Supreme Court Wrestles with Biden’s Deportation Policy
The Supreme Court on Tuesday wrestled with a politically tinged dispute over a Biden administration policy that would prioritize deportation of people in the country illegally who pose the greatest public safety risk. It was not clear after arguments that stretched past two hours and turned highly contentious at times whether the justices would allow the policy to take effect, or side with Republican-led states that have so far succeeded in blocking it. At the center of the case is a September 2021 directive from the Department of Homeland Security that paused deportations unless individuals had committed acts of terrorism, espionage or “egregious threats to public safety.” The guidance, issued after Joe Biden became president, updated a Trump-era policy that removed people in the country illegally regardless of criminal history or community ties. On Tuesday, the administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer told the justices that federal law does “not create an unyielding mandate to apprehend and remove” every one of the more than 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said it would be “incredibly destabilizing on the ground” for the high court to require that. Congress has not given DHS enough money to vastly …
US Supreme Court to Hear Immigration Policy Case
The U.S. Supreme Court wades into the immigration debate on Tuesday as it examines the Biden administration’s expulsion policies for undocumented migrants. The Homeland Security Department, in a September 2021 memo, instructed US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to concentrate expulsion efforts on persons who “pose a threat to national security, public safety, and border security.” “It is estimated that there are more than 11 million undocumented or otherwise removable noncitizens in the United States,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in the memo. “We do not have the resources to apprehend and seek the removal of every one of these noncitizens,” Mayorkas said. “Therefore, we need to exercise our discretion and determine whom to prioritize for immigration enforcement action.” The policy represented a shift from that of the administration of former Republican president Donald Trump which called for the expulsion of “all removable aliens.” The Biden policy was immediately challenged by several Republican-led states as being too narrow and was blocked by a court in Texas. The states argued that it imposes a heavy cost burden on the taxpayers because of the public services that would be needed to be provided to noncitizens. The Biden administration challenged the Texas …
VOA Immigration Weekly Recap, Nov. 20–26
Editor’s note: Here is a look at immigration-related news around the U.S. this week. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com. In Pennsylvania, Afghan Refugees Celebrate First Thanksgiving Judith Samkoff needed a bigger dinner table for Thanksgiving this year. The 65-year-old Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, resident helped resettle an Afghan refugee family of eight, and because this is their first holiday in the United States, Samkoff invited them to her father and sister’s home for Thanksgiving. One of Samkoff’s guests is Hadia, a 24-year-old Afghan refugee whose family fled Afghanistan in November 2021. VOA’s immigration reporter Aline Barros has more. New Refugees Celebrate First Thanksgiving in US Refugees from around the world who resettled in the Washington area got together to celebrate their first Thanksgiving in the United States. VOA’s Shahnaz Nafees has the story. ‘Kite Runner’ Actor a Two-Time Refugee The Afghan actor Ali Danish Bakhtyari, who played the role of an orphan in the 2007 film The Kite Runner, has fled the Taliban rule in his home country twice: first in the late 1990s, and then in 2021, when the United States withdrew its forces from Afghanistan. Keith Kocinski has the story from New York. Immigration around the …
The Somali Diaspora and its Journey to Political Victories in the West
From refugees to elected office, 14 Somali Americans have won legislative seats across the U.S. this year. Some also have been elected to city councils, school boards and the boards of parks and recreation in their respective cities. The U.S. midterm elections have proved to be historic for Somalis, with more women elected to public offices than ever before. VOA Somali Service’s Torch Program explains how Somalis who arrived as migrants and refugees to the West have made their way into politics. Hashi Shafi, executive director of the Somali Action Alliance, a Minneapolis-based community organization in the northern U.S. state of Minnesota, says the campaign that led Somalis to shine in U.S. politics started right after 9/11 with a community-based voter registration program. “In the beginning, Somalis were thinking about returning back to Somalia. They had their luggage ready; the artists were singing with songs giving the community a hope of immediate returning, but after 9/11, the community activists realized that such a dream was not realistic, and the Somalis needed to find a way to melt into the pot. Then, we started registering community members to encourage them to vote,” Shafi said. “Somali Americans’ rise in political power has …
In Pennsylvania, Afghan Refugees Celebrate First Thanksgiving
Judith Samkoff needed a bigger dinner table for Thanksgiving this year. The 65-year-old Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, resident helped resettle an Afghan refugee family of eight, and because this is their first holiday in the United States, Samkoff invited them to her father and sister’s home for Thanksgiving. “Because they have a larger dining room table and more dining chairs than I have,” she said, adding, “Our meal is not completely traditional in that we’re vegetarians.” In different homes around the U.S., Jewish volunteers who helped resettle Afghans are welcoming them for their first Thanksgiving dinner on U.S. soil. One of Samkoff’s guests is Hadia, a 24-year-old Afghan refugee whose family fled Afghanistan in November 2021. “We got a call and they said we had to go to the airport right away,” Hadia said of her family’s escape from Kabul. Because of security and safety concerns, VOA is sharing only her first name. In Afghanistan, Hadia had a bachelor’s degree in public administration from Balkh Province. She also volunteered to help displaced people from other countries. When Kabul fell to the Taliban, her family had to quickly make plans. The U.S. completed its withdrawal in August 2021 and helped evacuate more than …
New Refugees Celebrate First Thanksgiving in US
Refugees from around the world who resettled in the Washington area got together to celebrate their first Thanksgiving in the United States. VOA’s Shahnaz Nafees has the story. …
VOA Immigration Weekly Recap, Nov. 6–19
Editor’s note: Here is a look at immigration-related news around the U.S. this week. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com. Nonimmigrant Visa Backlog Is Shrinking, State Department Official Says The Biden administration has reduced wait times worldwide for nonimmigrant visa interviews, an official said Thursday. But the progress is disputed by an immigration policy analyst who follows the issue closely. VOA’s immigration correspondent Aline Barros reports from Washington. Judge Delays End of Asylum Restrictions to Late December A federal judge on Wednesday granted the Biden administration a five-week delay to end far-reaching asylum restrictions, writing in capital letters that he was doing so “WITH GREAT RELUCTANCE,” The Associated Press reports. International Students Returning to US Since Pandemic Decline International students are returning to the United States after a significant drop during the pandemic, according to the Open Doors 2022 Report on International Educational Exchange (IEE). VOA’s immigration correspondent Aline Barros reports from Washington. Cuba Agrees to Accept US Deportation Flights as Border Crossings Rise Cuba has agreed for the first time since the pandemic to accept U.S. deportation flights carrying Cubans caught at the U.S.-Mexico border, three U.S. officials told Reuters, giving U.S. authorities a new but …
Upcoming US Congress Likely to Keep its Share of Foreign-Born Lawmakers
The 117th U.S. Congress was considered the most racially and ethnically diverse ever, according to studies by the Pew Research Center. It showed that 18 congressional members were born outside the United States and became U.S. citizens through naturalization. The 118th Congress, which will be sworn in on January 2, 2023, will maintain its share of immigrants and yet remain below historical highs, according to Pew. Some congressional races have yet to be decided, but the 118th U.S. Congress is expected to have at least 16 members — 3% — who immigrated to the U.S. and later became U.S. citizens. In the 50th Congress from 1887 to 1889, 8% of members were born abroad. “While the number of foreign-born lawmakers in the current Congress is small, more members have at least one parent who was born in another country. Together, immigrants and the children of immigrants account for at least 14% of the new Congress, a slightly higher share than in the last Congress (13%),” according to a 2021 study from Pew, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington that provides analysis on demographic trends shaping the United States. The study also showed that the 117th Congress’ share of foreign-born lawmakers, …
Nonimmigrant Visa Backlog Is Shrinking, State Department Official Says
The Biden administration has reduced wait times worldwide for nonimmigrant visa interviews, an official said Thursday. During a briefing with reporters, Julie Stufft, deputy assistant secretary for visa services at the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, said that the agency had doubled its hiring of U.S. foreign service personnel who process visa applications, and that the processing was rebounding faster than projected. “Our embassies and consulates are again open for routine consular services, including visitor visa interviews,” Stufft said. “We’ve seen a tremendous drop in wait times today. We have a median global wait time of seven weeks for visitor visa interviews and only seven days for students and temporary workers. That’s down significantly from just a few months ago.” Nonimmigrant visas are issued to foreign nationals seeking to enter the United States temporarily for business, medical treatment, tourism or temporary work. Stufft told reporters that local pandemic-era restrictions had curbed the agency’s ability to see visa applicants, because in most cases, the applicant is required by U.S. law to appear in person. The applications that built up over the past two years have combined with regular seasonal demand, resulting in extended wait times for U.S. visa interview appointments, …
Judge Delays End of Asylum Restrictions to Late December
A federal judge on Wednesday granted the Biden administration a five-week delay to end far-reaching asylum restrictions, writing in upper-case letters that he was doing so “WITH GREAT RELUCTANCE.” U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan acknowledged in his brief order that attorneys for asylum-seeking families didn’t object to the delay and that the administration wasn’t challenging his decision, just asking for time to prepare. The Trump-era policy denying migrants rights under U.S. and international law to request asylum on public-health grounds of preventing spread of COVID-19 is now set to end December 21. Sullivan ruled in Washington on Tuesday that enforcement must end immediately for families and single adults, calling the ban “arbitrary and capricious.” The administration has not applied it to children traveling alone. Within hours, the Justice Department asked the judge to let the order take effect December 21, giving it five weeks to prepare. Plaintiffs including the American Civil Liberties Union didn’t oppose the delay. “This transition period is critical to ensuring that [the Department of Homeland Security] can continue to carry out its mission to secure the Nation’s borders and to conduct its border operations in an orderly fashion,” government attorneys wrote. Sullivan, who was appointed by …
Judge Orders Halt to Trump-era Asylum Restrictions at Border
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Biden administration to lift Trump-era asylum restrictions that have been a cornerstone of border enforcement since the beginning of COVID-19. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled in Washington that enforcement must end immediately for families and single adults, saying it violates federal rule-making procedures. However, his ruling conflicts with another in May by a federal judge in Louisiana that asylum restrictions remain in place. If Sullivan’s ruling stands, it would upend border enforcement. Migrants have been expelled from the United States more than 2.4 million times since the regulation took effect in March 2020, denying migrants rights to seek asylum under U.S. and international law on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19. The regulation was authorized under Title 42 of a broader law covering public health. The rule has been unevenly enforced by nationality, falling mostly on migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — in addition to Mexicans — because Mexico allows them to stay within its borders. Last month, Mexico began accepting Venezuelans who are expelled from the United States under Title 42, causing a sharp drop in Venezuelans seeking asylum at the U.S. border. The lawsuit was filed by …
Foreign Students Returning to US Since Pandemic Decline
International students are returning to the United States after a significant drop during the pandemic, according to the Open Doors 2022 Report on International Educational Exchange (IEE). During a recent conversation with reporters, higher education officials said enrollment of international students increased almost 4% in the 2021-2022 academic year, from the year before, and almost 9% in the fall of 2022, from the year before. International student enrollment dropped 15% in the 2020-2021 school year. Almost 1 million students came to the U.S. in the 2021-2022 academic year from more than 200 countries. Most of the increase is attributed to graduate students who had deferred their enrollment until they were able to come to the U.S. to study in person. “Last year [2020-2021], you may remember that due to COVID-19, new enrollments dropped by 46 percent,” according to Mirka Martel, director of research at the Institute of International Education (IIE). “Many international students at that time decided to defer their enrollment or pause their academic plans. This year [2021-2022], we saw that new enrollments soared 80 percent year over year to over 261,000 students. This brings new international student totals back to pre-pandemic levels, and it is notable that new …
Iranian Exile Who Inspired ‘The Terminal’ Dies in French Airport
An Iranian who got stuck for 18 years in a Paris airport, inspiring a Steven Spielberg movie starring Tom Hanks, died on Saturday at the terminal, an airport official said. Mehran Karimi Nasseri died of natural causes just before midday on Saturday in terminal 2F at Charles de Gaulle airport outside the French capital, the official told AFP. Caught originally in an immigration trap — unable to enter France and with nowhere to go — he became dependent on his unusual place of living and increasingly a national and international cause celebre. He called himself “Sir Alfred,” and a small section of airport parquet and a plastic bench became his domain. Karimi Nasseri’s peculiar story came to the attention of Hollywood director Spielberg, inspiring 2004 film “The Terminal,” which starred Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Hanks played a man who becomes trapped at New York’s JFK airport when his home country collapses into revolution. After spending most of the money he received for the film, Karimi Nasseri returned to the airport a few weeks ago, the official said. Several thousand dollars were found on him. Born in Iran Born in 1945 in Masjed Soleiman, in the Iranian province of Khuzestan, …
Cuba Agrees to Accept US Deportation Flights as Border Crossings Rise
Cuba has agreed for the first time since the pandemic to accept U.S. deportation flights carrying Cubans caught at the U.S.-Mexico border, three U.S. officials told Reuters, giving U.S. authorities a new but limited tool to deter record numbers of Cuban border-crossers. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has about a dozen Cubans in custody who failed an initial screening for asylum at the border, the officials said, requesting anonymity to discuss the diplomatic situation. The U.S. agency is waiting until it has enough Cuban deportees to fill a plane before sending one to Havana, they said. A third source familiar with the matter said there was not a new formal agreement for regular deportation flights, but that Cuba had agreed to accept occasional groups of deportees. Regular deportations of Cubans were halted during the COVID-19 pandemic, though the United States continued to deport a small number of Cubans via commercial airlines, a separate U.S. official told Reuters. The U.S. State Department, the White House and ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment. About 1,500 Cubans were removed in fiscal year 2020, which began Oct. 1, 2019, the year regular deportation flights were paused, according to data from …
Report: US Border Agency Chief Being Forced Out
The head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection is being forced out of his job leading the nation’s largest law enforcement agency as agents encounter record numbers of migrants entering the U.S. from Mexico, according to two people familiar with the matter. Chris Magnus was told to resign or be fired less than a year after he was confirmed as the Biden administration’s choice to lead the agency, according to two people who were briefed on the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. He is refusing to step down. Magnus’s removal is part of a larger shake-up expected at the Department of Homeland Security as it struggles to manage migrants coming from a wider range of countries, including Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. This comes as Republicans are likely to take control of the House in January and are expected to launch investigations into the border situation. Migrants were stopped 2.38 million times at the Mexican border in the fiscal year that ended September 30, up 37% from the year before. The annual total surpassed 2 million for the first time in August and is more than twice the highest level during …
US Extends Protected Status to Mid-2024 for 6 Nationalities
The United States has notified El Salvador that the temporary protected status of its citizens and those of five other countries will be extended through June 30, 2024, Salvadoran Ambassador to the United States Milena Mayorga said Thursday. The other countries are Haiti, Nicaragua, Sudan, Honduras and Nepal, according to a document filed Thursday by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The action means their temporary protected status (TPS) will no longer expire on December 31, 2022, as previously scheduled. “Thanks be to God,” said Mayorga, who tweeted the document, adding work visas for recipients would be valid for another 18 months. According to the American Immigration Council, TPS is provided to nationals of certain countries experiencing problems that make it difficult or unsafe to deport them back to those countries. The Department of Homeland Security announced the extension, set to be published next week, “to ensure its continued compliance” with two ongoing court cases, the document said. President Joe Biden’s administration in October pulled out of settlement talks that could have provided further protections to the TPS enrollees from these countries, according to plaintiffs in the case. …
Meta Layoffs Deepen Silicon Valley’s Jobs Losses
The widespread retrenchment in the U.S. technology industry has thrown thousands of workers in Silicon Valley out of work, a trend greatly amplified on Wednesday by Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, which announced it would eliminate 13% of its workforce, amounting to more than 11,000 jobs. The announcement followed on the heels of major layoffs at other tech firms, most recently Twitter, which is restructuring in the aftermath of its takeover by Tesla founder Elon Musk, and also business software firm Salesforce and social media giant Snap, Inc. Other major tech firms, including Apple, Amazon and Alphabet, the parent company of Google, have said that they will slow or curtail new hiring. Announcing the job cuts, Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted he had made an error in judgment by assuming the sharp growth in online commerce that coincided with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic signaled a permanent change in consumer habits. “I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here,” Zuckerberg said in a statement released Wednesday. “I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.” Market reacts The move by Meta to cut …
Afghan Americans Voting With Eye Toward Afghan Refugee Issues
Some Afghan Americans who live in northern Virginia are determined to vote in the midterm elections, saying that U.S. foreign policy toward Afghanistan and immigration are most important to them. Matiullah Abid Noor and Shahnaz Nafees have the story. Roshan Noorzai contributed to this report. …
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