People hold conversations through the U.S.- Mexico border fence Saturday at Border Field State Park in San Diego. (Mike Blake/Reuters)

By Maria Sacchetti and Nick Miroff November 21 at 5:25 PM

President Trump’s vision of a “big, beautiful” wall along the Mexican border may never be realized, and almost certainly not as a 2,000-mile physical structure spanning sea to sea.

But in a systematic and less visible way, his administration is following a blueprint to reduce the number of foreigners living in the United States — those who are undocumented and those here legally — and overhaul the U.S. immigration system for generations to come.

Across agencies and programs, federal officials are wielding executive authority to assemble a bureaucratic wall that could be more effective than any concrete and metal one. While some actions have drawn widespread attention, others have been put in place more quietly.

The administration has moved to slash the number of refugees, accelerate deportations and terminate the provisional residency of more than a million people, among other measures. On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security said nearly 60,000 Haitians allowed to stay in the United States after a devastating 2010 earthquake have until July 2019 to leave or obtain another form of legal status.

“He’s building a virtual wall by his actions and his rhetoric,” said Kevin Appleby, migration policy director for the Center for Migration Studies, a nonprofit think tank.

Trump administration officials say they are simply upholding laws their predecessors did not and preserving American jobs. Previous Republican and Democratic administrations were too soft on enforcement, they say, and too rosy in their view of immigration as an unambiguously positive force.

“For decades, the American people have been begging and pleading with our elected officials for an immigration system that’s lawful and serves the national interest,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in Austin last month. “Now we have a president who supports that.”

Bob Dane, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which has pushed for many of the Trump administration’s main goals on immigration, said the president has “really scaled back this expansive view of immigration that occurred under the Obama administration.”

[A Haitian woman asks: ‘How would I survive going back there?’]

The new restrictions could significantly reduce the number of foreign-born workers in the U.S. labor force, but demographic experts say there is little chance they will alter the country’s broader racial and ethnic transformation, which Trump’s critics say is his goal. Census projections show the United States will no longer have a single racial or ethnic majority by mid-century, according to the Pew Research Center.

Still, by erecting tougher, taller administrative hurdles for foreigners seeking to move to the United States or remain in the country after arriving illegally, the White House is attempting to shift the country back toward the tighter controls on immigration in place before the 1960s.

“Within the administration there are a number of key players who are just looking for every opportunity, every program . . . every administrative or regulatory leeway they have to restrict entry into the United States,” said Linda Hartke, president and chief executive of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which resettles refugees.

Even as they fight court orders seeking to halt parts of Trump’s immigration agenda, Sessions, White House senior adviser Stephen Miller and other key players are finding ways to shrink the immigration system. Miller was an aide to Sessions before both men joined the administration; in less than a year, their immigration policy prescriptions have moved from the realm of think-tank wish lists to White House executive orders.

In October, the White House — in a plan led by Miller — said it had conducted a “bottom-up review of all immigration policies” and found “dangerous loopholes, outdated laws, and easily exploited vulnerabilities in our immigration system — current policies that are harming our country and our communities.”

Trump has endorsed GOP legislation to cut annual, legal immigration by half, reducing the number of green cards issued annually from about 1 million to 500,000. More weight would be given to immigrants with job skills, as opposed to those with extended family in the United States.

[Trump’s proposal for a ‘solar’ border wall appears to be dead]

The president cut the number of refugees the United States is willing to accept annually from 110,000 to 45,000, the lowest level since 1980, and ordered the implementation of a time-consuming “extreme vetting” system that could mean the number of refugees cleared each year is much lower. In October, 1,242 refugees arrived in the United States, down from 9,945 in October 2016.

Trump also eliminated a smaller program specifically for refugees fleeing violence in Central America. The Pentagon, citing concerns about vetting, suspended a recruitment program offering skilled foreigners a fast track to citizenship if they serve in uniform.

Muzaffar Chishti, the director of the Migration Policy Institute at the New York University School of Law, said nearly 350,000 of the newcomers who arrive legally to the United States each year are the spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Since barring those arrivals is not under consideration, Chishti said, the government would have to eliminate or sharply restrict almost all other avenues to reduce the annual number of immigrants to 500,000.

In addition to this week’s decision on Haitians, the government earlier this month declined to renew Temporary Protected Status, a form of provisional residency, for about 2,500 Nicaraguans. The State Department says conditions in Central America and Haiti that had been used to justify the protection for as long as two decades no longer necessitate a reprieve. Decisions on more than 250,000 Hondurans and Salvadorans with the provisional residency permits are pending.

Trump is also ending Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, the Obama administration program that granted work permits to 690,000 young immigrants brought here as children. Trump’s administration is expanding immigration courts and detention centers and has ratcheted up deportations from the interior of the United States, where millions of undocumented immigrants with U.S.-born children and no serious criminal records held little fear of expulsion under President Barack Obama.

Arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement are up more than 40 percent this year, and the agency wants to more than double its staff by 2023, according to a federal contracting notice published this month. ICE is calling for a major increase in workplace raids and has signed more than two dozen agreements with state and local governments that want to help arrest and detain undocumented residents.

“If you’re in this country illegally and you committed a crime by entering this country, you should be uncomfortable,” Thomas Homan, the top official at ICE, told lawmakers this year. “You should look over your shoulder. And you need to be worried.”

[Meet the young people whose lives were transformed by DACA]

The president and his aides have pressed forward despite an outcry from advocates and Democratic lawmakers, who in states such as California and Illinois have instructed police and public officials to shun cooperation with ICE. The Trump administration has threatened to strip such “sanctuary” jurisdictions of federal funding in an escalating legal standoff.

Trump’s tough talk alone appears to be one of the administration’s best bulwarks: Illegal crossings along the border with Mexico have plunged to their lowest level in 45 years, and U.S. agents are catching a far greater share of those attempting to sneak in. Applications for H-1B skilled visas and new foreign-student enrollment have also declined.

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William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, said that until now U.S. immigration rates have largely spared the country from the challenges facing advanced industrial nations such as Japan and Germany that can’t replace aging workers fast enough. By slashing immigration, Frey said, the country could end up with labor shortages and other workforce issues.

But although some of Trump’s most fervent supporters see curbing immigration as a way to turn back the United States’ rapid racial and ethnic transformation, Frey said it is an unrealistic goal. By 2020, census projections show minorities will account for more than half of the under-18 U.S. population, because of higher birthrates in nonwhite populations. And by 2026, the number of whites is projected to begin declining in absolute numbers, he said, as deaths exceed births.

“You can slow the rate of Latino and Asian immigration, but it won’t make the population whiter,” Frey said. “It will just become less white at a slower pace.”

Trump continues to insist his administration will build a border wall, despite exorbitant cost projections and senior DHS officials saying a 2,000-mile structure is impractical. His supporters say they admire the president for plowing ahead in his overhaul efforts and see a historic, generational shift underway.

“There is more than one way to get to the goal,” Dane said. “Legislative solutions are all great, but clearly the administration has done things behind the scenes. . . . The results have been dramatic.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/how-trump-is-building-a-border-wall-no-one-can-see/2017/11/21/83d3b746-cba0-11e7-b0cf-7689a9f2d84e_story.html?utm_term=.7b1fe8859690

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3805428&forum_id=2#34745544)

what is the point?

they need to think much bigger. deporting 50k Hatians is meaningless.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3805428&forum_id=2#34747952)

You mean as soon as the new Administration takes over.

ljl @ "TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP!" as if he's done something permanent and long-lasting.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3805428&forum_id=2#34748009)

MAGA

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3805428&forum_id=2#34747953)

A scientist recruited by the renowned Cleveland Clinic is stuck in India because his visa is delayed. An entrepreneur courted by Silicon Valley companies had his application denied. Many green card applicants have new interviews to pass.

The Trump administration has pursued its immigration agenda loudly and noticeably, ramping up arrests of undocumented immigrants, barring most travel from several majority-Muslim countries and pressing the case for a border wall.

But it has also quietly, and with much less resistance, slowed many forms of legal immigration without the need for Congress to rescind a single visa program enshrined in the law.

Immigration and State Department officials are more closely scrutinizing, and have started more frequently denying, visas for people seeking to visit the United States on business, as well as for those recruited by American companies, according to lawyers representing visa seekers. Foreigners already in the United States whose employers wish to extend their stay also are facing new hurdles.

“I call this the real wall,” said Anastasia Tonello, the president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “The wall is being built.”

The changes show how the Trump administration has managed to carry out the least attention-grabbing, but perhaps farthest-reaching, portion of the president’s immigration plans: cutting the number of people entering the United States each year as temporary workers or permanent residents.

The administration has put into practice the philosophy President Trump laid out in a pair of executive orders billed as protecting the nation from terrorism and its workers from foreign competition.

One of them, the “Buy American, Hire American” order, singles out the H-1B visa program. Hailed by proponents as vital to American innovation, H-1Bs also have been derided as a way to displace United States workers with cheaper foreign labor; in one highly publicized case, some Disney employees were told to train their foreign replacements if they wanted severance payments.

Each year, 85,000 H-1Bs, which are valid for three to six years, are available to companies, according to a ceiling set by Congress. Demand far outstrips supply when the economy is healthy, prompting the government to hold a lottery.

But now even applicants lucky enough to be chosen are drawing more scrutiny.

Officials are asking for extra details about applicants’ education and work history, the position to be filled and the employer, requiring the company to amass many additional documents, which can postpone a decision by several months.

For H-1Bs, the number of such “requests for evidence” from January to August this year jumped 44 percent compared with the same period last year, according to the most recent data from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.

So far, the government is still greenlighting most H-1B applications that survive the lottery, but the approval rate is inching down.

Photo

H-1B visa petitions arriving at a government processing center in Laguna Niguel, Calif. As a candidate, President Trump vowed to end the visa program. Credit Eros Hoagland for The New York Times

For the first two months of this fiscal year, October and November, 86 percent and 82 percent of H-1B applications were approved. That compares with 93 percent and 92 percent for the same months last year. The data does not reflect companies that give up after receiving requests for more evidence.

Once a company has spent thousands of dollars in attorney fees to petition for a worker, “there is huge discouragement after an R.F.E. is issued,” said Roxanne Levine, an immigration attorney in New York, “because of the massive extra time, effort and money required to respond.”

L. Francis Cissna, the immigration agency’s new director, said in an interview that if there are more requests for evidence, “that is perfectly rational and perfectly appropriate.”

“We are looking at the entire program to ensure the entire thing is administered well and in conformity with congressional intent,” he said.

He recently met with a group of displaced American workers in Florida, including some laid off by Disney. The meeting was arranged by Sara Blackwell, an employment lawyer who leads a group called Protect U.S. Workers. “The administration has done much more for American workers, but I hope to see much more soon,” she said.

Still, immigration lawyers and companies seeking the visas say that some of the decisions appear arbitrary.

After responding to requests for evidence, a consulting firm that applied for an H-1B for an energy expert from Britain received a denial stating that the skills for the position “do not appear to be of such complexity, uniqueness or specialization as to require the attainment of a bachelor’s degree,” a prerequisite for the visa.

Kristen Albertson, the operations manager at the firm, called the outcome “egregious.”

“We apply only when it’s a strong case and essential to our business,” she said of the applicant, who is a graduate of the University of Chicago.

An H-1B visa for an Indian scientist recruited by the Cleveland Clinic for his expertise in cellular biology is stuck in “administrative processing” in New Delhi, meaning it is undergoing further review that could stretch months. “His team’s projects are now on hold due to the delay,” said Janice Bianco, an official at the Cleveland Clinic who handles applications for foreigners.

She said a visa for a pediatric geneticist hired in the spring took three months to be issued — in the past, it would have taken about three weeks — forcing the hospital to reroute some patients to other facilities.

The State Department, which has handled the Cleveland Clinic visa requests, said in a statement that “consular officers have the discretion to request additional screening in any case.”

Other types of visas also are tougher to get now. During trips to Silicon Valley, Vladimir Eremeev of Russia was encouraged to establish a branch of his cloud-based technology company, Ivideon, in the United States. In Europe, Ivideon employs 150 people, and Philips, the Dutch multinational, sells a camera powered by its technology.

Mr. Eremeev drew up plans, which his lawyer in New York detailed in a 347-page visa application. He was applying for an L-1A visa, awarded to executives transferring to the United States.

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“Sounds and looks great, but it didn’t help me obtain a visa,” Mr. Eremeev said in a phone interview.

Among other things, the immigration agency stated that the office leased by Mr. Eremeev did not appear to be suited for a “business that would require the employment of a manager or executive.” His lawyer provided details and pictures of the space.

Ultimately, the government denied the petition, stating that the “organizational structure” presented did not support the “managerial or executive position” that Mr. Eremeev was to fill.

“You are going in circles,” said the lawyer, Oksana Bandrivska, “and it’s getting harder to win cases.”

Russell Harrison, director of government relations for IEEE-USA, a society of technology professionals, applauded the administration’s efforts to tackle visa abuse. However, he said, a blanket approach could stifle American competitiveness.

“They seem to be against anyone coming in, which is a simplistic view,” Mr. Harrison said. “There are some incredibly talented people not born in this country and they are being treated just like other workers who are cheap.”

Some lawyers said they had also seen more scrutiny of H-2B visas, the seasonal work permits that Mr. Trump uses to staff his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. Jeff Joseph, a lawyer in Aurora, Colo., said the government was more often denying visas for companies that sought the visas season after season. (Mar-a-Lago uses them only during winters.)

The government’s argument, Mr. Joseph said, is that those companies are trying to import temporary workers to fill permanent jobs that should go to Americans. But he said his clients faced a shortage of local labor year after year to fill jobs in construction, lodging, landscaping and amusement parks.

Other changes affect foreigners already working or living in the United States on H-1Bs or other temporary permits.

Those sponsored by their employers for a green card, or legal permanent residency, must pass in-person interviews, a reversal of a 20-year-old policy that is likely to exacerbate a long backlog in green card applications. A memo from the immigration agency said the change was in line with the executive order to safeguard the nation from terrorism.

The administration said this month that it planned to eliminate a program established during the Obama administration that allows international entrepreneurs to stay in the United States for up to five years. The administration also said it would eliminate a two-year-old program that granted work permits for spouses of H-1B workers. And it recently announced plans to restrict the ability of foreign students to work temporarily in the United States after they graduate.

Another change affects green card holders who enlist in the military. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, military service has provided a faster path to citizenship than applying as a civilian, typically taking just 10 weeks.

37

COMMENTS

In October, the Pentagon enacted new procedures that substantially slow the process by adding several layers of vetting. The change affects thousands of immigrants who have already enlisted because they cannot start training before clearing the background checks.

The Pentagon said the new measures were needed to ensure that terrorists do not infiltrate the military. But Margaret Stock, an immigration lawyer and retired lieutenant colonel in the Army, said the military would suffer. “They are turning away green card holders with language, cybersecurity and other skills that the United States military needs,” she said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/us/trump-immigration-slowdown.html

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3805428&forum_id=2#34966464)

"But...but...fuck muds!"

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3805428&forum_id=2#34966724)

"But although some of Trump’s most fervent supporters see curbing immigration as a way to turn back the United States’ rapid racial and ethnic transformation, Frey said it is an unrealistic goal. By 2020, census projections show minorities will account for more than half of the under-18 U.S. population, because of higher birthrates in nonwhite populations. And by 2026, the number of whites is projected to begin declining in absolute numbers, he said, as deaths exceed births.

“You can slow the rate of Latino and Asian immigration, but it won’t make the population whiter,” Frey said. “It will just become less white at a slower pace.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3805428&forum_id=2#34966626)