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Absurd Alhazred posted:With respect to retroactive changes of status, does anyone else remember someone in the Obama administration suddenly losing their clearance/job because the city they were born is was transferred from the US to Canada? I could swear there was a story like that, but it's hard to filter through all the recent bullshit to find it on Google, and I don't remember either the person's or the city's name. That happened to Donna Moss in the Bartlett Administration.
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Nov 1, 2018 15:01
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To be fair, the c-plot from an episode of West Wing does have a pretty Obama administration vibe to it.
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Nov 1, 2018 15:50
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Also The Obama administration was basically them trying to do The West Wing but in real life.
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Nov 1, 2018 15:57
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Crosspost from the Trump thread, re: the press conference he did today on immigration:VH4Ever posted:WHEN?!?!?! When is it going to stop??? loving WHEN?!?!
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Nov 1, 2018 22:24
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karthun posted:That happened to Donna Moss in the Bartlett Administration. Wow, awkward.
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Nov 2, 2018 02:35
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I am getting the response of "well we don't know if the cartels are trafficking these kids across the border so what is the government supposed to do?" in response to confronting people with lovely opinions on caging children and I...don't really know how to respond to that mostly because it seems like some serious "arguing a hypothetical". Is there any concrete proof that this is happening or lack of proof? Edit : Closest thing I have found to counter this is this article friendbot2000 fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Nov 13, 2018 |
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Nov 13, 2018 16:02
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friendbot2000 posted:I am getting the response of "well we don't know if the cartels are trafficking these kids across the border so what is the government supposed to do?" in response to confronting people with lovely opinions on caging children and I...don't really know how to respond to that mostly because it seems like some serious "arguing a hypothetical". Is there any concrete proof that this is happening or lack of proof? If authorities have any proof of individual cases of this, they're free to take appropriate action in those specific cases. Applying cruel and unusual (and illegal!) policies to everyone just in case they committed the grievous sin of lying, on the other hand, is pretty much just racist.
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Nov 13, 2018 17:11
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Main Paineframe posted:If authorities have any proof of individual cases of this, they're free to take appropriate action in those specific cases. Applying cruel and unusual (and illegal!) policies to everyone just in case they committed the grievous sin of lying, on the other hand, is pretty much just racist. That has been my general line in response, I was just hoping there was more empirical refuting evidence.
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Nov 13, 2018 17:30
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friendbot2000 posted:That has been my general line in response, I was just hoping there was more empirical refuting evidence. The claim you're trying to refute is quite vague, and in general, it's always easier to prove that something does exist than to prove that it doesn't exist. Challenge them to provide proof first.
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Nov 13, 2018 18:24
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I don't think you're going to have any luck refuting it, because it's not really a factual statement, and it's purposefully vague. The intention is to justify a horrible practice, so that's the starting point, and no amount of arguing is going to get you anywhere. It reminds me of that really outrageous scenario that I encountered either in the wild or in the Idiots on Social Media/Crazy email threads, where people were saying the law should require teenagers to report any abortions to their guardians because what if an evil rapist takes that poor innocent girl, impregnates her, and then forces her to abort thus removing the evidence of his crime!  Does it make sense? Is it common? Is it common for the girls who might want to seek an abortion provider without alerting their legal guardians? No, but it's enough for them to somehow hold in their head the thoughts "I'm a good person" and "I support a clearly abhorrent policy". It's a conservative fairy tale.
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Nov 14, 2018 02:01
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x-posting from uspol: quote:Their might be a better thread for this but can I goonsource some research on ow much it would cost to process and resettle caravan migrants, especially versus the cost of Trump's combined border operation? In addition, what the process of legally resettling them looks like? It's a lot lol but I was hoping someone had something bookmarked for the same purpose I need it for (convincing a skeptical but open-minded friend).
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Nov 29, 2018 00:52
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Deified Data posted:x-posting from uspol: I found two ways to get this number while bored at work. The simplest and dumbest is to point out that House Dems passed what was a Republican bill before the election and offered about 2.5 billion for border security but Trump turned it down and insisted on more than 5 billion for the wall. So the wall costs at least twice as much as the next most stupid approach. The second way to get is that it costs about $80,000 over 5 years to resettle a refugee according to http://fairus.org/issue/legal-immigration/fiscal-cost-resettling-refugees-united-states. No honest agency has reported more than 5,000 refugees but even if you take Trump's (obviously lying) number of 10,000 refugees you still got a total cost of under a billion dollars, or less than a fifth of the cost of the wall. But the wall cost is for this year while the resettlement cost is for 5 years, so resettling them would cost something more like 2-4% what building the wall would. Wall costs also do not include losses to citizens from having their property seized to build the wall on or the ongoing costs of Trump having deployed the army to the border. All of this is neglecting that at some point immigrants become productive citizens and become a net benefit to the economy. Here's an article from the Bush (as in former republican president Bush) institute on how immigrants improve the economy: https://www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/north-american-century/benefits-of-immigration-outweigh-costs.html
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Jan 16, 2019 22:41
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LLSix posted:I found two ways to get this number while bored at work. The simplest and dumbest is to point out that House Dems passed what was a Republican bill before the election and offered about 2.5 billion for border security but Trump turned it down and insisted on more than 5 billion for the wall. So the wall costs at least twice as much as the next most stupid approach. I'm way late in replying but this post was hugely helpful, BTW. Thanks for taking the time.
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Jan 17, 2019 00:47
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LLSix posted:I found two ways to get this number while bored at work. The simplest and dumbest is to point out that House Dems passed what was a Republican bill before the election and offered about 2.5 billion for border security but Trump turned it down and insisted on more than 5 billion for the wall. So the wall costs at least twice as much as the next most stupid approach. As you noted, the population of people who successfully pursue legitimate asylum claims is low, but I'm not sure what the 5,000 number is in reference to. (E: I see you were talking about the migrant caravan.) Legal immigration is undeniably a net benefit to the US economy, but legal immigration includes both highly skilled and unskilled labor. Scientists coming over to do research at universities or programmers coming to work at Apple aren't crossing the southern desert on foot. Illegal immigration does have a net benefit for the US economy as a whole, but those benefits accrue almost entirely with the owners of captial. Owners take advantage of a large pool of low skill workers to operate more profitably by depressing the wages of unskilled workers. It's often said that illegal immigrants take jobs that Americans won't do, but most people would pick strawberries for $50 an hour; the reason that owners can successfully offer low wages for unskilled, back-breaking work is because of their access to a pool of unskilled migrant labor. Unskilled and low skilled native workers forced to compete against immigrants see their wages fall. ("In summary, the immigration surplus stems from the increase in the return to capital that results from the increased supply of labor and the subsequent fall in wages. Natives who own more capital will receive more income from the immigration surplus than natives who own less capital, who can consequently be adversely affected." - "The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration", The National Academies) Also, while the US economy as a whole may benefit, illegal immigration is a net negative on the balance sheets of state and local governments: they do not pay enough in taxes to make up for the services they consume. This is localized to the communities where illegal immigrants live, while the profits from cheap immigrant labor do not necessarily remain in the community. While the National Academy of Sciences says that subsequent generations of immigrants make up for the defecits created by first generation immigrants, this is a blended number for all immigrants, high and low skill alike, not just low or unskilled illegal immigrants. Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Jan 17, 2019 |
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Jan 17, 2019 20:35
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Dead Reckoning posted:Also, while the US economy as a whole may benefit, illegal immigration is a net negative on the balance sheets of state and local governments: they do not pay enough in taxes to make up for the services they consume. This is localized to the communities where illegal immigrants live, while the profits from cheap immigrant labor do not necessarily remain in the community. Even if we take this to be true, this means that certain policies aimed at hurting illegal immigrants would actually hurt those communities. Specifically, anything that would dissuade someone who might fear being deported or harassed by ICE from answering the Census would decrease the recorded amount of people in a community, in turn decreasing the community's proportional influence in state legislatures, the US House, and the Electoral College.
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Jan 18, 2019 06:12
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Dead Reckoning posted:
I don't have time to delve into this tome you posted but one of the researchers cited several times on the negative effects of immigration, Borjas, is extremely controversial. You can read one article here about some of the methodological problems with his work. He catches tons of flack for all kinds of issues. https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/6/23/15855342/immigrants-wages-trump-economics-mariel-boatlift-hispanic-cuban The statement that illegal or low skill immigration depresses the wages of unskilled native workers extremely controversial and poorly supported by empirical evidence, even if it is generally supported by theoretical models of supply and demand. Whether or not Americans would pick strawberries for $50 an hour is also an irrelevant question because no farmer could afford to buy labor at that price. Instead as immigrant labor has become more scarce in the last decade farmers have switched to less labor intensive crops instead, hope you like spinach as much as strawberries because that's much easier to automate. Alternatively, produce production has increasingly been outsourced to Mexico. The least disruptive solution would to increase the quantity and availability of foreign work permits for seasonal labor, for some reason though that has been impossible.
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Jan 18, 2019 07:51
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https://mobile.twitter.com/NathanJRobinson/status/1104454284542906368
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Mar 10, 2019 17:24
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It's sounds like that's Moran's point? He's saying that being tough on immigration didn't get the Dem's anything so they should have had open borders instead.
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Mar 10, 2019 19:33
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LLSix posted:It's sounds like that's Moran's point? He's saying that being tough on immigration didn't get the Dem's anything so they should have had open borders instead. "There may as well have been" doesn't mean that, it means that Rs behaved as though the borders were open when they very much weren't.
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Mar 10, 2019 23:48
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Yeah, this isn't him saying that he now supports open borders. This is him complaining that they didn't get enough credit for ruining people's lives. It is a pretty good indication of the rot at the core of the Obama administration policy.
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Mar 11, 2019 08:00
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Hello thread, I haven't had the fortitude to post anything here because whenever I am forced to consider the state of immigration in the country I start crying blood and black out. But this week we got some interesting data released by USCIS about their denial and RFE (request for evidence) rates for work visa petitions. You may have heard, anecdotally, that USCIS has made a number of revisions to its practices and standards in the past couple years that are making it increasingly difficult for companies to obtain work visas for employees. Most notably, they have been applying a different standard to certain definitions that is generating a lot more RFEs and denials, and they removed the deference given to extensions - that is, that if you are already working on a visa, that they would not re-adjudicate your eligibility unless something changed. Now they'll potentially re-adjudicate even if you are just asking for an extension in the same role. Anyway, a lot of this has been general feelings and individual cases until now. Here's the summary of the data that has been released:   Summary for people who aren't looking at charts: In 2015, USCIS issued RFEs for 22% of H-1B filings; following the RFE, they ultimately approved 83% of cases. For those cases without an RFE, they approved 95%. So far for 2019, USCIS has issued RFEs for 48% of H-1B filings; following the RFE, the ultiamtely approved 60% of cases. For those without an RFE, they approved 79%. In 2015, USCIS issued RFEs for 34% of L-1 filings; following the RFE, they ultimately approved 54% of cases. For those cases without an RFE, they approved 84%. So far for 2019, USCIS has issued RFEs for 52% of L-1 filings; following the RFE, they ultimately approved 51%. For those cases without an RFE, they approved 73%. Note that these changes have occurred while there have not been any changes to the underlying immigration laws or regulations; the framework for filing is exactly the same now as it was on 2019. What has changed is only the instructions that USCIS officers receive as guidance and practice pointers, but it has resulted in a de facto revision of the requirements. In 2018 USCIS denied almost 120,000 H-1B petitions. The other thing to consider is that each of those petitions reflects, at the bare minimum, a professional worker that has a company prepared to offer them a position in the US, but over a quarter of them are denied at the current rate. Not all of this is falling on the worst of H-1B employers, the mills and contract workers that people hate. The H-1B and (lesser extent) L-1 is basically the entry point for professional workers to immigrate to the US, and it's the closest thing to what people imagine when they tell immigrants to 'get in line'.
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Jun 18, 2019 20:05
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Foreign Policy has an article on our practice of deporting people to Cambodia who weren't even born there.quote:Nak grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, where his family had been resettled as refugees when he was 6 months old. His parents had fled Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s. Nak, now 41, was born in a refugee camp in Thailand. While he was eligible after five years in the country, he never became a U.S. citizen: His family didn’t understand the process. Nak never gave the distinction much thought until he started having run-ins with the law. In 1999, after pleading guilty to selling marijuana to avoid prison time, Nak was given a deportation order. (U.S. immigration law states that noncitizens convicted of a wide range of crimes can be sent back to their native countries.) But Nak had no documents proving Cambodian citizenship, so he stayed in the United States for another 19 years.
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Aug 14, 2019 18:09
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Unfortunately not a unique situation; there was a recent article on a man who was born in Greece as a refugee and then came to the US - he lived almost his whole life in Detroit. Because Greece doesn't have birth citizenship, he was deemed an Iraqi national and deported there even though he had no family, didn't speak any of the languages, and was both mentally ill and diabetic. He died two months later. By odd coincidence, also 41.
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Aug 14, 2019 18:29
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https://twitter.com/LatinoUSA/status/1169986010748542978
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Sep 7, 2019 23:20
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Throw this on the pile of 'using any meas to gently caress legal immigration they can muster'. Remember that change in the public charge rule that was going to make it harder for people to get their green cards? Well, because that change goes into effect on October 15, 2019, USCIS has announced that it will not be accepting older editions of the I-485 (the form you complete to apply for a green card) because they don't cover this change properly. The problem? USCIS has not published a new version of the form yet. So we better hope that they go ahead and do that in the next two weeks, because otherwise people who are legally eligible for their green cards will be unable to file because there is no appropriate, approved form to use to do that. Historically, USCIS publishes new versions of forms months in advance and provides a sunset period where they'll continue to accept the old version for people who are in the process of preparing and filing. Announcing that they will discontinue accepting a form before it's replacement is published and available is basically unprecedented and insane. But of course, there isn't a law that says there has to be a valid form available, so I guess we get to litigate this as well. Meanwhile people will be denied their rightful benefits just from bureaucratic fuckery.
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Oct 1, 2019 15:21
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Ashcans posted:Historically, USCIS publishes new versions of forms months in advance and provides a sunset period where they'll continue to accept the old version for people who are in the process of preparing and filing. Announcing that they will discontinue accepting a form before it's replacement is published and available is basically unprecedented and insane. But of course, there isn't a law that says there has to be a valid form available, so I guess we get to litigate this as well. Got a link to an article which summarizes this?
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Oct 1, 2019 16:04
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Unfortunately most of the stuff I have about it is through AILA (American Immigration Lawyers Association) because as you can imagine we're freaking out about how to deal with this for clients - but AILA announcements and articles are paywalled for members. I'm going to see if I can find an article or similar discussing it to share here though. I guess I could copy over the AILA information if anyone wants that. This is an example of how form changes usually are handled - USCIS published a revised form 9/17/2018, but that old forms would be accepted until 11/19/2018. After that date (two months), they would actually continue to accept the previous edition in addition to the new form, just not any editions prior to that (ie, the 03/04/15 and 05/05/16 versions).
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Oct 1, 2019 16:18
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so like, what's stopping trumps admin from banning immigration the same way the atf made it so you couldnt register full auto weapons in 1986? like, make a certain requirement to do the thing, but make the ability to meet that requirement literally impossible
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Oct 2, 2019 11:13
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The Hughes Amendment was a legislative act, not executive action.
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Oct 2, 2019 12:19
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Ashcans posted:Throw this on the pile of 'using any meas to gently caress legal immigration they can muster'. The website claims that they'll accept older versions postmarked through October 14: https://www.uscis.gov/i-485
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Oct 2, 2019 13:52
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Kanine posted:so like, what's stopping trumps admin from banning immigration the same way the atf made it so you couldnt register full auto weapons in 1986? Gun laws are just generally accepted to be weird vague nonsense because they have always been that way historically.
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Oct 2, 2019 14:26
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eXXon posted:The website claims that they'll accept older versions postmarked through October 14: I realize this is kind of a weird little bureaucratic niche thing that isn't really dramatic or as dire, but it's pretty emblematic of how hostile the system is becoming to completely legal, sponsored immigration. Kanine posted:so like, what's stopping trumps admin from banning immigration the same way the atf made it so you couldnt register full auto weapons in 1986? USCIS and other agencies have a fair amount of latitude in how they interpret or implement actual laws, and they can decide to do that in a hostile manner if they want. Certain benefits are defined in statute so they can't be eliminated, but USCIS gets to determine how they are interpreted and implemented through regulations and guidelines. They also design the application process and set the fees, so if they want to, then can make the process more onerous and expensive to complete. The only really remedy is for someone to take their disagreement up in a lawsuit and hope that a court comes down on their side - but as you can imagine, many people applying for immigration benefits - even companies! - don't have the time or resources to do that. And while these are minor things in our current people-in-cages world, these are targeting the legal, 'get in line' immigration that people pretend to support.
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Oct 2, 2019 15:28
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Because I'm experiencing this with someone I know right now, til I learned that even if ICE grants a person an asylum case review, if that person can't pay the $10,000-20,000 bond that ice will just up and deport you rather than hold you in detention until the case has actually been reviewed It's straight up extortion and human trafficking
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Oct 2, 2019 15:50
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Also, just spent a day navigating the bond process and it's insane. They change policies every other week without telling anyone, communicate with noone, leave people waiting in line for hours without telling them anything, and then make up new rules on the spot to gently caress people over. Then they purposely dump people on the street without notifying their pickup people and don't notify the courts of the new addresses for the people so that they miss notifications of court dates. Cool cool cool And this is the side that just interfaces with the public. I did learn from lawyers with nonprofits in the waiting room that volunteers who can host immigrants for anywhere from a few days to a few months are always desperately needed so I guess I have a new hobby.
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Oct 3, 2019 02:15
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Update to my complaints above; USCIS has still not released updated versions of the forms, which they are still planning to stop accepting if mailed after Monday. Only real progress is that AILA has filed a suite over it, but we'll see where that goes. Current prediction among the lawyers I know is that USCIS will release the new forms on 10/15 so that there is technically no period where a valid form isn't available and makes the suite moot, but maximizes the disruption to filing and prep. Also I had been so focused on the green card aspect, I previously missed that this also applies to the I-129 (used to apply for work visas) and I-539 (all other extensions/changes of status). This means that until it is straightened out, people cannot do things like switch jobs or file to extend their status at all. Those things tend to have more leeway on timeline so it won't be dire unless the situation drags on after next week, but it's still completely ridiculous. Imagine if it was April 10 and the IRS said it wouldn't accept the current version of forms for tax filing, but also hadn't issued any new ones.
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Oct 10, 2019 14:37
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Ashcans posted:Update to my complaints above; USCIS has still not released updated versions of the forms, which they are still planning to stop accepting if mailed after Monday. Only real progress is that AILA has filed a suite over it, but we'll see where that goes. It's almost as if they're trying to get more people to give up/not be in compliance and thus be eligible for deportation. 
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Oct 10, 2019 14:59
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I mean that is definitely the intent, I could make a huge list of the changes they have made over the last two years to make it increasingly hard for people to use the legal system - they have basically been trying to figure every lever they can pull to make the process harder, more time consuming, and less appealing. This is remarkable for how blatant it is; it's not some sort of process change or rule alternation that is difficult to parse, it's straight up 'There is literally no way to apply for a benefit defined in law, get hosed' that anyone can understand. And I work with business-based immigration, which is far and above the most acceptable and best lobbied form - the ideal of what people are 'supposed' to do. It's even worse for everyone else, all the way to flat out abuse like El Mero Mero describes for people who are operating in the legal system without the benefit of company and lawyer backing.
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Oct 10, 2019 15:19
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And the new forms are actually out, so hooray for there not being an actual dead period!
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Oct 10, 2019 15:36
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Ashcans posted:And the new forms are actually out, so hooray for there not being an actual dead period! How much worse are they?
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Oct 10, 2019 20:01
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Absurd Alhazred posted:How much worse are they? Initial reactions are... not good. People are still going through it to make sure that we have the whole picture of what is required. The non-immigant stuff is an additional 2 pages of forms and is restricted to your current status (ie, if you are applying for an H-1B, they only care if you have previously used any public benefit while an H-1B in the last couple years). The biggest issue here is that all this information is about the beneficiary (worker) but the forms are signed by the petitioner (company). On the face of it that means you would have to disclose any use of public benefits you used to your employer and they have to review and attest to the information, which is incredibly awkward and invasive. But it's at least doable. The new requirements for the green card are.... really something. There is an entire additional form to be completed (I-944) which is 18 pages long, and in addition to completing that everyone has to file the following documents: - Household Income, including your most recent tax return and tax transcripts for members of your household. - If your income is not high enough (125% of federal poverty), Enumeration of household assets that may be converted to cash in less than 12 months, with documentation of value (ie, bank statements, for any physical assets it requires proof of ownership and an appraisal of value) - this will not apply to a lot of people in general because the bar is low - Enumeration of all liabilities and debts, including car loans, mortgages, and credit cards - Copy of your credit report from one of the 3 agencies and your credit score - Copy of your health insurance policy with terms and coverage, with a letter from the company or other evidence that you are enrolled and covered - Enumeration of any public benefits you may have received, with documentation including your name, benefit, date you were authorized for the benefit, and dates of receipt. - Copies of all your educational documents, degrees, transcripts from high school up, with evaluations if these are not US institutions - List of any occupational skills, including certifications and licenses, apprenticeships or other documents. - Proof of English or other language literacy(!) You must provide documentation of your skill in English or any other language, either through a literacy test or documentation that you have completed language courses for credit (ie, high school diploma and courses, college transcript showing language course for credit) These are going to be required for everyone applying for permanent residence, regardless of the basis. So if your spouse is being sponsored based on their job in the US, as a dependent you still have to furnish all this information even if no one has every claimed benefits and you make plenty of money. The justification for this is that USCIS wants to review the 'totality' of the situation to evaluate whether someone might, some day, require public benefits. At this point we have no idea what happens if you just say 'I make $100,000 in pharmaceuticals, gently caress off I'm not giving you all this bullshit'. Also hosed up - because some of these are 'household', you may have to include information for people in your household who aren't applying for any immigration benefit, or are US citizens. My biggest concern is that they have created a huge amount of additional paperwork that people are going to have to fill out and complete, a lot of which is really intense and complicated. This is already bad, but last year USCIS amended its policies so that officers are no longer required to issue a Request for Evidence or Notice of Intent to Deny before denying an application - it was previously the case that they were almost always required to send one of these notices for any deficit in an application, and give the applicant the opportunity to respond and furnish additional documentation. So if you screwed up, you would get a notice and a chance to correct it before a decision was reached. Now, not so. An officer has much greater discretion to simply deny an application, and the more they request and the more they require the greater chance someone is going to forget a tax transcript for their household member or something. There is a a lot going on here and we're still in the 'initial reaction' phase, but one of the partners emerged and said 'I don't know how we're actually going to file these applications any more'. It's just so much documentation to gather and coordinate, especially for families or more complicated households.
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Oct 10, 2019 21:27
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