According to Newsweek, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) reported that the agency's helpline, set up by the Trump Administration, received more than 5,000 tips, reporting H-1B visa fraud and abuse, between April 3, 2017 and May 21, 2018.
U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen rejected a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Texas and six other states that challenges the legality of the DACA amnesty program. The one-sentence order rejected the motion to dismiss, which was filed Tuesday by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), under the assertion that the court should either throw out the lawsuit case, put it on hold or transfer it to California.
Loopholes in the current immigration system enabled U.S. employers to hire 403,000 foreign nationals with pending asylum claims in FY2017. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) granted these asylum-seekers Employment Authorization Documents (EAD), which authorized them to work in the United States. Most of these individuals would likely have sought work in lower-skilled occupations, competing with American workers and putting downward pressure on wages.
DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen granted $1.7 Billion of federal funding to sanctuary cities, despite the Trump Administration’s public objection to funding jurisdictions that do not fully cooperate with immigration law enforcement.
DHS proposed in a statement today that the agency eliminate the International Entrepreneur Rule (IE Final Rule) program that enables foreign nationals to bypass certain immigration procedures and move to the U.S. to build or invest in start-up businesses. Under the IE Final Rule, the DHS secretary has authority to parole foreign nationals into the U.S. and grant them authorization to work in the country for "significant public benefits."
More than 10,000 Americans signed a petition on the White House website urging Pres. Trump to sign an executive order mandating the use of E-Verify for all employers nationwide. The petition must garner another 90,000 signatures by mid-June before it can be presented to Pres. Trump to sign.
Pres. Trump said in a Fox News interview today that he will not approve any DACA amnesty legislation that doesn’t include strong border security, end the visa lottery program, and eliminate chain migration.
This week the Center for Immigration Studies released its analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the first quarter of 2018. The report shows that while the situation has greatly improved since the height of the Great Recession, employment levels for workers have not yet returned to pre-recession levels.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions directed immigration judges on Thursday to stop delaying removal cases for illegal aliens through administrative closure. Under the Obama administration, immigration judges used administrative closure to indefinitely delay hundreds of thousands of removal cases, allowing illegal aliens to be released into the United States.
Social Security Administration (SSA) Acting Commissioner Nancy Berryhill urged Congress, in a statement today at a House hearing on Social Security fraud, to pass immigration legislation that requires mandatory use of E-Verify for all employers. Berryhill said that mandating E-Verify, an Internet-based system operated by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), would combat identity theft by reducing the fraudulent use of Social Security numbers (SSN) by illegal aliens.