New York, March 2010
The United States Immigration Newsletter
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ICE Focuses on Criminal Illegal Immigrants
 Dallas, TX:
In a three-day multi-agency operation in Texas, 284
illegal immigrants who also have criminal records have been arrested. John Morton, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said that “these are not people we want walking our streets.” Morton also said that that the DHS and its enforcement agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) primarily will target criminal offenders. Responding to the question why illegal immigrants who’ve served prison terms haven’t already been deported, Morton said that while state and federal prisoners’ have their immigration status checked.
In addition, many city and county jails are not checked, and a program that allows jails to check inmates’ immigrant status against federal databases is only used by 110 law enforcement agencies. Of the 284 illegal aliens arrested during the three day sweep in Texas, 159 had convictions for serious drug offences or violent crimes. |
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Green Cards for Entrepreneurs with New Visa
 Washington, D.C.:
A new visa for foreign entrepreneurs has been suggested in a bill introduced by Democrat Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and Republican Senator Richard Lugar of
Indiana. Foreigners sponsored with at least $100,000 by an angel investor or $250,000 by a qualified venture capital firm would be eligible for the visa. If the visa holder would be eligible for a green card if he or she had revenues of at least $1 million, hires five or more people, or secures $1 million more in investment within two years. More than 100 large angel investors and venture capitalist firms are backing the new bill that is aimed at stopping the “brain drain” out of the United States. Today the EB-5 investment visa is only available to immigrants who invest at least $1 million in the U.S. and employ at least 10 people. There is also the H-1B
visa for skilled workers, but it is only granted to a relatively small number of people.
The suggested new visa would not be taking any existing jobs, unlike the H-1B
visa. According the National Venture Capital Association, which supports the new bill, 25 percent of the nation’s publicly traded business that is backed by venture capitalist firms have immigrant founders or co-founders. The association also says that immigrant entrepreneurs are more likely to create high-tech, high paying jobs.
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Military Service a Fast Track to Citizenship
 New York, NY:
Military personnel have a different set of immigration rules than other non-citizens have. According to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), those who have served honorably in the armed forces for at least one day during a designated period of hostility can apply to be a U.S. citizen. The U.S. has been in such a period of hostility since 9-11, meaning non-citizen
military
personnel can apply for citizenship almost immediately upon enlisting. So far
only American Citizens or legal permanent residents (those who have green cards)
can join the armed forces, but last year the military launched a pilot
recruitment campaign targeting temporary visa holders. The program is so far
limited to 1,000 recruits, and offers a fast track to citizenship in return for
enlisting; a fast track that saves the enlistee both time and money, since
military personnel don’t have to pay the filing fee to apply for citizenship. Family of service members are also be entitled to expedited processing, if they meet
other requirements for citizenship. |
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E-Verify Fails to Identify Illegal Immigrants
 Washington, D.C.:
The online employment eligibility verification system called
E-Verify wrongly identifies more than half of un-documented workers as eligible for employment, while legal workers were correctly identified 93 percent of the time. This is the conclusion in an evaluation made by a research company for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). With E-Verify employers can check potential hires against DHS and Social Security databases and is meant to help curb illegal immigration. It’s considered essential for an immigration reform to have any chance of approval by Congress. A summary of the evaluation on the DHS website pointed out that E-Verify is right “almost half the time” and more effective than the
I-9 form that most employers use. Among the nation’s 7 million employers approximately 184,000 use E-verify so far, most of them voluntarily. The DHS will is budgeted to spend about $100 million on E-Verify in 2010. |
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Virtual Border Fence Delayed
 Washington, D.C.
The virtual fence, consisting of high-tech radar, cameras and satellite signals to complement the physical border fence in combating illegal immigration and smuggling across the U.S. border from
Mexico, will be delayed for several years. The multi-billion-dollar project called SBInet was meant to be completed by 2011, but will probably not be finished for at least another seven years. One official says that “it was a great idea, but it didn’t work." Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been ordered by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to perform a department-wide assessment of the high-tech virtual fence that was originally meant to cover the entire 2,000 mile U.S.-Mexico border. The SBInet is part of the Secure
Border Initiative, a plan to use physical fencing and technology to keep guns, drugs and undocumented workers from crossing the border from Mexico. Most of the physical fence is completed, with a price tag of $3.4 billion. |
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Study Shows Deportation System is Unfair
 NEW YORK, NY:
A study of the deportation process in the U.S. has found that the current deportation system “is severely flawed and fails to afford fair process to all non-citizens facing deportation from the United States." The comprehensive review was carried out by the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration and a leading U.S. law firm. It finds that 84 percent of people in detention had to go through immigration proceedings without legal counsel. Many can’t afford a lawyer, and those who do still have trouble retaining counsel due to “remote detention facilities, short visiting hours, restricted phone access and transfers.” Other findings include that
immigration judges are overwhelmingly overloaded with an average of 1,243 per year. This means that there is not enough time to conduct thorough legal research or to analyze complex legal cases. In the past eight years the number of deportations from the U.S. has grown from 69,000 to 356,000 annually.
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