected In-Country overstay rate is 0.65 percent of the 20,974,390 expected departures. For non-VWP countries, the FY 2015 Suspected In-Country Overstay rate is 1.60 percent of the 13,182,807 expected departures. DHS is in the process of evaluating whether and to what extent the data presented in this report will be used to make decisions on the VWP country designations.

Overall, CBP has improved the collection of data on all admissions to the United States by foreign nationals, biometric data on most foreign travelers to the United States, and processes to check data against criminal and terrorist watchlists. CBP has also made tremendous progress in accurately reporting data on overstays to better centralize the overall mission in identifying overstays. CBP will continue to roll out additional pilot programs during FY 2016 that will further improve the ability of CBP to accurately report this data.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Counterterrorism and Criminal Exploitation Unit (CTCEU) is the program dedicated to the enforcement of nonimmigrant visa violations. Each year, ICE analyzes records of hundreds of thousands of potential status violators from various investigative databases and DHS entry/exit registration systems. The goal is to identify, locate, prosecute when appropriate, and remove overstays consistent with DHS’s immigration enforcement priorities, which prioritize those who pose a risk to national security or public safety.

Read more here.

The Counterterrorism and Criminal Exploitation Unit prevents terrorists and other criminals from exploiting the nation’s immigration system. Really? Yup, that is what the website reads. In a hearing from 2012, you may be interested in reading the testimony on the matter of visa overstays delivered by DHS Deputy Counterterrorism Coordinator John Cohen and ICE Homeland Security Investigations Deputy Executive Associate Director Peter Edge.

Proposed Trump Budget, Chain Saw or Scalpel?

Posted on March 13, 2017March 13, 2017 by Denise Simon

Back in January, The Hill reported on early meetings the Trump team was having to address the proposed governmental budget. Yippee…finally. However, are all the proposals a good thing once they are introduced? Trump’s White House wants to cut $10.5 TRILLION in 10 years. He is working to increase Pentagon spending by $54 billion.

***

Staffers for the Trump transition team have been meeting with career staff at the White House ahead of Friday’s presidential inauguration to outline their plans for shrinking the federal bureaucracy, The Hill has learned. The changes they propose are dramatic.

The departments of Commerce and Energy would see major reductions in funding, with programs under their jurisdiction either being eliminated or transferred to other agencies. The departments of Transportation, Justice and State would see significant cuts and program eliminations.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, while the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely.
Overall, the blueprint being used by Trump’s team would reduce federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years.

*** So far, so good.

Okay, there are more clues, and you can decide for yourself.

The White House is proposing a 17% cut to the nation’s top weather and climate agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

A $1.3 Billion cut to the Coast Guard.

There are other agencies that will be affected and they can lobby their case for more funding once the budget is presented, reviewed and accepted.

The budget plans that the White House is expected to send to departments and agencies on Monday are just one stage in a lengthy process.

The agencies can argue for more funding, and final spending plans must be approved by the U.S. Congress.

Trump’s budget assumes annual economic growth of 2.4 percent, the second official said. While campaigning for the presidency last year, Trump called for a “national goal” of 4 percent economic growth.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, speaking on Fox News earlier on Sunday, said Trump’s budget would not seek cuts in federal social programs such as Social Security and Medicare. More from Reuters.

Anyone remember the old discussion of balancing the budget? The Heritage Foundation has a money wing that has studied and examined all government agencies and has proposed the blueprint. It would be well for voters and those concerned with government budgets and spending to examine this blueprint and as such the Trump White House should do the same. The full blueprint is here and it is a stellar piece of work.

First up that must be scrutinized is ‘entitlements’. Just exactly where did that term come from anyway? Who is entitled to anything and why? If you can stomach entitlement spending and the associated charts, click here.

There are also federal government grant programs and the Trump White House has not mentioned these. The U.S. State Department is a major grant operation for non-government agencies (NGO) and click here for those details.

The Department of Justice provides grants and much of those dollars go to cities for sanctuary cities.

Then there is the Department of Agriculture with a grant program. In fact every agency has a grant operation and we have not mentioned subsidies. Whoa, that one will light your hair on fire.

As noted by the Daily Caller in 2015:

The federal government spends billions of dollars each year on business subsidies and tax credits, with most of the money accruing to large corporations, a new database reveals.

The database released Tuesday by the government accountability group Good Jobs First, called Subsidy Tracker 3.0, represents the first-ever comprehensive listing of federal economic development programs, expanding on the group’s existing database of state and local subsidies.

According to an accompanying report put out by the group, “two-thirds of the $68 billion in business grants and special tax credits awarded by the federal government over the past 15 years have gone to large corporations,” including numerous foreign firms.

C’mon White House, how about addressing the grants/subsidies/loan guarantee/pledges and types of aid to foreign countries that hate us.

First on the list is the money that should be terminated that the United States pays to UNRWA.

U.S. Funding for the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA

The Palestinian Authority is hugely dependent upon foreign assistance, which accounts for about 66 percent of its annual budget. European Union funding for the PA amounted to $600 million in 2005.[2] The United States gives $70 million directly to the PA each year, as well as $225 million for humanitarian projects through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).[3] Between 1993 and 2004, the Palestinian Authority received $6.93 billion in aid from the international community.[4]

What do you want Trump to cut? Education? EPA? Section 8 Housing? United Nations? Ransom money to rogue nations? How about the waste, fraud and collusion of members of Congress? How about stopping ridiculous travel by federal government employees?

Maybe we need to look carefully too at what we NEED to be spending quality money on.

Leave your thoughts in the comments section. Thanks as it is going to be a wild ride to stop spending and reforming the tax code.

The Debate on Immigration is Now, The Raise Act

Posted on February 7, 2017February 7, 2017 by Denise Simon

What is President Clinton say in the State of the Union address in 1995 on immigration? It got a standing ovation. It is time to have this debate in a wide and deep context including the financial and social and legal consequences.

NumbersUSA: Chain Migration is the main reason that American workers have had to compete for wages and jobs with tens of millions of new immigrants who have been given lifetime work permits the last several decades.

40% IMMEDIATE REDUCTION IN ANNUAL IMMIGRATION

Sen. Cotton says his bill would reduce the number of lifetime work permits given to foreign citizens by around 40% the first year — and by around 50% in the tenth year after passage.

Ending Chain Migration is the primary way the bill would achieve that goal.

For several decades, immigrants no longer have been limited to bringing in a spouse and minor children. Chain Migration categories allow each immigrant (once a citizen) to petition for adult brothers and sisters, for adult sons and daughters, and for parents. Each of them can in turn do the same along with bringing their own spouses who can start whole new chains in their own families, and so forth in a never-ending pattern.

Sen. Cotton would stop all of that immigration which adds millions of workers each decade without any regard to their skills or how they would affect Americans competing in the same occupations.

By limiting family immigration to a spouse and minor children — including overseas adoptions and marriages by U.S. citizens — Sen. Cotton says the bill would . . .

” . . . restore historical levels of immigration in order to give working Americans a fair shot at wealth creation.”

At around one million a year since 1990, overall annual legal immigration has been some THREE times higher than the historical average before then.

A RARE OPPORTUNITY

Sen. Cotton’s bill will be the first since 1996 to challenge the Senate to eliminate future Chain Migration.

It was in 1996 that we started NumbersUSA with our Number One legislative goal being to end Chain Migration, as recommended by the bi-partisan federal commission chaired by the Civil Rights icon Barbara Jordan.

Sen. Cotton has boldly indicated today that he will assume the leadership to advance that vision of an immigration policy that first serves the interests of our national community’s workers, especially its most vulnerable.

This year represents a rare opportunity. It is the first time in nearly a hundred years that there is a President in the White House who has declared his intention to reduce the overall numerical level of immigration.

THE PROBLEM BEING ADDRESSED

Sen. Cotton is titling his bill the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment Act.

Its initials spell RAISE. It’s the RAISE bill. Sen. Cotton wants to give hard-pressed American workers a raise by allowing labor markets to begin to tighten.

Sen. Cotton described the problem his bill is attempting to address:

For over a quarter century, the United States has accepted an average of 1 million immigrants annually—the equivalent of adding the entire state of Montana each year.
When only 1 out of every 15 immigrants arrives in the United States on a skills-based visa, the majority of the remaining immigrants are either low-skill or unskilled.
This generation-long influx of low-skilled labor has been a major factor in the downward pressure on the wages of working Americans, with the wages of recent immigrants hardest hit.
Wages for Americans with only high school diplomas have declined by 2 percent since the late 1970s, and for those who didn’t finish high school, they have declined by nearly 20 percent. This collapse in wages threatens to create a near permanent underclass for whom the American Dream is always just out of reach.

THE ‘RAISE’ SOLUTION

Sen. Cotton describes the key elements of his bill like this:

Eliminate Outdated Diversity Visa Lottery: The Lottery is plagued with fraud, it advances no economic or humanitarian interest, and it does not even deliver the diversity of its namesake. The RAISE Act would eliminate the 50,000 visas arbitrarily allocated to this lottery.

Place Responsible Limit on Permanent Residency for Refugees: The RAISE Act would limit refugees offered permanent residency to 50,000 per year, in line with a 13-year average. (This is the same annual refugee cap in Pres. Trump’s executive order. It is also the cap recommended in the 1980 Refugee Act, which is current law but which Presidents have routinely exceeded.)

Prioritize Immediate Family Households. The RAISE Act would retain immigration preferences for the spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.

Eliminated would be green card categories for foreign citizens who are:

Adult parents of U.S. citizens
Adult brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens
Unmarried adult sons & daughters of U.S. citizens
Married adult sons & daughters of U.S. citizens
Unmarried adult sons & daughters of legal permanent residents

Create Temporary Visa for Parents in Need of Caretaking: For U.S. citizens who wish to bring elderly parents in need of care-taking to the United States, the RAISE Act creates a renewable temporary visa on the condition that the parents are not permitted to work, cannot access public benefits, and must be guaranteed support and health insurance by their sponsoring children.

The difference in this being a wonderful bill and it being an incredibly helpful law is likely to be the degree to which the 8 million members of NumbersUSA’s online grassroots army make it clear to their Members of Congress and to Pres. Trump that this is a TRUE PRIORITY.

Tech Companies Filed Amicus Brief, Supports Foreign Workers

Posted on February 6, 2017February 6, 2017 by Denise Simon

Amicus Brief Tech companies This is an employment epidemic across the nation where companies sponsor foreign national for domestic jobs, leaving thousands to train their replacements. We have not addresses how many could be purposely placed for industrial espionage.

***

Apple, Google, Microsoft pile in: 97 US tech firms file brief against Trump’s travel ban

In part from ZDNet: Immigrants or their children founded 200 US companies that generate $4.2 trillion in annual revenues, the brief highlights, among them Apple, AT&T, and Google, as well as Ford, General Electric, McDonald’s, Boeing, and Disney.

“Businesses and employees have little incentive to go through the laborious process of sponsoring or obtaining a visa, and relocating to the United States, if an employee may be unexpectedly halted at the border.

“Skilled individuals will not wish to immigrate to the country if they may be cut off without warning from their spouses, grandparents, relatives, and friends. They will not pull up roots, incur significant economic risk, and subject their family to considerable uncertainty to immigrate to the United States in the face of this instability.” Full article here.

***

The H1-B visa program has a cap to the number allowed to be issued. It is a visa program that needs more scrutiny by Congress for the sake of American employees. There have been abuses to the program and further companies like Disney hire foreign nationals to replaced domestic employees driving down the salary costs.

Janet Napolitano, the former Secretary of the Department of Homeland security and now the president of the University of California system knows it all so well and how to work the system.

In part from the LATimes: Using a visa loophole to fire well-paid U.S. information technology workers and replace them with low-paid immigrants from India is despicable enough when it’s done by profit-making companies such as Southern California Edison and Walt Disney Co.

But the latest employer to try this stunt sets a new mark in what might be termed “job laundering.” It’s the University of California. Experts in the abuse of so-called H-1B visas say UC is the first public university to send the jobs of American IT staff offshore. That’s not a distinction UC should wear proudly. Full op-ed here.

*** One of 5 huge examples beyond California is:

Pfizer Connecticut R&D

In 2008, workers at pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s New London and Groton (Connecticut) research and development campus raised the alarm: They were being replaced by Indian workers on H-1B visas and forced to train their replacements. Those outsourced workers were scheduled to return to India, where they will run the same systems as their U.S. counterparts, albeit at a cheaper rate and with diminished benefits. The move was part of an outsourcing agreement signed in 2005 between Pfizer, Infosys Technologies and Satyam Computer Services. More here.

***

A 100 page Joint Venture report for tech companies includes the following text:

Foreign-Born Residents

Silicon Valley has an extraordinarily large share of residents who are foreign born (37.4%, compared to California, 27.1%, or the United States, 13.3%). This population share increases to 50% for the employed, core working age population (ages 25-44), and even higher for certain occupational groups. For instance, nearly 74% of all Silicon Valley employed Computer and Mathematical workers ages 25-44 in 2014 were foreign-born. Correspondingly, the region also has an incredibly large share of foreign-language speakers, with 51% of Silicon Valley’s population over age five speaking a language other than exclusively English at home (compared to 43% in San Francisco, 44% in California, and 21% in the United States as a whole). This majority share in 2014 was up from 49% in 2011.

*** The Senate held a hearing in 2015 with a few former employees that were forced to train their foreign replacements. Many of these employees are paid a severance package but it also includes a major stipulation to remain mute on the topic as noted below:

My former company, a large utility company, replaced 220 American IT workers with H-1Bs…we would have to train them in order to receive our severance packages. This was one of the most humiliating situations that I have ever been in as an IT professional.

The whole IT department was going through the same fate as myself. Those were the longest and hardest five months of my life. Not only did I lose a work family, but I lost my job and my self-esteem. We had constant emails sent by HR that we could not talk about this situation to anyone or make posts to social media. If we did, we would be fired immediately and not get our severance. Read the full article here.

UC Berkeley, Protests over Milo and $370 Million

Posted on February 2, 2017February 2, 2017 by Denise Simon

How did it all happen? It continues to happen…

Exactly who is boycotting/protesting who? Napolitano protesting Federal law perhaps?

UC Berkely, the birthplace of ‘free speech’ is the campus where Milo Yiannopoulos was invited to speak. The Republican student organization extended the invitation and the university officials said fine if you put up $6000.00 for security teams. They agreed and did. Then Milo, a foreign national in the United States on a green card, actually travels the country doing talks with his own bodyguard. Once Milo was inside the student union building, things began to go sideways and Milo was evacuated. So much for free speech.

***

Berkeley students were still receiving texts from university police to “shelter in place” as of 9pm PT, and helicopters could be heard overhead well into the evening. More here from Forbes.

NBC

The Star

So, where did all this come from?

UC President Janet Napolitano reiterates vow to protect immigrant students

University of California President Janet Napolitano assured vulnerable immigrant students Wednesday that, despite fear and uncertainty about President Trump’s intentions, the university would protect them.

“UC chancellors and I have reaffirmed our intentions to ensure that every corner of the University of California remains welcoming, safe and inclusive for all,” Napolitano said at a two-day meeting of the Board of Regents in San Francisco.

Trump signed executive orders Wednesday signaling a crackdown on illegal immigration, but he has not yet moved to end an Obama administration program that deferred deportation against young people who are in the country illegally. The program, Deferred Action Against Childhood Arrivals (DACA), was created by Napolitano when she served as Homeland Security secretary under Obama.

UC officials indicated that they intend to fight back if Trump does end the program, which could jeopardize an estimated 3,700 UC students who are living in the country illegally.

The regents plan to discuss the “prelitigation potential” of possible university responses to Trump’s actions on immigration in a closed session Thursday, Regent George Kieffer said. He asked UC officials Wednesday about whether such responses would be legal.

“We know that the new president has certain views on immigration, DACA…. We’re going to be in a position in some ways to be opposite to him,” Kieffer said. “Do we have solid legal foundation for some of the actions we’ll be taking?”

“Everything that we do will be thoroughly researched and grounded in law,” replied Nelson Peacock, the university system’s senior vice president for state and federal government relations.

A working group formed by Napolitano the day after Trump’s election in November is developing possible responses to any repeal of the DACA program or other actions that would harm their students, said Julia Friedlander, UC deputy general counsel. She declined to elaborate on what such actions might be.

“There’s a great deal of concern, but we’ll have to see the fine print” of any move by Trump before responding, she said. “The university has a commitment to equal opportunity, and we will do everything in our power to fulfill that commitment.” Read more here from LATimes.

Just $370 million in Federal funding goes to UC Berkeley? (How many other universities are doing the same as UC Berkeley and getting Federal funding subsidies?)

Each year, the UC Berkeley campus receives well over half a billion dollars in research and other support from external sources. In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2016, UC Berkeley attracted $673.9 million in new awards. Many of these awards fund multiyear research projects and support expenditures that will be reflected in subsequent years. The federal government provided 55 percent of these funds, and California state agencies and other government sources, industry, and the nonprofit sector supplied the rest. Of the research funding provided by the U.S. government, the largest contributors are the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

More here on UC Berkeley funding revenue.