Judge to WH: Unseal Records of Trump Business Partner?

Posted on March 21, 2016March 21, 2016 by Denise Simon

This site has published articles here and here about Felix Sater, a mafia linked frauster that is/was a partner of Donald Trump. It seems this unsavory character is known to many in New York and Washington DC including Attorney General, Loretta Lynch as well as Senator Jeff Sessions. Seems some interesting powers are working phones to determine future damage to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and others with their fingerprints on the matter.

Judge Wants US to Protect Trump Associate’s Secret History

ABC: A U.S. judge is urging the Obama administration to protect from public disclosure federal court records related to the once-secret criminal history of a former Donald Trump business partner.

In a highly unusual order prompted by The Associated Press, U.S. District Judge Brian M. Cogan said that unless the Justice Department acts before April 18, he will decide whether to make the court files public under the assumption that federal prosecutors don’t care.

The case involves Felix Sater, a Trump business associate who had pleaded guilty in a major Mafia-linked stock fraud scheme and cooperated with the government. The AP reported in December that, even after learning about Sater’s background, Trump tapped Sater for a business development role in 2010 that included the title of senior adviser to Trump. Sater received Trump Organization business cards and was given an office within the Trump Organization’s headquarters, on the same floor as Trump’s own.

“It seems to me that the government has a unique interest in keeping documents that relate to cooperation agreements under seal,” the judge wrote in his order. “The government should speak and assert its position as to whether the public’s right to access each document in the record is outweighed by a compelling need for secrecy.”

Lawyers for the AP had asked the judge to justify sealing a five-year criminal contempt proceeding in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

Not only did Cogan seal all documents in the contempt case, he also initially sealed the AP’s request that he unseal his justification for their sealing. When The New York Times asked the judge to unseal the AP’s request to unseal the sealing order, that request was sealed, too. Late last week, he made the requests by the AP and the newspaper publicly accessible — but ordered that the parties to the case file any response to them under seal.

The defendants in the contempt case, Frederick Oberlander and Richard Lerner, are attorneys whom the government said revealed once-secret court records about Sater’s crimes and cooperation. Sater’s lawyers, who once included Leslie Caldwell, now the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, have said that Sater’s cooperation was vital to national security and disclosures about his past put him in danger.

Oberlander and Lerner said they never revealed sealed records. Some of what they had been ordered not to disclose is already publicly available in the Congressional Record, they said.

“We wish that people could inspect the documents, because it would reveal judicial and prosecutorial misconduct of the highest levels,” Oberlander told the AP.

Also at issue in the case are statements that U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch — formerly the top prosecutor in Cogan’s district — made about Sater’s case before the Senate confirmed her last year. Oberlander and Lerner said the government improperly permitted Sater to use his status as a secret cooperator to commit new crimes and avoid paying restitution to past victims, who are owed millions of dollars.

In February 2015, Lynch told Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, of the Senate Judiciary Committee that information about Sater’s restitution “remains under seal,” and that the Justice Department would never waive victims’ right to restitution as part of a cooperation agreement. Court records already publicly available at the time showed that Sater was not ordered to pay restitution and the government never requested it. One of Sater’s attorneys said in a statement at the time that the government had waived restitution payments partly out of gratitude to Sater.

A Justice Department spokeswoman, Melanie Newman, told the AP that Lynch’s comments were accurate because some documents related to restitution in Sater’s case remain under seal.

Oberlander told the AP that the original cooperation agreement Sater signed in 1998, which has been publicly available since 2013, said Sater acknowledged that the penalty for his crime included roughly $60 million in restitution payments to victims.

The New York judge has twice asked the Justice Department to pursue contempt charges against the two lawyers who revealed Sater’s cooperation. In both cases, local federal prosecutors recused themselves over unspecified conflicts of interest after consulting with Justice Department officials in Washington. They referred the case to federal prosecutors in Albany, New York, who likewise did not act.

In his latest order, Cogan again urged prosecutors to go after Oberlander and Lerner.

“One would think that the desire to ensure that further informants cooperate in government investigations should also motivate the government to take swift action against individuals who seek to expose the identity of informants, their proffered criminal history and the details of their cooperation,” the judge wrote.

Sater’s attorney, Robert Wolf, said the judge was right.

“Mr. Sater shares and supports the court’s frustration and outrage as to why these rogue lawyers have not yet been criminally prosecuted,” Wolf said in a statement. He credited Sater with providing information that “potentially saved tens of thousands, if not millions, of our citizens’ lives.”

Sater pleaded guilty in 1998 to one count of racketeering for his role in a broad stock fraud scheme involving the prominent Genovese and Bonanno crime families, according to court records. Five years earlier, a New York State court had sentenced Sater to more than a year in prison for stabbing a man in the face with a broken margarita glass.

Cuba: Where is Barack and the Pope on This?

Posted on March 20, 2016March 20, 2016 by Denise Simon

Traveling with a delegation of about 80, Barack Obama has arrived in Cuba, something no sitting president has done since Calvin Coolidge. It is not clear who Obama will have meetings with, but his first stop was the recently fully opened U.S. embassy.

Meanwhile, there are real things going on in Havana that many are ignoring especially media and the entire diplomatic delegation. Obama calls this a new day in relations but it is hardly so when it comes to human rights.

The Pope played a large role in re-starting talks but it all began in earnest at the Nelson Mandela funeral.

The average salary for Cubans is $20.00 USD per month. All monies that flow into the island have two destinations, the Castro regime and the military.

Facts about Cuba: Venezuela ships 100,000 barrels of oil to Cuba a day. Only a few years ago, Putin forgave $32 billion in Cuban debt. Cuba has a long history of human rights violations such that John Kerry’s advance trip, ahead of Obama’s was cancelled due to major disputes with diplomatic personnel. Cuba’s military is known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces and all people between the ages of 17-28 have mandatory service.

Russia has an intelligence and spy base in Lourdes, Cuba as does China which is located in Bejucal, Cuba. Both of these bases spy on telecom transmissions, phone, satellite ad internet.

Chinese telecommunications spybase in Bejucal, Cuba Bejucal Lourdes

Meanwhile……

Violent Arrests of Pro-Democracy Activists Precede Obama Landing in Cuba

Hours before President Barack Obama landed in Havana to meet with high-ranking members of the island’s repressive communist regime, more than 50 pro-democracy dissidents were beaten and arrested, shoved into buses to be shipped into the nation’s jails to prevent them from disturbing official activities.

Breitbart: At least 50 of those arrested are members of the Ladies in White, a mostly-Catholic dissident group comprised of the wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters of prisoners of conscience. The Ladies in White members joined a larger group of anti-communist dissidents in Havana following their weekly attendance at Mass. Service this Sunday is especially important to Catholics as they celebrate Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week.

“It was brutal, there are people with fractures and contusions,” Antonio Rodiles, leader of the dissident group Estado de SATS, told the Spain-based Diario de Cuba. “They hit us with everything.” The newspaper notes that Rodiles spoke to them via telephone, and the chaos of mass arrests happening around him threatened to drown out his own voice on the phone. Rodiles was subsequently arrested.

In addition to the 50 members of the Ladies in White and Antonio Rodiles, Danilo Maldonado, an artist known as “El Sexto,” was arrested in the fray.

***

Maldonado was recently released from prison after serving a ten-month sentence for painting the names “Fidel” and “Raúl” on the backs of two pigs for an Animal Farm-themed art project.

The protesters all carried signs and chanted slogans directed at President Obama, calling for him to reconsider his friendly stance towards dictator Raúl Castro. The Ladies in White marched holding a sign reading “Obama, Nothing Has Changed Here.” Another group of dissidents held a sign reading “Obama, traveling to Cuba is not fun. No more violations of human rights.”

While Sunday’s arrests yielded much more dramatic images due to the unusually high number of media representatives on the island for President Obama’s visit, there is evidence that the communist government has been working all week to keep the nation’s most vocal opponents of communism silent. On Saturday, a man named Ciro Alexis Casanova Pérez was arrested for placing a sign on his window reading “Neither Obama nor Castro, Freedom for Cuba.” He was taken to the hospital after his arrest for severe body aches, a sign he was beaten by police during his arrest.

Pérez was among more than 200 arrested yesterday, according to Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) leader José Daniel Ferrer, who attested to the arrest of 209 members of his group in Oriente, the eastern end of Cuba. In contrast, the Cuban government arrested about 250 dissidents throughout the entirety of Pope Francis’ visit in September.

In addition to those taken to jail, at least one is being held under house arrest without charge. The man: Zaqueo Báez, who made international headlines in September for daring to approach Pope Francis’ vehicle in Havana and say the word “freedom” within earshot of the pontiff. Báez was beaten severely in front of the pope and taken to prison, facing criminal charges for disturbing the peace. Pope Francis later denied any knowledge of the incident despite his proximity to it.

The Cuban dissident community has loudly opposed President Obama’s visit, arguing that his presence on the island would embolden the Cuban government to act more violently against pro-democracy activists. “These sorts of visits bring a lot of collateral damage,” dissident Marta Beatriz Roque said in February.

Studies of Castro regime behavior following President Obama’s announcement in December 2017 that he would be establishing diplomatic ties with the Castro dictatorship show that Havana has become more oppressive and violent against those who demand to live in a democratic society. “There has been no substantial improvement in regard to human rights and individual freedoms on the island… [The Cuban government] has adapted its repressive methods in order to make them invisible to the scrutinizing, judgmental eyes of the international community, but it has not reduced the level of pressure or control over the opposition,” a report by the Czech NGO People in Need concluded in December.

$500 Million State Dept Climate Change Collusion

Posted on March 14, 2016March 14, 2016 by Denise Simon

Senators accuse State Dept. of defying Congress with $500M UN climate payment

FNC: Two Republican senators are accusing the State Department of misusing taxpayer dollars by green-lighting $500 million for a United Nations climate change program without first obtaining congressional approval.

The senators now are demanding the department justify the “cloak-and-dagger” contribution to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) – even threatening legal action.

“Lawyers cannot replace the constitutional requirement that only Congress can appropriate money,” Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., said, adding that he’s demanding a “full legal analysis.”

Gardner, in a statement to FoxNews.com, alleged the department was trying to “wave a magic wand and write a half-billion dollar check to a Green Climate Fund that they admit was never authorized by Congress.”

He also vowed to “pursue legislative action that prevents cloak-and-dagger re-programming of money outside of congressional approval.”

At the center of the dispute is whether the State Department abused its authority in shifting funds between an existing program and the climate fund.

The Obama administration – despite resistance from congressional Republicans — has committed the U.S. to contributing $3 billion to the fund, a program established by the United Nations to help poor countries adopt clean energy technologies to address climate change. Nearly 200 other nations have agreed to provide $100 billion per year by 2020, from private and public sources.

Along with Gardner, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., maintains Congress has not allocated any funding for what he calls the “international climate change slush fund” and has in fact “prohibited the transfer of funds to create new programs.”

The State Department acknowledges the funding was never explicitly approved by Congress – but argues the department was within its authority to shift funding to the Green Climate Fund, because Congress did not explicitly prohibit funding the GCF.

Under questioning by Barrasso at a March 8 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Heather Higginbottom told the committee the funds were diverted from the department’s Economic Support Fund — which provides economic funding to foreign countries — to the GCF after a full review by department lawyers.

State Department spokeswoman Katherine Pfaff also confirmed to FoxNews.com the source of the funding was the economic fund, but could not say from which exact program the money came.

And she bluntly addressed the GOP senators’ accusation. “Did Congress authorize the Green Climate Fund? No,” she said, adding that department lawyers “reviewed the authority and the process under which we can do it.”

The administration, meanwhile, has requested another $750 million for the GCF in its fiscal 2017 budget.

Higginbottom also insisted they were not required to notify Congress about the transfer from the Economic Support Fund.

At the hearing, though, Barrasso said the first installment of the $3 billion pledge was “a blatant misuse of taxpayer dollars.”

Barrasso said because the GCF technically is a new program and not authorized by Congress, the department may have violated the Anti-Deficiency Act, a law that prohibits federal agencies from obligating or expending funds in advance or in excess of an appropriation.

According to Politico, Barrasso is prepared to go to court over the issue and to seek prosecution of individuals if they are found to have violated the Anti-Deficiency Act.

The Wyoming senator’s communications director, Bronwyn Lance Chester, confirmed to FoxNews.com that “all options are being considered.”

The department may have been able to effectively use a loophole to contribute the money – namely, because Congress did not include specific language barring spending to the GCF. Analysts say this dispute could have been avoided if Congress had simply included a specific prohibition on spending for the climate fund.

“The problem is that the horse has already left the barn. There was not a specific line item in the budget prohibiting spending on the GCF. I am sure [State Department lawyers] have come up with some creative way to fund it, but it would not be an issue if Congress had explicitly prohibited it,” said H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow with the Heartland Institute.

Senate Republicans backed away from including a specific rider in last year’s omnibus bill after President Obama threatened to veto if such a rider were included.

“They were gutless,” said Burnett, who noted the first installment is a “drop in the bucket” when compared with the $3 billion.

Because the omnibus spending bill was silent on the GCF, the White House argued this left the door open for the administration to fund the U.N. program. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in December “there are no restrictions in our ability to make good on the president’s promise to contribute to the Green Climate Fund.”

Gardner and Barrasso also were signatories to a letter sent last year to Obama asserting the deal reached at a United Nations climate change conference in Paris, including the $100 billion-a-year Green Climate Fund, must be submitted to Congress for approval before any funding could be made.

Obamacare Causes a $1.5 Billion Flop in Chicago

Posted on March 14, 2016March 14, 2016 by Denise Simon

Blue Cross parent lost $1.5 billion on individual health plans last year

ChicagoTribune: Year 2 of the Affordable Care Act was another financial flop for the Chicago-based parent of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois but hints of a turnaround are emerging.

Health Care Service Corp.’s financial losses in its individual business, which includes ACA plans, worsened in 2015. The company, which owns Blue Cross affiliates in Illinois and four other states, said it lost $1.5 billion in its individual business, up from $767 million in 2014, the first year of the health law’s state exchanges for buying coverage.

In anticipation of ACA-related losses in 2015, HCSC set aside nearly $400 million in 2014 to boost reserves to $680.9 million. The company spent $657.3 million of those reserves to cover the medical expenses associated with ACA plans in 2015.

HCSC is the latest large insurer to report losses on 2015 ACA business, a troubling sign for the state exchanges that are the heart of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. The far-reaching legislation has increased access to insurance coverage by expanding Medicaid and providing tax credits to subsidize the cost of insurance. Though the law has brought new customers to many insurers, much of that growth has been unprofitable, reflecting higher-than-expected medical expenses, regulatory challenges and unexpected shortfalls in federal risk-sharing programs.

UnitedHealthcare said it had losses of about $475 million on its 2015 ACA business. Aetna didn’t break out the loss on its individual health plans but said the operating losses on that line of business were 3 to 4 percent of the sales.

As a result of the losses, some insurers have considered withdrawing from the state marketplaces. Any exodus would threaten the stability of exchanges, making the online marketplaces less attractive to consumers.

“2015 was not a good year as far as the ACA went,” said Stephen Zaharuk, senior vice president at Moody’s Investors Service, who covers the health insurance industry. “Insurers had no idea what to expect.”

Still, no one expected the rollout of some of the biggest reforms in health care to be smooth. The exchanges are a new way to sell health plans to a population that largely was uninsured. Moreover, the law forbids insurers from using consumers’ medical history to set prices. Insurers were essentially groping in the dark.

But with two years of experience under their belts, insurers may be on more secure footing. HCSC, for one, didn’t book a reserve for potential 2016 losses on ACA plans, said Carl McDonald, a divisional senior vice president at the company. Zaharuk said that’s a good sign the company’s individual business may break even this year.

But HCSC officials are not so optimistic that the ACA plans will be profitable in 2016. Company spokesman Greg Thompson said in an email, “Our not booking a (reserve for ACA losses) for 2016 does not indicate nor imply an anticipated level of profitability for the year.”

Despite problems with its ACA-related business, HCSC narrowed its overall loss in 2015, according to a financial statement filed with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. The filing is primarily an accounting of its fully insured lines of business.

The company reported a loss of $65.8 million, down from $281.9 million in 2014, reflecting higher earnings from its group health plans and an increase in investment income. Premium revenue rose 12.5 percent to $31.2 billion.

HCSC is among the biggest players in the individual market, with 1.64 million members at the end of last year, an increase of 3.4 percent, according to the filing. Nearly one-third of its enrollment is in Illinois, where Blue Cross sold roughly 80 percent of all 2015 individual policies in the state.

HCSC doesn’t disclose how much of its individual enrollment came from ACA plans sold on and off the exchanges. The individual market also includes policyholders who were allowed to keep the plans they had before the health law was implemented through 2017. Insurers blame that last-minute change by the Obama administration for keeping healthier people out of the exchanges.

When the exchanges launched, HCSC’s Blue Cross plans offered some of the lowest-priced policies and largest provider networks. The strategy was to provide cost-effective health care access, reflecting the company’s status as a not-for-profit, customer-owned insurer, analysts said.

However, medical costs and customers’ use of health care services on ACA-related plans were higher than anticipated. In 2014, HCSC’s key medical-loss ratio, which measures the share of premiums used to pay patient medical costs, rose to 86.5 percent, from 85 percent. Last year, the ratio jumped to 90.4 percent, according to the annual statement.

To manage the risk, HCSC followed in the footsteps of its for-profit competitors and made significant changes last year that were not consumer friendly.

The company raised 2016 premiums and redesigned policies to shift more costs to consumers. In Illinois and Texas, its two largest markets, HCSC eliminated its popular PPO plans that were more expensive but had the largest networks of hospitals and doctors. The decision sent Blue Cross customers scrambling to find other plans on the exchanges that included their doctors.

The company even took the hard line of walking away from business. In New Mexico, the company sought a rate increase averaging 51.6 percent, after it said it lost $19.2 million in 2014 on its individual business in the state. New Mexico insurance regulators rejected the request but were willing to approve a lower increase, according to published reports. Instead, HCSC pulled out of the New Mexico exchange.

The company also is cutting expenses. Thompson confirmed that HCSC has laid off employees in its information-technology department but declined to say how many were let go. Last month, the company eliminated commissions to independent brokers in Illinois, Texas and Oklahoma on sales of individual plans that take effect April 1 or later.

After eliminating commissions in Illinois, Blue Cross said it remains committed to “expanding access to quality health care to as many people as possible.” The changes are necessary to continue offering “sustainable” health plan options to members, the company said.

Despite signs of strain, the Obama administration says the exchanges are getting stronger. There were many new customers among the 12.7 million people who chose plans during open enrollment for 2016. In Illinois, enrollment grew nearly 12 percent to about 388,000.

Still, the administration has tweaked some regulations to benefit insurers. It placed a one-year moratorium for 2017 on the annual tax insurers pay, which is generally passed along to customers. The change will save some insurers hundreds of millions of dollars. For 2016, HCSC expects to pay a fee of $538.7 million.

The administration also has tightened some of the eligibility rules for people who sign up for insurance after the enrollment deadlines. Insurers have complained that people are waiting until they are sick to buy plans and then dropping coverage after their health problems are resolved, driving up costs and premiums.

Facebook’s Zuckerberg Against Hiring Americans

Posted on March 11, 2016March 11, 2016 by Denise Simon

Record high 91.5 million people not included in labor force, 2014

Senate legislation to stop H1B Visa Abuse.

Zuckerberg to Supreme Court: Give Me More Cheap Foreign Labor

IR: In news that will surprise no one, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg urged the U.S. Supreme Court to allow for the implementation of President Obama’s executive amnesty programs. In a friend of the court brief (known as an amicus brief), Zuckerberg and 60 other business executives asked the Supreme Court to overturn the Fifth Circuit’s injunction blocking the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) and expanded Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) amnesty programs. “The federal government’s recent actions—clarifying its enforcement priorities and making temporary work authorization available to certain low-priority [illegal aliens]—strengthen the American economy by stabilizing the workforce, promoting job creation, reducing deficits and increasing federal, state and local tax revenues,” the brief claims. The business executives continue, “Preventing or delaying these policies will only withhold the tangible benefits of a more diverse, productive business environment.”

The message from Zuckerberg and Co. is clear: we want access to more cheap foreign labor. Rather than “stabilizing the workforce,” implementation of DAPA and expanded DACA would flood the labor market with at least 5 million illegal aliens who would receive work authorization under these amnesty programs. Instead, Zuckerberg and his business pals want to stabilize costs in the form of lower wages to these amnestied illegal aliens in order to further pad their pockets with even higher profits. Unsurprisingly, Zuckerberg’s brief fails to mention that the tech industry has experienced record profits yet wages have flat-lined for years.

Despite the ample supply of native workers at the high-skilled (there’s a glut of STEM degree holders) and low-skilled (workforce participation is at historical lows) levels, Zuckerberg continues to demand amnesty and increased guest worker programs simply because they are cheaper than hiring Americas.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in U.S. v. Texas starting April 18. To learn more about the case, visit FAIR’s resource page here.

**** Then there is the Donald:

In the CNN March 10 debate…..hey Trump is there a right or wrong standard you won’t exploit? See the video here.

Donald Trump, facing questions in tonight’s CNN debate about the H1B visa program, said it’s a program he knows well. “It’s something that I frankly use and shouldn’t be allowed to use,” Trump said. “We shouldn’t have it — very, very bad for workers.””I’m a businessman and I have to do what I have to do,” Trump continued. “When it’s sitting there waiting for you, but it’s very bad. It’s very bad for business. And it’s bad for our workers and unfair for our workers.”

NYT:Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., describes itself as “one of the most highly regarded private clubs in the world,” and it is not just the very-well-to-do who want to get in.

Since 2010, nearly 300 United States residents have applied or been referred for jobs as waiters, waitresses, cooks and housekeepers there. But according to federal records, only 17 have been hired.

In all but a handful of cases, Mar-a-Lago sought to fill the jobs with hundreds of foreign guest workers from Romania and other countries.

In his quest for the Republican presidential nomination, Mr. Trump has stoked his crowds by promising to bring back jobs that have been snatched by illegal immigrants or outsourced by corporations, and voters worried about immigration have been his strongest backers.

But he has also pursued more than 500 visas for foreign workers at Mar-a-Lago since 2010, according to the United States Department of Labor, while hundreds of domestic applicants failed to get the same jobs.

*** Further:

Trump’s modeling agency broke immigration laws, attorneys say

CNN Investigations: Throughout his campaign, Trump has loudly opposed the practice of U.S. companies using foreign workers instead of Americans — specifically the highly-skilled workers brought to the United States through the controversial H-1B visa program.

“These are temporary foreign workers, imported from abroad, for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay. I remain totally committed to eliminating rampant, widespread H-1B abuse,” Trump said in a statement on his website, though he backtracked on his position during a recent Republican debate.

While this visa program is best known for bringing over technology workers like engineers and computer programmers, Trump’s own modeling agency has used the program for years, federal data shows. That’s because federal law surprisingly lumps in fashion models with these other specialized workers — though it’s the only job that doesn’t require higher education. (Instead, models must have “distinguished merit and ability.”)

And now, the use of this visa by Trump Model Management, founded by Trump in 1999, is being questioned.

The agency is currently battling a proposed class action lawsuit filed by Jamaican model Alexia Palmer, who was brought to the country with an H-1B visa.

The suit alleges that the agency recruits foreign models with promises of wages that never materialize and defrauds the U.S. government on visa applications. Palmer is currently the only plaintiff and the suit has not yet been approved as a class-action.

In her case, Palmer says she was paid only a few thousand dollars over three years despite being lured with the promise of more than $200,000 in earnings in that same time period.

That salary was also what was listed by Trump Model Management as part of the visa application.

“Ms. Palmer will receive compensation of at least $75,000 per year,” the agency’s president Corinne Nicolas said in a letter to immigration officials. “She is a model whose services have been in great demand, and whose proposed temporary presence in the United States has stirred great anticipation by Trump Model Management and its clientele.” (Nicolas did not respond to a request for comment).

Government data analyzed by Howard University professor Ron Hira shows that since 2008, Trump’s agency has successfully brought over around 30 foreign models — from countries like Brazil, Latvia and China — using the H-1B program. Almost half of these applications indicated the same $75,000 annual salary, while others went as high as $416,000.

CNNMoney asked a dozen attorneys and other immigration experts to review facts and documents from the case, and the vast majority said Trump’s agency appears to have violated immigration law.

“It seems pretty clear to me that there was a violation… and a pretty egregious violation,” said New York immigration attorney Jeffrey Feinbloom.

Experts say that the U.S. government requires that full-time H-1B workers like Palmer be paid a high enough wage that they aren’t being exploited or displacing American workers — regardless of how much they end up working.

Experts say that the firm was required by law to pay the amount stated on Palmer’s visa — in this case, $75,000 a year. Even more egregious, they say, was that the Trump agency didn’t pay the “prevailing wage” determined by the U.S. government (which is based on the industry and location).

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency (USCIS) confirmed that a sponsoring company “must pay the actual wage or the prevailing wage, whichever is higher” — meaning it was illegal to pay Palmer below either listed wage. “Employers may never pay below the prevailing wage,” the agency said in a statement.

For Palmer, the prevailing wage acknowledged by the Trump agency on the visa application was roughly $45,000 a year. Instead, she made less than $30,000 over three years from modeling jobs for clients ranging from Conde Nast to Saks Fifth Avenue.

And she didn’t even get to keep that full amount. It was almost entirely eaten up by taxes, a 20% commission to the Trump agency, administrative fees and modeling-related costs like $75 walking lessons and a $200 dermatology visit.

In the end, Palmer netted $4,985 over three years (which included cash advances and a $3,880.75 check), a figure acknowledged by the Trump agency. Much more here.

Silenced workers who lost jobs to H-1B visa abuse (quietly) speak out

WashingtonExaminer: The Senate Judiciary Committee recently held a hearing into abuses of the H-1B skilled guest worker visa program. Lawmakers heard experts describe how the use of foreign workers has come to dominate the IT industry, with many tech giants using the program to fire well-paid current workers and replace them with workers from abroad at significantly lower pay.

“The current system to bring in high-skill guest workers … has become primarily a process for supplying lower-cost labor to the IT industry,” two experts who testified at the hearing, Howard University’s Ron Hira and Rutgers’ Hal Salzman, wrote recently. “Although a small number of workers and students are brought in as the ‘best and brightest,’ most high-skill guest workers are here to fill ordinary tech jobs at lower wages.”

Exhibit A in the abuse of H-1Bs was the case of Southern California Edison, which recently got rid of between 400 and 500 IT employees and replaced them with a smaller force of lower-paid workers brought in from overseas through the H-1B program. The original employees were making an average of about $110,000 a year, the committee heard; the replacements were brought to Southern California Edison by outsourcing firms that pay an average of between $65,000 and $75,000.