Trump Administration Begins Sending Asylum Seekers To Guatemala

In yet another major blow to America’s asylum system, on Wednesday the Trump administration reportedly began sending some asylum seekers from Honduras and El Salvador to Guatemala rather than permit them to seek protection in the United States.

Under the “Asylum Cooperative Agreement” deal signed with Guatemala in July, the Guatemalan government will process the asylum claims of people who arrive at the U.S. border without visas.

For the first time in American history, large numbers of refugees can now be returned to a third country without their consent.

This denies them any opportunity to seek protection in the United States. Instead, people will be required to apply for asylum in Guatemala, a country with one of the highest rates of poverty and malnutrition in the entire Western Hemisphere...

 

More information: https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4632-Sending-Asylum-Seekers-to-Guatemala.html 

 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com

The Supreme Court Heard A Major Case On DACA. Here’s What You Need To Know

By Jorge Loweree

The Supreme Court heard arguments on November 12 in three cases challenging President Trump’s attempted rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative. The Court’s decision could have far-reaching consequences for DACA recipients and the limits of executive authority when it comes to immigration law and policy.

President Obama created the DACA initiative in June 2012 to provide young unauthorized immigrants with protection from deportation and the ability to work lawfully in the United States in two-year renewable increments. All applicants were required to meet specific criteria related to age, education, and criminal history. Government data indicates that approximately 661,000 people are currently enrolled. President Trump terminated the program September 5, 2017.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court focused on one primary question: did the Trump administration provide an adequate explanation for why it ended DACA?

Anytime the Executive Branch makes a major policy decision such as ending DACA, it must explain why and ensure that the reasoning is not “arbitrary and capricious.” The Trump administration needed to provide a reason why it was ending an initiative that hundreds of thousands of people had benefited from and relied upon.

In two memos announcing the rescission, administration officials claimed DACA was an unconstitutional exercise of executive authority, and thus “illegal” from the start. Both memos failed to offer any policy justifications for the termination of the program. They instead pointed to a decision by the U.S. District Court in Brownsville, Texas barring a similar program known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) as proof that DACA was illegal.

In response to several lawsuits, lower courts across the country issued injunctions against the rescission. This forced the government to continue accepting and adjudicating DACA requests from people who have DACA or those who participated in the past. These lawsuits then made their way to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court focused on the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) when it discussed whether the president’s decision to eliminate DACA is one that can be reviewed by federal courts and, if so, if it was lawful as implemented. The APA sets forth the standards governing the judicial review of decisions by executive branch agencies.

The APA permits a federal court to review whether government action is “arbitrary or capricious,” or otherwise not in accord with the law. It thus provides a check on government decisions that do not have lawful, rational justifications.

This review is particularly important when major policy decisions would significantly impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of people across the United States, like the attempted rescission of DACA. The APA contains an exception, however, for actions considered to be within an agency’s discretion.

The administration argued that its decision falls within this exception and is therefore not reviewable by the courts. This is a curious position given its exclusive focus on the DAPA case in Texas as its justification for rescinding DACA.

The respondents—the parties that initially challenged the DACA rescission—argued that the original memo rescinding the policy contained factual and legal errors, and that the reasoning provided for the decision was insufficient.

Initial reports indicate that a majority of the justices appear ready to allow the administration to move forward with the rescission of the program.

The consequences of simply revoking a program like DACA that people have come to rely on for many years are dire. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people who participated in the program over the last seven years would be thrown into disarray.

It would then be up to Congress and the president to negotiate a permanent solution allowing DACA recipients to live and work in the United States without the constant threat of deportation. The House passed such a measure in June of this year.

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4615-DACA-Here-What-You-Need-to-Know.html

Trump New Healthcare Ban Threatens The Legal Immigration System

By: Aaron Reichlin-Melnick www.immigrationimpact.com/

President Trump invoked the same legal authority used for the Travel Ban to impose a sweeping new ban on legal immigration last week. Under the new ban, which analysis suggests could block as much as two thirds of all immigrants from coming to the United States, immigrants will be banned from entering unless they can prove they will be covered by private health insurance within 30 days of entry. The ban is set to go into effect on November 3, 2019.

Immigrants will also be permitted into the United States if they can prove they are wealthy enough to pay for any “reasonably foreseeable medical costs” out of pocket. However, the rule does not provide any guidance on what constitutes a “reasonably foreseeable medical cost” and leaves it up to the Secretary of State to create new rules implementing the Ban.

Depending on how those rules are written, the Healthcare Ban could impose a direct wealth test on immigrants; a stark rejection of the principles of immigration that have guided America for generations.

Like the Travel Ban which was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court, this new ban invokes a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act. That provision allows the president to declare that the entry of “certain” noncitizens is “detrimental to the United States.” As with the Travel Ban, those subject to this ban will be denied visas and barred from entering the United States as permanent residents.

Under the new Healthcare Ban, immigrants must demonstrate that they will be covered by private health insurance. In addition, subsidized health insurance plans purchased through the Affordable Care Act exchange would not be counted. This could create a huge hurdle for immigrants lacking employer-provided health insurance.

The Healthcare Ban could lead to nearly 70% all legal immigrants being denied entry. According to the Migration Policy Institute, 34% of recent legal immigrants are uninsured, and an additional 31% have health insurance plans that wouldn’t qualify under the Healthcare Ban.

The requirement to purchase unsubsidized health insurance will provide a particular hurdle for immigrants.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the majority of individual health insurance plans purchased on the individual market are subsidized plans—which would not count as health insurance for the purpose of the Ban. Out of 13.7 million people who enrolled in the individual market in the first quarter of 2019, two thirds of the total (9.3 million) received subsidies.

The Healthcare Ban does provide some exceptions, including one for minor children of U.S. citizens and immigrants who are already in the United States. There is also a limited exception for parents of U.S. citizens, who still must prove that their healthcare “will not impose a substantial burden on the United States healthcare system.”

The Healthcare Ban comes just days before the Trump administration’s much-attacked new “Public Charge” rule goes into effect on October 15. That rule sought to limit legal immigration by expanding the groups of immigrants excluded as “public charges” because they might use public benefits in the future.

But the Healthcare Ban sweeps far more broadly than public charge, targeting even immigrants who would easily meet that rule’s new standards.

Given the extreme damage that the new ban would do to legal immigration, legal challenges are likely. President Trump has made his dislike for immigrants who use public benefits clear, and his general anti-immigrant attitude is likely to form one basis for the lawsuit. And unlike the Travel Ban, where much of President Trump’s statements occurred before he became president, challengers will be able to draw on a long list of anti-immigrant actions and rhetoric taken throughout his term in office.

 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com 

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4527-New-Healthcare-Ban-Threatens-The-Immigration-System.html

White House’s Misguided Immigration Reform Plan Is Set for Failure

Written by Guillermo Cantor

President Trump announced his new plan for overhauling the legal immigration system on Thursday. The plan is short on details, but it rests on principles that the Trump administration has touted before. Specifically, the proposal emphasizes the desire to radically curtail family-based immigration while prioritizing certain attributes that are viewed as an expression of “merit.” 

Like he did when he supported the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy (RAISE) Act in 2017, the president now aims to shift the criteria for immigrant admission and emphasize the importance of the skills that prospective immigrants would bring to the United States. 

While the details remain unknown, the president’s proposal introduces a point system that would allow the United States to select immigrants based on a defined set of academic and professional credentials, as well as English-language skills. It would simultaneously restrict family-based admissions to immediate family members only. 

The president’s recipe for “fixing” the legal immigration system, however, seems to be based on a misguided diagnosis that has nothing to do with the actual needs of the country or American businesses, workers, and families. He simplistically defines the problem as “discriminating against genius” and admitting immigrants “by chance.” 

It’s true that employers who intend to hire foreign-born workers with specialized skills and high-skilled immigrants wanting to start a business in the United States face some obstacles in the current system. But that is only one problematic aspect of our legal immigration system. 

In this proposal, merit is narrowly defined as possessing certain types of skills, employment histories, and educational credentials. The proposal assumes these narrowly defined sets of criteria are what the country needs. However, this doesn’t account for the complexity of our economy, the various types of skills that are in demand, and the fact that those needs may change over time. 

For example, the proposal ignores the fact that so-called “less-skilled” immigrants play a fundamental role in the essential economy, which encompasses occupations such as elder care, construction, and food services, to mention just a few. 

Although it’s too early to tell, this proposal seems to be designed to exclude certain groups. For example, immigrant women who work in the domestic sphere, caring for the elderly and sick and raising the future workforce, would probably be excluded. The plan would probably also exclude individuals from countries with lower levels of human capital, or people above a certain age. 

The current system clearly has many problems. These include the system’s lack of flexibility to allow admissions to follow the fluctuations of the business cycle and the enormous backlogs for certain categories of immigrants from certain countries. The new proposal, however, does nothing to remedy those problems. Additionally, this plan provides no solution for the DACA or TPS populations—let alone the undocumented population as a whole. 

A robust reform to the immigration system that aspires to be durable should be the result of broad consensus and based on a rigorous analysis of the economic and noneconomic implications of such changes. Unfortunately, neither of these elements are present here. 

It’s also worth pointing out that when defining immigrant selection criteria, the country is not only defining a market, it is also building the foundations of a community. This aspect, not surprisingly, is not even superficially acknowledged in the President’s proposal. 

 

 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com 

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4169-Immigration-reform-in-the-United-States.html

President Trump's Asylum Ban Is Illegal And Solves Nothing

Written by Royce Murray

In response to a much over-hyped caravan of migrants slowly trekking north through Mexico, the Trump administration announced new rules to block people from applying for asylum if they cross between the ports of entry along the Southern border. The rules take effect immediately, setting the stage for an utterly avoidable crisis that will put people’s lives at risk. 

The asylum ban was made through two bureaucratic steps. First, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice jointly published an interim regulation that creates a new bar to asylum. 

President Trump then issued an accompanying proclamation that applies to anyone who has entered the United States along the Southern border between the ports of entry. Those who defy the proclamation will be denied the opportunity to seek asylum. The change does not apply to individuals who enter between ports of entry on the Northern border or to unaccompanied children who enter without a parent. 

This asylum ban is illegal. 

U.S. law clearly states that any person who arrives in the United States—whether or not at a port of entry—can apply for asylum. 

Many individuals who enter between the ports of entry and seek asylum do so because their alternatives are limited. Some at imminent risk of grave harm are desperate to get protection from the closest possible place along the U.S. border—which may not be a port of entry. 

Although the proclamation directs asylum seekers to ports of entry, many who have tried to approach an official port of entry have been turned away or told that the port is full. This generates weeks-long waits in precarious conditions on the Mexico side of the border. Those who cannot afford the risk of waiting often cross between the ports and immediately present themselves to a DHS official to ask for asylum. 

Within hours of the proclamation’s announcement, advocates challenged the government’s issuance of the rules without providing the public advanced notice and an opportunity to comment on it, as well as the ways in which the asylum ban violates the clear letter of the law. 

It is legal to seek asylum. Congress clearly established that it is legal to do so between the ports of entry. No stroke of the presidential pen can change that. 

Instead of restricting asylum and placing people’s lives at risk, we have to strengthen pathways that allow for orderly migration and protection. Robust refugee processing will allow those fearing for their lives to apply from abroad and improved capacity of the Mexican asylum system will expand the availability of options. 

Until root causes of violence and instability that make people flee are fully addressed, we should expect that deterrence measures like these will not prevent people at risk from seeking safe haven. 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com 

http://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a3943-Asylum-Ban-Is-Illegal-And-Solves-Nothing.html

Ending Birthright Citizenship Could Put All Americans’ Nationality in Jeopardy

Written by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick

On Monday night, President Trump told reporters that he intended to end birthright citizenship and claimed that he could do so with an executive order. 

Birthright citizenship comes from the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which states that “Any person born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, is a citizen of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Although the president falsely claimed that no other country provides birthright citizenship, it is the law in over 30 countries, including Mexico and Canada. 

The unexpected announcement sparked fears for many in the immigrant community, including U.S. citizens whose parents are undocumented. It met swift condemnation from all sides of the aisle, with Republicans and Democrats alike questioning the legality. Legal scholars agreed that the plan is unconstitutional; a president cannot amend the Constitution through executive action. 

In 1898, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship. Wong, born in San Francisco, had been prevented from re-entering the United States by immigration agents who argued that he was not a citizen because his parents were Chinese. The Supreme Court ruled in his favor, declaring that “citizenship by birth is established by the mere fact of birth under the circumstances defined in the Constitution.” In other words, as long as you are born in the United States, you are a citizen. 

Despite this 100-year-old ruling, some continue to argue that the constitutionality of birthright citizenship is not settled. In a tweet on Wednesday morning, President Trump endorsed a fringe legal theory that the children of undocumented immigrants are not citizens because their parents were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, as required by the Fourteenth Amendment. 

However, “[t]o be ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the U.S. is simply to be subject to the authority of the U.S. government … [and to be] required to obey U.S. laws,” according to James C. Ho, a judge nominated to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals by President Trump and confirmed in January. 

The Supreme Court has largely agreed, suggesting in the 1982 case Plyer v. Doe that there is “no plausible” interpretation of the phrase that excludes undocumented immigrants. 

The only people not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States are diplomats and ambassadors, who are entitled to diplomatic immunity and are not required to follow most American laws. 

The only way for the president to end birthright citizenship would be to amend the Constitution, which requires a two-thirds majority vote of the House and the Senate, and then for three-fourths states to approve the Amendment. 

Eliminating birthright citizenship would create a new permanent underclass in the United States and could even leave some children stateless. 

It would also impose hardship on all Americans, who could no longer point to a birth certificate as proof of citizenship. If place of birth no longer guaranteed citizenship, then all Americans—not just those whose parents were undocumented—would be forced to prove their parents’ nationality to the government in order to be recognized as a U.S. citizen. Many Americans would likely be denied citizenship based on government mistakes. 

Although President Trump cannot change the Constitution with an executive order, his threat to eliminate birthright citizenship at a highly political moment is not only divisive but fundamentally out of line with America ideals. 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com

http://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a3937-Ending-Birthright-Citizenship-in-United-States.html

Trump’s Immigration Remarks at Joint Address, Debunked

Written by Joshua Breisblatt in Border Enforcement, Enforcement, Executive Action, Interior Enforcement

This week, President Trump gave an address to a joint session of Congress where he continued his divisive, inaccurate rhetoric on immigration. Some analysts have said Trump moderated his tone in this speech, but in reality Trump isn’t shifting from his hard-line immigration policies. In his speech, he continued to falsely blaming immigrants for the underlying cause for many issues our country faces. 

Below are five statements from President Trump’s Joint Address that need to be corrected and explained. 


1. Trump claimed that we’ve left “our own borders wide open for anyone to cross.” 

This is categorically false Since the last major overhaul of the U.S. immigration system in 1986, the federal government has spent an estimated $263 billion on immigration and border enforcement. Currently, the number of border and interior enforcement personnel stands at more than 49,000. The number of U.S. Border Patrol agents nearly doubled from Fiscal Year (FY) 2003 to FY 2016 with Border Patrol now required to have a record 21,370 agents. Additionally, the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents devoted to its office of Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) nearly tripled from FY 2003 to FY 2016. 


2. Trump said that immigrants aren’t contributing to our economy and instead are “costing the country billions.” 

Once again, Trump is incorrect. The study Trump cited and misconstrued was conducted by the National Academies of Sciences (NAS), Engineering, and Medicine. The same report flatly states found that immigrants have “little to no negative effects on the overall wages or employment of native-born workers in the long term.” The NAS study also finds that immigrant workers expand the size of the U.S. economy by an estimated 11 percent annually, which translates out to $2 trillion in 2016. Further, the children of immigrants were found to be the largest net fiscal contributors among any group, native or foreign-born, creating significant economic benefits for every American. 


3. Trump said that the government is “removing gang members, drug dealers and criminals that threaten our communities and prey on our citizens.” 

Despite the rhetoric, Trump has complicated immigration enforcement by making virtually all of the undocumented population a priority . The new administration is ignoring priorities that were put into place by the Obama Administration as a way to manage limited law enforcement resources and prioritize those who pose a threat to public safety and national security. The priorities recognized that there is a finite budget available for immigration enforcement, thus making prioritization important. The approach now being pursued by the Trump Administration casts a very wide net and will result in an aggressive and unforgiving approach to immigration enforcement moving forward. 


4. Trump believes a merit-based immigration system will improve the economy. 

The idea of a merit-based system is not new but it usually has been discussed as one piece to updating our immigration system, not the only piece as discussed in this speech. At its core, the allocation of points is not a neutral act, but instead reflects a political view regarding the “desired immigrant.” Since the enactment of the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965, legal immigration to the United States has been based primarily on the family ties or the work skills of prospective immigrants. 

The contributions of family-based immigrants to the U.S. economy, local communities, and the national fabric are many. They account for a significant portion of domestic economic growth, contribute to the well-being of the current and future labor force, play a key role in business development and community improvement, and are among the most upwardly mobile segments of the labor force. And if cutting family-based immigration becomes part of a trade-off for a merit-based system, we would be turning our back on a centuries’ old tradition of family members already in the United States supporting newcomer relatives by helping them get on their feet and facilitating their integration. 


5. Trump attempted to make the link between immigrants and crime through his newly created office of Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE). 

Despite the implications of this new office at DHS which seeks to demonize all immigrants, immigrants are actually less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born. Additionally, high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime and property crime. This holds true for both legal immigrants and the unauthorized, regardless of their country of origin or level of education. 

Photo Courtesy of C-SPAN.

Source: http://immigrationimpact.com 
http://inmigracionyvisas.com/a3556-Trump-Immigration-Remarks-at-Joint-Address.html

Undocumented Immigrants Pay Billions in State and Local Taxes

Undocumented immigrants contribute to the U.S. economy in many ways. They fill essential jobs, they sustain U.S. businesses through their purchase of goods and services, and—contrary to popular misconceptions—they pay taxes to federal, state, and local governments. Their contributions would be even greater if they had a chance to earn legal status and didn’t have the danger of deportation constantly hanging over their heads. With legal status, they’d be able to change jobs more easily and—as they found better jobs and their wages increased—their economic clout as consumers and taxpayers would rise as well. This is a winning scenario for both the immigrants themselves and the native-born population. 

In a recent report titled Undocumented Immigrants’ State & Local Tax Contributions, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) explores in depth not only the present tax contributions of undocumented immigrants, but how much those contributions would increase under two different scenarios. One is the temporary reprieve from deportation and the renewable three-year work authorization that the Obama administration would grant to some undocumented immigrants via executive action. The other is the granting of legal permanent resident (LPR) status to all undocumented immigrants—in other words, legalization. Not surprisingly, immigrants with legal status pay more in taxes than those who are undocumented. 

Undocumented immigrants, like everyone else in the United States, pay sales taxes. And they also pay property taxes—even if they rent. Plus, as ITEP points out, “the best evidence suggests that at least 50 percent of undocumented immigrant households currently file income tax returns using Individual Tax Identification Numbers (ITINs), and many who do not file income tax returns still have taxes deducted from their paychecks.” In sum, according to ITEP, “undocumented immigrants living in the United States pay billions of dollars each year in state and local taxes. Further, these tax contributions would increase significantly if all undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States were granted a pathway to citizenship as part of a comprehensive immigration reform.” 

ITEP estimates the current and possible future tax contributions of undocumented immigrants at the state and local level: 

• Current contributions: Undocumented immigrants paid $11.6 billion in state and local taxes 2013. This ranged from roughly $2.2 million in Montana (home to only 4,000 undocumented immigrants) to $3.1 billion in California (with an undocumented population numbering more than 3 million). The average effective state and local tax rate of undocumented immigrants in 2013 was 8 percent (compared to 5.4 percent for the top 1 percent of all taxpayers).
• Executive Action: The Obama administration’s executive actions would grant a reprieve to more than 5 million undocumented immigrants. The state and local tax contributions of this group of immigrants would increase by $805 million per year once the actions were fully in place. This would raise the effective state and local tax rate of this group from 8.1 percent to 8.6 percent.
• Legalization: Granting LPR status to all undocumented immigrants would increase their state and local tax contributions by $2.1 billion per year. Their average effective state and local tax rate would rise to 8.6 percent.

These estimates should be kept in mind as political commentators and presidential candidates debate how best to deal with the 11 million undocumented immigrants who now live in the United States. In spite of their undocumented status, these immigrants—and their family members—are adding value to the U.S. economy; not only as taxpayers, but as workers, consumers, and entrepreneurs as well. If they had legal status, they would contribute even more. On the other hand, the only alternative— mass deportation—would be very costly and needlessly destructive. Common sense should dictate which route to take. 

 

http://inmigracionyvisas.com/a3261-Undocumented-Immigrants-Pay-Billions-in-Taxes.html