USA Green Card Immigration Blog

Latino Immigration to the U.S. Could End This Year – Shannon K. O’Neil – International – The Atlantic.

Looking ahead to the new year ahead of us, these next two weeks I want to look at important developments affecting Latin America that are worth keeping a close eye on in 2012. The first is the changing nature of immigration.

The flow of immigrants from Latin America to the United States, a constant and often accelerating trend of the last three decades, slowed in 2011. The most prominent was the change from Mexico. New arrivals fell off a cliff, with apprehensions at the border hitting their lowest levels in seventeen years. The drop is so great that Doug Massey, head of the Mexican Migration Project (a long term survey of Mexican emigration at Princeton University), claims that for the first time in sixty years, Mexican migration to the United States has hit a net zero.

Though Mexico is the single largest source of migrants to the United States, providing roughly a third of all newcomers, they weren’t the only change. Anecdotal evidence at least suggests that many Brazilian migrants – which once numbered around one million – started heading home as well. Unemployment fell to all time lows, and numerous articles pointed out the labor scarcities both for high and low skilled workers.

There are many reasons behind these trends, some general, some country specific. Many point to the Obama administration’s rather tough immigration policy as one reason for the decline. A record-breaking 400,000 immigrants were deported last year, and immigration prosecutions increased almost eighty percent along the U.S-Mexico border in the last four years. For Mexico, others speculate that the rise of organized crime and violence along the border may deter some from contemplating the journey (though studies, such as that done by Jezmin Fuentes et al., suggest this may be less of a deterrent than many claim).

An important factor is the weak U.S. economy. With unemployment rates hovering at just over eight percent, there are fewer jobs for natives and migrants alike. This has occurred at a time when many of their home countries are growing steadily – at a decent 4 percent regional average clip, and much more in particular countries and economic strongholds. Better job opportunities in the region broadly — but particularly in Brazil — encouraged many to return home, and kept others from leaving at all.

Looking ahead, a U.S. economic recovery would recreate the pull north for Latin Americans seeking to improve their lot. If the Chinese economy stumbles this too could slow returns, or push more migrants north (especially from Brazil, which counts China as its largest trading partner). Meanwhile, flows from Central America are likely to continue as long as economic opportunities there remain scarce. The real question is Mexico. There, demographics have already shifted, with fewer Mexicans coming of age and entering the work force each year. As a result, the Mexican immigration boom of the 1990s and early 2000s is unlikely to be repeated ever again.

Week in review: Immigration 9/6-9/12 | Center for Investigative Reporting.

The Obama administration is changing the government’s strategy in enforcing immigration laws while repealing birthright citizenship would expand the population of illegal immigrants, who, depending on how you look at it, may or may not be a burden on taxpayers.

USA Today published a Pro Publica round-up report that enumerated how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has shifted policies in who the agency targets for deportation, which in turn has reduced the threat of deportation for millions of illegal immigrants.

Meanwhile, the number of removals this year lags slightly behind last year’s figures through 11 months, despite reports that the Obama administration is deporting more illegal immigrants than ever.

Whoever is in the Oval Office in 2050 would have considerably more unauthorized immigrants — at least 5 million — to deport if birthright citizenship is repealed, according to a report by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.

“The unauthorized population would rise to 24 million in 2050 under a scenario in which citizenship would be denied to U.S.-born children with one unauthorized immigrant parent, even if the other parent were a citizen,” the report states. Illegal immigration is currently at the lowest it’s been in decades.

But would that be a drag on taxpayers, or a benefit? Depends on how you look at it, Edward Schumacher-Matos, a Washington Post columnist, wrote in the Post:

The truth is that unauthorized immigrants are probably a net burden on taxpayers in the short term, but only if you consider education as a cost and not as an investment in the nation’s future, as it was seen a century ago.

So, how does Congress view illegal immigrants who aspire to attend college? We may find out before November, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid “intends to move the DREAM Act” before mid-term elections. The proposed legislation, which has been floating around Congress for the better part of a decade, would pave the way toward legal resident status — and possibly citizenship — for young illegal immigrants if they meet certain requirements.

For cities and towns who believe illegal immigrants are a drag on society — and aim to deter them from taking jobs or renting housing in their communities — passing laws with that in mind are not constitutional, a federal appeals court ruled.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which struck down ordinances adopted by the City of Hazelton, Pa. that also served as models for like-minded towns and states around the country, “is the broadest statement by a court to date on the vexing question of how much authority states and towns have to act on immigration matters that are normally the purview of the federal government,” The New York Times reported.

Despite a down economy and deterrents such as the Hazelton ordinances and other enforcement efforts, the push/pull of illegal immigration persists. Immigration agents in Riverside found 37 smuggled aliens from six countries jammed inside a tiny bedroom where some claim they had been held for weeks, according to an ICE press release. Six job recruiters were indicted for forcing 400 laborers from Thailand to work after luring them to the United States in what the FBI called the largest human-trafficking case in U.S. history, The Associated Press reported.

It’s not just allegedly greedy businesses that are breaking the law. The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post both had stories about misconduct and corruption among Border Patrol agents and customs inspectors.

The Border Patrol is “grappling with a spate of misconduct cases in its ranks, which have expanded from 4,000 agents in the early 1990s to 21,000 today,” the Times reported while the number of Customs and Border Protection “corruption investigations opened by the inspector general climbed from 245 in 2006 to more than 770 this year,” according to the Post.

Corruption cases at its sister agency, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, rose from 66 to more than 220 over the same period. The vast majority of corruption cases involve illegal trafficking of drugs, guns, weapons and cash across the Southwest border.

But, as the Whittier Daily News reported, some agents are allegedly stealing from the government — and taxpayers — too.

Two former Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were arrested Friday on charges stemming from allegations they falsely claimed nearly $600,000 worth of work hours.

The Department of State is proposing to redress and enhance the present Exchange Visitor Program regulations by arranging more specificity and clarity to the sponsors of the visiting students of the Secondary School Student category. This decision is in respect to the implementation of the responsibilities of the sponsor under exchange visitor programs.

The Exchange Visitor Program is for promoting mutual discernment between the people of the United States of America and the people of other countries. This is carried out by implementing cultural and educational exchanges under the U.S. law. The Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) help the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the U.S. Department of State to school and exchange programs and also the visitors.

The existing regulations about the screening, selection, school enrolment, orientation, and monitoring overall caliber assurance of student participants in the immigration policy are to be upgraded by the U.S. Department of State. It has also decided to rework on quality assurance monitoring.

This is in effect to the placement of students with undesirable or poorly selected host families, affecting the safety, and well being of the student exchange visitors. According to the Department of State, the inefficient screening of the host families is due to the dearth of fair specificity in the decree or lack of minimum industry standards.

The Department also concedes that the coordinators, who act as agents for the visiting students, are important for a fruitful exchange program. These local coordinators practice unconstrained judgment related the host families’ capabilities. Their main concern is to determine the key factors, such as the family’s potential to provide appropriate and developing home conditions for a student and whether the family is an applicable match for the student. The financial condition of the host family will also be taken into consideration.

With these specifications, the U.S. Department of State will also conduct a testing and certification programme annually for all local as well as regional coordinators. Among other things, this programme will necessitate enumerating the Department’s regulatory conditions and also the sponsoring the organization.

President Barrack Obama had initiated an immigration policy to legalize an estimated 12 million of USA’s illegal immigrants earlier this year. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS,) the federal agency that supervises immigration issues and grants visas, is getting ready to deal with the enormous increase in applications once this immigration policy becomes a law.

Even though the official estimate of the number of illegal immigrants who will apply for legal documents is not available, two research groups based in Washington, namely the Pew Hispanic Center and the Center for Immigration Studies, estimate that a minimum of 10.8 million illegal immigrants live in the country.

Alejandro Mayorkas, who took over as the director of USCIS in August this year, says that USCIS is equipped to process only around 6 million USA immigration applications a year. But, once President Obama’s immigration policy is passed, it may have to process that many USA immigration applications in just a few weeks. The processing of applications also involves tedious steps, such as collection of fingerprints and other biometric identity information.

USCIS is gearing up to cope up with the tremendous increase in the visa applications under Obama’s comprehensive immigration reform plan. Several measures are being implemented by the agency director Alejandro Mayorkas to process the applications faster. For instance, the agency is planning to use lockboxes to receive applications instead of local offices.

Allowing illegal immigrants to use a simple mail-in registration to set the legalization process in motion is another step that is to be taken.

The agency is also exploring ways to reduce backlogs and delays to ensure a better performance. Further, Mr. Mayorkas, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and other officials have also been holding meetings across the United States to garner ideas from the public on how to deal with the situation.

U.S. Temporarily Suspends Policy of Deporting Widows of Citizens – WSJ.com.

The Department of Homeland Security has stopped deporting widows and widowers of US citizens, “a sign of the Obama administration’s interest in new approaches to immigration.”

This will temporarily halt the policy of deporting some immigrants whose American spouses had died and left their legal status in limbo.