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Nine boats packed with hundreds of migrants arrived on the southern Italian island of Lampedusa on Sunday, and officials said more people were expected as the weather improved.

Around 1,200 people got off the vessels at Lampedusa, one of the main landing points for people trying to get across the Mediterranean into Europe, ANSA news agency said.

"Migrants arrivals are resuming alongside good weather," Lampedusa's mayor Toto Martello told state broadcaster RAI. "We need to restart discussions about the immigration issue."

Around 11,000 migrants disembarked on Italy's coasts from the start of 2021 to May 7, compared with 4,105 in the same period the year before, interior ministry data shows.

Overall numbers are still down from 2015, when hundreds of thousands of migrants made the perilous sea crossing to Europe, many of them fleeing poverty and conflict across Africa and the Middle East.

But the issue still sharply divides European governments and has fuelled anti-immigration sentiment and parties across the continent.

Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy's far-right League party, called on Prime Minister Mario Draghi to tackle the issue.

"With millions of Italians facing difficulties, we cannot care for thousands of illegal migrants," he wrote on Twitter.

Some of the boats were intercepted off the coast of the Mediterranean island by the Italian tax police, who deal with financial crime and smuggling, ANSA said.

About 400 migrants of various nationalities got off one of the boats, a drifting fishing vessel, the agency reported.

Another boat carrying 325 people was intercepted eight miles off Lampedusa, the agency added.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Boats carrying hundred of migrants arrive in Italy's Lampedusa - Reuters

For a "nation of immigrants," Americans have remarkably mixed feelings about immigration feelings which are surely a contributing factor to our multi-decade treadmill slog toward immigration reform.

Consider these new poll results from Pew Research Center:

Every single question sees a majority agreeing that the proposal at hand is either "very" or "somewhat" important for the United States. Dive into the demographic breakdowns and you'll find partisan trends, but often less dramatic than the past five years of immigration debate might suggest. In fact, on a two-year trendline, Republicans and Democrats are generally moving in the same direction, albeit from different starting points.

So what has Americans thus united? Beefing up border security and keeping out asylum seekers yet treating asylum seekers humanely if they somehow manage to break through our diverse defenses. The same survey also found seven in 10 Americans (including half of Republicans) want a path to legal status for immigrants in the country illegally, and another recent poll from The Associated Press found three quarters of Americans want to allow refugees to come to the United States to escape violence.

It all seems so contradictory. Together, these surveys suggest the median U.S. opinion is that an undocumented immigrant inside the country should be allowed to stay, but an asylum seeker at the border should be turned away by a robust security apparatus, but a refugee trying to come from farther away should be welcomed in.

Some of this is different people wanting different things. Yet with majority opinions well above 50 percent on so many of these questions, there must be overlap, and overlap doesn't make much sense. Why beef up security only to accept those who evade it? (Particularly when border security has already massively expanded in both cost and manpower, by both Democrats and Republicans over the past three decades.) And why the favor for refuge and disfavor for asylum? The main difference between them is location. (As the Department of Homeland Security explains: "An asylee is a person who meets the definition of refugee and is already present in the United States or is seeking admission at a port of entry.") Moreover, regardless of individuals' views, how are lawmakers supposed to turn this jumble into reasonably coherent and representative governance?

I suspect the confusion around location is partly just how humans work: It's easier for us to identify with and meaningfully care about people physically closer to us. We can shrug at a major catastrophe half the world away and sob over a much smaller tragedy in our own town. Likewise, an undocumented immigrant is here illegally, but she is here. "Americans have empathy for those who live among us and who are good people as most illegal immigrants are," Alex Nowrasteh, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, told me in an interview by email. "But those feelings do not extend to people on the other side of the border."

That latter group includes asylum seekers, Nowrasteh said, because many Americans don't believe the "migrants showing up on the southwest border are bona fide asylum seekers" and that belief is often correct. "Some of them may be asylum seekers according to a broad reading of U.S. law," he explained, "but the vast majority of them clearly aren't." They're better described as economic migrants trying to do the whole only in America, land of opportunity thing, which is quite difficult to accomplish under current law. Asylum is one of very few legal immigration paths for unskilled workers without close family in the United States. That's why so many people who don't strictly need asylum try to get it.

This dynamic might sound like a great reason to make our immigration process much simpler and open to more people. That's certainly how it strikes me. The trouble is many "Americans have no idea how the immigration system works and how restrictive it is," Nowrasteh told me. They also "hate chaos and want to stop it by using the government," he continued, sharing research which suggests "the perception of greater chaos and less control over immigration leads to opposition to immigration, even the legal variety, and greater political support for harsh repressive methods."

The recent surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border including tens of thousands in line to seek asylum looks like chaos on American news segments. That has many Americans (even many who are typically pro-immigration) demanding more security and restrictions at the border. What they don't realize is the extensive security and byzantine restrictions already in place are a key source of the very chaos they want to stop.

Giving economic migrants a quick, doable option to immigrate "the right way" would remove the incentive for them to do it "the wrong way," including illicit border crossings and the unmerited asylum claims Americans are so eager to reduce. For our immigration policy and feelings alike, we need to simplify.

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Americans are incoherent on immigration - The Week

French politicians have been debating whether there is a link between terrorism and immigration, after a policewoman was killed by a Tunisian man in Paris on April 23. InfoMigrants reviews the current laws on immigration and legalizing undocumented foreigners in France.

The April 23 killing of a French policewoman by a 36-year-old Tunisian man in Rambouillet, near Paris, reopened a contentious debate about the legalisation of undocumented foreigners in France. After several simplistic, inaccurate or false statements were made by politicians in the news and social media, InfoMigrants takes stock of the immigration laws concerning the legalization of foreigners in France.

1. "We must stop legalising illegal immigrants. When a person enters our country violating French law, and stays on with an illegal status, we must end the possibility of legalising him under the law."

-- Marine Le Pen, head of the right-wing National Rally party (formerly the National Front) on BFM-TV, April 23, 2021.

Marine Le Pen talked about revoking the possibility under the law of regularising a foreigner who has entered French soil illegally. This is legally complicated, if not impossible.

First, this proposal contravenes the principle of the right to asylum, governed by the Geneva Convention, to which France is a signatory. An individual has the right to request international protection without any prerequisite. There is no need to have an "authorisation" to enter French soil.

The law does not require an asylum seeker to have valid papers when submitting his or her claim for asylum, which is decided by Ofpra (French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons).

The protection of a foreigner threatened in his or her country is enshrined in the French Constitution. It is not a priori possible to question the access to asylum.

Secondly, it is estimated that there are about 350,000 undocumented foreigners in France, according to the Washington DC-based Pew Research Center. Some of them work and participate in the French economy, but they do not meet the criteria for legalisation by the administration. Others are parents of children born in France. Still others have entered legally (as students, for example) but have not renewed their residence permit and are now in an illegal status.

The cases are varied and covered under specific regulations. "Stop legalising illegal immigrants" implies that the cases of all undocumented migrants are identical. This is not true.

2. "We must come to our senses: [we must] deport illegal immigrants."

-- Marine Le Pen on BFM-TV, April 23, 2021

This is already the case. France is deporting people who have no legal status. In 2020, France sent back a total of more than 9,000 people. That's half as many as in 2019 when 19,000 people were sent back. According to the Interior Ministry, this decline can be partly attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic and numerous border closures.

The deportation trend has been steadily rising in recent years. In 2016, 12,900 people were sent back to their countries of origin compared with 14,200 in 2017, 15,600 in 2018 and 19,000 in 2019.

Second, the expulsion of an undocumented migrant is subject to rules. It is not automatic. For example, a foreigner without a passport or without nationality cannot be expelled. In order to send him/her back, s/he must have the agreement of his/her country of origin and request a consular pass. However, these documents are issued piecemeal by the countries concerned. A deportation can therefore take a long time.

Last November, the French government chastised countries that refuse to take back their nationals, especially those imprisoned for radicalisation. French President Emmanuel Macron is particularly targeting Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, countries that are reluctant to allow potential criminals to return home. According to the Interior Ministry, as of November 2020, France had 231 undocumented foreigners being monitored for "radicalisation" and has made their expulsion a priority.

3. "How could a man who remained illegal for 10 years on our territory be legalized?"

-- Marine Le Pen on BFM-TV, April 23, 2021

According to anti-terrorist prosecutors, the attacker in the Rambouillet stabbing case was born in Tunisia and arrived in France in 2009. In 2019, he received an exceptional employment authorisation and in December 2020, a residence card valid until December 2021. His illegal status therefore lasted 10 years.

Le Pen is offended that after several years as an undocumented resident, a foreigner can be granted a residence permit. These cases are not rare and they are regulated. A 2012 Interior Ministry circular set the terms for legalisation, such as duration of stay in France, family situation, children in school, sufficient resources, etc.

Manuel Valls, who was Interior Minister at that time, did not want to "legalize en masse" but to provide a roadmap to prefectures to help them grant residence permits in a consistent manner.

Generally, undocumented migrants must be able to prove a promise of employment or a work contract. They must also prove that they speak French and that they adhere to French values.

Many foreigners contacted by InfoMigrants are helped in these procedures by specialised lawyers or by groups defending undocumented migrants.

4/ We must "stop denying the link between terrorism and immigration."

Valrie Pcresse, head of the Soyons Libres party on Europe 1, April 25

"There is a link between immigration and terrorism. It is necessary from now on, from today, in a radical way, to stop all immigration"

Guillaume Peltier, deputy vice-president of the Les Rpublicains (LR) party on France 3, April 25

The link between immigration and terrorism regularly comes up in public debates on Frances security situation. To support their anti-immigrant statements, many politicians cite the latest attacks in France as an example.

The most recent was on October 29, 2020, when a 21-year-old Tunisian man who had just arrived in France murdered two women in the Basilica of Notre Dame in Nice, in southern France. The attacker is effectively an undocumented foreigner. He reached France by taking advantage of the "classic" migration route taken by thousands of migrants, via the Italian island of Lampedusa.

A few days earlier, Abdoullakh Anzorov, a Russian of Chechen origin, beheaded French school teacher Samuel Paty, Anzorov is not French either. He arrived in France at the age of six with his parents. All of them had residence permits.

However, since 2012, most of the other terrorists involved in the deadly attacks in France were French and born on French soil. The include Toulouse attacker Mohammed Merah, the Kouachi brothers (Cherif and Said) who conducted the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack, Amedy Coulibaly, who attacked a kosher supermarket in 2015) and Larossi Abballa, who killed a police officer and his partner in their home in Magnanville, near Paris, in 2016.

The November 13 2015 Paris attacks case is particular. Six of the 10 Islamic State (IS) group members who conducted the attacks were French, two were Iraqi, one was Belgian and the last one Belgian-Moroccan. None of them were "migrants" in the humanitarian sense of the word, but all of them (except the Abdeslam brothers) took advantage of the migration flows via Greece, to go back and forth to Syria.

The October 2019 attack at the Paris police headquarters was conducted by a Frenchman, Mickal Harpon, who murdered four police officers. The man was originally from the French overseas territory of Martinique.

Cherif Chekatt, the alleged perpetrator of the attack on December 12, 2018 in downtown Strasbourg is also French.

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Myths and realities about undocumented foreigners in France - InfoMigrants

JASON: There is something, though, that is out this week that must be addressed. And Rush did a great job of it a few years ago. And I want to replay that because the rationale for open borders by so many on the left and on the Chamber of Commerce right is, Oh, gosh, we dont have workers, so weve gotta basically take in everybody else. And there is a grain of truth in everything, but in this particular case you can extrapolate that to the birthrate.

We now have the lowest birthrate, the lowest birthrate since 1979. It fell 4% last year to about 3.5 million babies, six straight annual declines. Its actually quite shocking if you think about it. They declined 4%. Thats about double the average rate of decline in the last few years. People the DINKs (Double Income No Kids) are not having kids. Theyre not understanding what family is.

As were talking about the economy, you gotta understand something. The economy is made up of two fundamental things that spur economic growth and only these two things: people and productivity. Output per worker is dependent upon capital formation and productivity, one and, two the number of workers. So when, you know, Joe Biden would call it a giveaway to small business if you have depreciation, straight line depreciation.

Some of the digits, however you depreciate your business equipment, Why, thats a giveaway to business. No. The businessman or woman buys the truck for the truck driver, and the truck driver is a lot more productive with the truck than without it. Thats capital formation. Thats productivity increase. You must have capital. But you also must have the truck driver, people. And when were not having babies, theres gonna be an economic effect.

But more important than that, theres gonna be a cultural effect. We are losing the concept of assimilation and what it means to be a citizen of a Western society. Call it The Death of the West, as one pundit did years ago. But its happening. And the left doesnt care because theyre citizens of the world. Theyre elitists who sit atop.

It doesnt matter what the peasants are doing. Theyre guarded off. But the rest of us want a cohesive nation built on our values, values of the enlightenment, the Age of Reason, the Roman Senate, everything that has to do with the West, Western Civilization. Its very, very dangerous to keep that going with a falling birthrate in America. Heres what Rush had to say about it. Hit audio number 9.

RUSH: Have you followed what is going on in Germany? It is an absolute disaster. Angela Merkel opens the borders and brags about the fact that she wants 800,000 illegal and immigrant refugees per year, because the German birth rate is below population replacement levels. So you have got a labor force problem. And its totally out of control. Its not being reported on in this country because it would not be helpful to the pro-immigration, open-borders crowd in this country. But its the same premise.

What people dont understand, the reason why you have a tough time convincing people, when you run out and tell people that are not particularly politically oriented, who dont pay attention to politics every day and who have been sucked in by the premise, Hey, were a great country. There are people around the world suffering, if they want to come here to better their lives, why shouldnt we let them? Thats a very seductive argument. Its used on unsuspecting people who are unaware of the real motivation behind people who want mass immigration and open borders.

So here theyve got it in their minds that its the compassionate thing to do. Its what powerful people with plenty and abundance do. We share it. Why in the world would we want to not treat these people nicely and so forth? But what youre faced with then is, youve got to tell them why the pro-immigration, open-borders forces are really doing it. Then you get into politics. And if the low-information crowd that thinks this is just a wonderful humanitarian thing to do, if they dont have a political-understanding foundation, you are running an obstacle course trying to change their minds about it. And thats where we find ourselves in this country, because the real reason and lets take the Democrat Party first.

The real reason that left-wing Democrats, which is about all there are anymore, are so in favor of open borders is this. The Democrat Party politically, for its enduring power and thus survival, needs a permanent underclass of people dependent on government. And the fastest way to get them is to bring them here from poor nations when theyre young, when theyre uneducated and unskilled and cant work and thus they arrive totally dependent.

And if this happens with a Democrat in the White House, they are going to grow very accustomed to the government of the United States taking care of them. As they learn who the government is, i.e., its Obama and Democrats, they become Democrat voters. And thats the reason they support it. Its not compassion. Its actually the opposite of compassion. They want poor and uneducated, low-skill people to come into the country and stay that way. Thats the trick. They want them to stay ill-educated. They want them to stay lower middle class to poor.

They dont want them earning a lot of money. They dont ever want them becoming independent. Its hideous. Its the exact opposite of compassion, why the Democrat Party is in favor of open borders. And the more of those circumstances that exist, the better. The less English they speak, the better. The more dependent on government they are, the better. Because the Democrats then look at them as really just a giant, unregistered voting block waiting to be registered.

And you can easily poison those peoples minds against Republicans. All you have to do is say they dont want you here. They dont want you to have welfare checks. They dont want you to have healthcare. So you cement them as Democrats for the rest of their lives. Gee, Mr. Limbaugh, that sounds awful cynical. It may sound cynical but it is the reason. That is why its not compassion.

Its not charity. Well, it is that. But its not a desire to share Americas wealth with the poor and the impoverished of the world, because when they get here, the objective of the Democrat Party is to keep them poor and to keep them ill-educated. Thats the objective. The Republicans want them here because their donors do. Those people equal cheap labor. And the people who get hurt in all this are people who become educated and develop skills, who then have an ability to command a certain wage but theyll never get it because the immigrants over here will get the jobs because they dont have to be paid as much.

Its hideous. And we find ourselves opposing it and when we do we are castigated as heartless and cold and unfeeling, when in truth were standing up for the humanity of everyone, the American citizens who are here. And we are trying to do our best in seeing to it that these newly arrived immigrants, if theyre left to be Democrats, theyre always going to be poor. Theyre never going to be fully educated, by design. It cant be compassion why the Democrats want them here. And the whole I dont know if we call them the program or what. But the numbers of people crossing the border are not subsiding. I mean, theyre continuing to come across in droves even during the campaign while nobodys looking as focused as they have been.

JASON: I will tell you as promised, coming up next segment we will take a call on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

JASON: Illinois, Effingham. Theres Chuck. Thanks for your patience, sir. Youre on the Rush Limbaugh program.

CALLER: Thank you for taking my call. Mega dittos to all the listeners. We all loved Rush because he was accurate, and he made things easy to understand, and he certainly educated me. I can tell you that. I also want to say, the day that he told us, his listening audience, that he had cancer was like one of my immediate families had just told me that they had it.

JASON: Right.

CALLER: It was like it was coming from them. I was totally deflated.

JASON: He was inspirational in the way he handled his challenges. That is for certain.

CALLER: Yes. Well, Rush was Hed say, Folks, Ill tell you when its time to panic, and he also said that he got out before he could tell us that its time to panic, because its definitely time to panic. He also told us that if we lost this election, that the face of America is gonna change, and it would be unrecognizable. My question to you is, Now what the hell do we do?

JASON: Well, you know, it has been part of the psychological makeup of conservatives that they just want to be left alone. And when you want to be left alone, you want to, you know, create wealth and hire people and realize the American dream, but you dont want to I dont want to say its avoiding conflict. We just dont have time for arguing with people who are irredeemable, i.e., these left-wing Twitter trolls.

And yet weve arrived at the point where we can no longer turn the cheek, that weve gotta fight fire with fire. Theres a difference between self-defense and aggression, and were in the self-defense mode. And what I mean by that is, we have to start pushing back. We have to start going after these corporations and returning a few boycotts. We ought to quit carrying the water for corporate America when they turn around and support Democrats.

You look at my Senate race last year here in Minnesota. Every major corporation thats included in the Minnesota Business Partnership supported a socialist for the U.S. Senate, Tina Smith; not me, a free market capitalist. Why would I want to carry the water for those bums? And we have to start looking at things that way.

We have to start looking at these real Karens who get in your face when your mask is down around your chin because you can no longer breathe. We have to look We have to start telling people who are engaged in child abuse by mandating masks for 5-year-olds who dont need it, cant breathe, and have asthma that they are the lack of altruism, the lack of compassion.

They are tyrants. Its just very, very tough for the right to do that. Its not in our DNA, and its certainly not in the DNA of Big Government conservatives coming out of the Bush-Cheney years, and so they go along to get along. You know, its funny you should say this. So as the Democrat veers not port side, not to more liberalism, but to a collectivist, fascistic, tyrannical viewpoint of America and the world I would say, you know, communist.

We used to say that in the Cold War, Aw, youre a communist, but these people love big corporations as long as they do their bidding. They love that kind of private property. So maybe its more the corporatism of modern fascism. But as they go further left that way, what the old Republican Party did was follow the left. Oh, we dont have to go that far left. We can just go this far left and still get votes.

That is the antithesis of what youre talking about. What needs to be done is we need to I dont want to use the term purge, but, by the same token, weve gotta offer a choice not an echo. If you want to beat up on Donald Trump, join the Democrat Party because they got plenty of people there that would be willing to do it. Well, we dont need you in a Republican Party thats trying to unify for the midterms.

Republican Party has to have a, quote-unquote, litmus test of its own. The Democrat litmus test is command-and-control corporatism. Ours ought to be the workingman and woman, the middle class, the American lifestyle, the republic. And if you dont get those people speaking in unity within Republican Party, youre not gonna have a force, an opposing force that can be victorious. If that makes any sense to you.

CALLER: Yes, sir.

JASON: Well, I appreciate the call. You know, Rush had something on this Census count that I missed the other segment and I wanted to get to. Mike, do we have time to play that now? Its gonna be close, right? Lets go ahead and listen to Rush because this is a really important story.

RUSH: You know the real question here? Who took the citizenship question off the census and why? Thats the question. The idea that its controversial to put it back on, wrongo! And Ill tell you who took it off. Barack Hussein O eliminated the citizenship question from the census. And the real pregunta is why? Well, we all know the why.

The left is doing everything it can to increase the census by including illegal aliens in it. And if you put a citizenship question on there, you might depress or suppress the participation of the illegals. And the Democrats demand and require that the illegals participate in this. They want as many unproductive, dependent souls as they can get supposedly living legally in the United States.

The census to them is simply a vehicle for the distribution of wealth. And they also, of course, want to use it to help in the drawing of congressional districts and this kind of thing. But its really primarily about money. So her comment here, I do wonder that even if the citizenship question doesnt end up on there, all of this kind of conversation around it could in fact do what they want to do, which is sort of depress the counting among people who might be afraid of answering the census question.

So what shes saying is, she is in favor of illegals participating in the census and putting down, Yep, live here. Yep, Im in the country. Yep, Im here and be considered a legal resident of the country. Thats what she would prefer and all of her leftist buddies. And she thinks the controversy here is going to suppress people or depress people from even participating.

But, again, this is a classic illustration of how were always on defense or way too often on defense. We get up every day we just want to have a good day, happy day, just get through the day here. And every day we have to respond and react to some wacko idea theyre putting forward. We want a citizenship question on the census like its been.

It was removed because they took it off for political reasons. Now somehow wanting to add it back makes us the racists and the bigots and the controversial types when in fact the question needs to be asked, whyd you people get rid of it in the first place? Because thats where the answer to all of this lies.

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Rush Enlightens Us on the Census and Illegal Immigration - Rush Limbaugh

The Guardian

Many foreign-born workers have lost their jobs to the pandemic and strict new visa rules have raised the threat of removal Losing your job is a big deal, and if youre an immigrant it also means losing your status, so its an even bigger deal. Photograph: Hanna Kuprevich/Alamy When Swaraj lost his job amid the recession last year, it triggered a ticking time bomb. Suddenly, he had to either find a different employer to sponsor his visa or return to India, throwing away the life he had built during half a decade in the United States. Its not right, said Swaraj, who asked the Guardian to only use his first name to protect his career. If I lose my work status, I have to leave this country within 60 days. I felt like thats not correct. Swaraj messaged contacts on Linkedin, pored over applications and contacted to references. He tossed excess clothes in the recycling bin and sold his valuables a television, sofa, bed in case he had to move across the world during the crisis. Then, he found a new position. But months later, his room in Madison, Wisconsin, was still empty enough to hear echoes, and he continued to sleep on an air mattress, too wary to invest in replacement furniture. This is not your home, he said. So you can be kicked out any time. Swarajs experience is far from a one-off. From data analysts and software consultants to project engineers and molecular biologists, many foreigners with advanced degrees and specialized knowledge have been losing their jobs in America amid the pandemic. And because theyre only able to live and work legally in the US thanks to their H-1B status a coveted visa for skilled workers routine layoffs that arent their fault have the potential to completely upend their lives. Theres a whole lot of uncertainty and anxiety associated with losing your job, no matter who you are. But when youre an immigrant, that anxiety and uncertainty is definitely compounded, said Jennifer Minear, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Losing your job is a big deal, and if youre an immigrant it also means losing your status, so its an even bigger deal, she added. As the economy foundered and millions of Americans struggled to make ends meet, the former president Donald Trump used immigrants as scapegoats, suspending H-1B visas through early 2021. Officials also unveiled sweeping new rules around the visa program, creating even more hurdles for potential candidates and employers. Swaraj lost an offer soon after because the company that had hired him couldnt comply. Today, I might feel secure, he said. Tomorrow, because of some political situation, things might just change overnight. And I just need to accept that fact. Already, H-1B holders live under precarious conditions where, when they lose employment, theyre only granted a 60-day grace period to find another qualifying role and re-up their visas. Otherwise, they have few viable options outside of leaving the country. Living in the United States without work authorization and trying to work off the books, under the table that doesnt tend to give you the standard of living that I think a lot of college-educated workers, wherever theyre from in the world, would want, said Julia Gelatt, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. A number of online posts about layoffs amid the economic downturn provides a glimpse into which foreign professionals have been impacted most over the last year. Many hold graduate degrees from American universities, and they often say theyre open to relocating anywhere in the US. One engineer wrote that what hurt the most was being rejected by hiring managers based on my visa status. Another warned that she only had 20 days left before packing everything along with my dreams. It has been roughly 48 hours since I found out that my role at Victorias Secret was affected by the company-wide restructuring, a design researcher wrote. It is tough, defeating, and soul-crushing. The more years that people spend in the US, the deeper the roots they tend to put down Julia Gelatt The H-1B visa program is supposed to offer a temporary avenue for highly educated professionals to work in the US for up to three years, or possibly six. But because the visas are privy to different caps than green cards, Indian and Chinese workers who represent the lions share of H-1B petitions get stuck in a long, byzantine queue for permanent residency. Recently backlogged Indian workers face an impossible wait of nine decades if they all could remain in the line, according to a 2020 report by the Cato Institute. More than 200,000 petitions filed for Indians could expire as a result of the workers dying of old age before they receive green cards. In the meantime, would-be immigrants stay legally by extending their temporary visas, despite the instability that represents. While they wait, they continue to make friends, start relationships, buy houses, join faith communities and have children. The more years that people spend in the United States, the deeper the roots they tend to put down, Gelatt said. It just becomes harder and harder to leave. Swaraj sometimes worries about what would happen if he marries his significant other, who is also on an H-1B visa, and they start a family together in the US. His memories from last year loom large, and for now, hes trying to live as minimalist a life as possible. But over the last five years, hes already started to put down roots. Friends are more like family now, and when he scrambled to come up with a way to stay legally, colleagues went out of their way to help him. I guess thats what I have gained in this country: people, he said. If I was working alone, and if I had no friends, I had no connections, I would have not made it. Like, as simple as that.

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Schumer Actively Exploring Granting Citizenship to Millions of Illegal Immigrants Without GOP Support - Yahoo News