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President-elect Joe Biden is planning to act quickly after taking office to improve conditions at the southern border for migrants seeking asylum in the United States, part of a broader strategy aimed at reversing Trump administration policies that separated families and led to a spike in detentions.

Biden is expected to sign executive orders after his inauguration that would end President Donald Trumps ban on travel from certain majority-Muslim countries, and protect the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, which shields young undocumented immigrants from deportation.

The steps would represent a clear break from Trump, and could have an immediate impact on the way migrants are treated at the U.S.-Mexico border. They would also signal a departure from Trumps anti-immigrant platform, which has sometimes included racist and xenophobic rhetoric that critics point to as helping to fuel a rise in hate crimes and tension within immigrant communities.

But immigration reform advocates, former immigration officials, attorneys and others said the planned changes wont lead to long-term improvements unless Biden overhauls the nations broken detention and immigration court system, which is currently overwhelmed with a backlog of more than 1 million pending asylum cases built up over multiple administrations.

Advocacy groups and unions are also pressuring Biden to push for a comprehensive immigration reform bill. Biden told NBC News after the election that in his first 100 days in office he would send a bill to the Senate that would provide a pathway to citizenship for the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the country.

But Bidens ability to enact sweeping legislation whether on immigration, climate change or anything else will depend on the balance of power in Congress. Republicans can block much of his agenda if they retain their Senate majority, which will come down to two runoff elections in Georgia in early January.

Can he completely re-envision the system overnight? I dont think so. Thats going to take some time.

With control of the Senate still up in the air, advocates are urging the Biden transition team to take a serious look at other measures beyond an initial flurry of executive orders that could have a long-term impact and might not require Congress to act starting with substantive changes to the ways asylum cases are processed through the immigration court system.

Signing executive orders that reverse some of Trumps policies will make it easier for migrants to apply for asylum, said Denise Gilman, the director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. But without longer-term fixes, many asylum seekers will still wind up in detention or become entangled in court proceedings that often take years to resolve, she said.

[Biden] can make some very positive impacts immediately by signing executive orders. But can he completely re-envision the system overnight? I dont think so, Gilman said. Thats going to take some time.

I dont think anyone is walking away from a need for comprehensive immigration reform, said Maria Echaveste, who worked on immigration policy as White House deputy chief of staff to former President Bill Clinton. But in the face of likely resistance from Republicans, under Biden there is an opportunity to do [other reforms] piece by piece.

Migrants in the Remain in Mexico program walk on the Paso del Norte International Bridge to reschedule their immigration hearings amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, April 20, 2020. REUTERS/Paul Ratje

Among changes that advocates said could jump-start the process is ending Trumps Remain in Mexico policy, formerly called the Migrant Protections Protocols. The policy requires migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. to wait in Mexico while their cases are processed, regardless of what country theyre coming from. Critics argue the rule exposes migrants to violence, and a legal challenge is now before the Supreme Court. Biden has signaled plans to end the program, which Trump established by executive order.

Biden has also pledged to create a task force to work on reuniting the more than 500 families who remain separated as a result of the zero-tolerance policy the Trump administration put in place to prosecute immigrants caught entering the country illegally.

The Biden administration has to rebuild the structure to process asylum seekers in a human and orderly way, because its nonexistent at this point, said Fernando Garcia, executive director of the advocacy group Border Network for Human Rights. Under Trump, most of the resources were used to build a wall and deport immigrants.

One change eagerly sought by some immigration advocates is a return to an Obama-era policy prioritizing the deportation of undocumented immigrants with criminal records and those deemed a national security or public safety threat.

The approach, adopted after former President Barack Obama took office in 2009, was a shift away from the previous administrations focus on immigration enforcement in the interior of the country through workplace raids and other tactics. Obamas policy was formalized in a guidance issued by the Department of Homeland Security in 2014. The agency also began to prioritize the deportation of people who had recently entered the country illegally.

As a result, while the number of deportations of people who did not pose a security threat or didnt have a serious criminal background declined, the percentage of undocumented immigrants removed from the interior of the country who had been convicted of serious crimes rose from 51 percent in 2009 to 94 percent during Obamas last year as president in 2016, according to DHS data included in an exit memo released by then-Secretary Jeh Johnson two weeks before Trump took office.

Obama set a record for those kinds of removals, leading critics on the left to label him the deporter-in-chief. But overall 5.2 million people were deported under Obama, compared to 10.3 million under former President George W. Bush and 12.2 million under former President Bill Clinton, according to a study by the Migration Policy Institute.

READ MORE: Under Trump, higher immigration bonds mean longer family separations

Trump abandoned Obamas approach by signing executive orders in 2017 and 2018 that gave immigration enforcement officials greater leeway to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants who did not have criminal records. The changes led to a 30 percent increase in fiscal year 2017 in the number of arrests made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the interior of the country, a Pew Research Center study found. Interior arrests increased again in fiscal 2018 but fell in fiscal 2019 as more enforcement officers were called to work on apprehensions along the border, which ICE said compromised their ability to conduct enforcement elsewhere.

Arrests along the southern border have increased during Trumps presidency as well, driven by the zero-tolerance policy that led to family separations and other measures aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration.

According to the Pew study, the Trump administration apprehended 851,508 migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2019 alone the highest number in more than a decade and more than double that of the previous year.

President Donald Trump arrives to participate in a Thanksgiving video teleconference with members of the military forces at the White House in Washington, on November 26, 2020. Photo by REUTERS/Erin Scott

Once Biden takes office, I would expect an immediate shift back to the Obama strategy and especially the 2014 guidelines that focused on deporting undocumented immigrants with serious criminal records, said John Sandweg, who served as acting director of ICE under Obama.

Focusing enforcement efforts on people with serious criminal records, instead of law-abiding immigrants who have lived in the country for years, would yield immediate results, said Alfredo Lozano, an immigration attorney in San Antonio.

Why would you not want to first focus on those persons with a very bad criminal record, versus a 42-year-old mother that has been here for 15 years and has three children? Lozano asked.

Many of Bidens key immigration policy changes will be carried out by Alejandro Mayorkas, his nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Mayorkas, a former federal prosecutor, served as DHS deputy secretary under Obama. He would also make history as the first Latino to lead the department.

Why would you not want to first focus on those persons with a very bad criminal record?

Mayorkas is well-known among senior immigration officials and has the experience to lead the agency, said Sandweg, a former colleague who praised the selection. But there are certainly going to be some advocates who probably get frustrated that the department isnt moving far enough or fast enough the Abolish ICE crowd, he said.

[Mayorkas] real background is in law enforcement. He brings a prosecutors sensibility, Sandweg added. Hes not coming in saying, Okay, we need to stop deportations. Alis coming in saying, Whats the best policy?

But instituting a culture change at DHS after four years of Trump could take time. Trump was endorsed by the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council, the union that represents ICE officers, in 2016 and again this year. The union representing Border Patrol agents also endorsed Trump in both elections.

In 2010, the ICE union cast a vote of no confidence in then-director John Morton and another senior official, claiming the agency under Obama had shifted its focus from law enforcement to campaigning for programs and policies related to amnesty for immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

There is concern in the immigrant rights community that Mayorkas and other political appointees brought in by Biden could face similar resistance from rank-and-file ICE and border patrol agents who supported Trump and could remain loyal to him after he leaves office. This is very real resistance that wont disappear once Biden becomes president, Gilman said.

Immigration reformers are also closely watching who Biden nominates as attorney general. While Mayorkas will play a leading role in setting policy around the apprehension and detention of undocumented immigrants, any changes to the immigration court system would fall under the purview of the Department of Justice.

Federal immigration courts are overseen by the Executive Office for Immigration Review, an agency within the Justice Department. Immigration reform advocates have long called for an independent court system that operates outside of the Justice Department, in order to shield immigration judges from carrying out policies created by political appointees who work in the Executive Branch and report to the president. But that would require legislative action from Congress, and the prospect of establishing a new court system under Biden would likely face significant opposition from Republicans in Washington.

Under Trump, judges have faced tremendous pressure to make sure that we work lock and step with the law enforcement priorities of the administration, said Ashley Tabaddor, a federal immigration judge.

A U.S. Border Patrol Agent closes one section of the border fence between U.S.-Mexico in El Paso, Texas, U.S May 15, 2019. Photo by Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters

Immigration reform advocates said one of their top priorities under Biden will be reversing the executive order Trump signed in his first year in office that created a metric-based system for evaluating the performance of immigration judges.

The policy, which took effect in 2018 under then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, required judges to complete 700 cases a year. In addition to that quota, the new system required judges to complete 95 percent of their cases at the first trial hearing, said Tabaddor, who agreed to an interview in her official capacity as president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, the union that represents immigration judges.

The administration argued that the changes were intended to address the backlog in pending asylum cases. Critics said the policy was put in place to help implement Trump and Sessions hardline views on illegal immigration.

They used the backlog as a pretext to put in these quotas and deadlines. It hasnt gotten us anywhere, Tabaddor said.

The number of pending asylum cases has doubled under Trump, from roughly 600,000 when he took office to 1.2 million in 2020. The average number of days that cases have been waiting in court has also increased under Trump, from 691 days in fiscal year 2017 to 811 days in fiscal year 2020, according to TRAC Immigration, a database run by Syracuse University.

All of [Trumps] efforts to deter and discourage families from coming to the U.S. to seek asylum, they dont work. Its demonstrably shown that it just doesnt work, said Gilman, of the University of Texas at Austin School of Law.

Biden could use his executive authority to unwind Trumps quota system, immigration attorneys said. Other policy changes would require the Justice Department to formally vacate, or rescind, decisions made by Sessions, who carried out much of Trumps early immigration agenda before he was fired by the president in late 2018.

As a candidate, Biden promised to hire more immigration court judges to reduce the backlog of asylum cases. But Tabaddor noted the number of immigration judges under Trump increased from roughly 280 when he took office to more than 500 today, and yet the court system is even more overwhelmed than it was at the start of his presidency. The growing backlog under Trump is widely attributed to the rise in apprehensions at the border, especially in late 2018 and 2019, when several hundred thousand additional arrests were made in response to a surge in migration from Central America.

Until you stop the bleeding you can keep adding more and more bandaids but it wont solve the problem, she said. Right now, the court system is suffering from a massive hemorrhage.

Biden could also face challenges securing funding from Congress for his immigration agenda.

Between two-thirds and three-quarters of the DHS annual budget is funded through discretionary spending appropriated by Congress. The rest consists of mandatory spending and other revenue streams, according to a report on the agencys most recent budget, released in January by the Congressional Research Service.

But the vast majority of the discretionary spending awarded to DHS each year goes to paying for employee salaries and operational expenses funding that cant easily be moved around to pay for a new program or policy priority.

DACA recipients and their supporters celebrate outside the U.S. Supreme Court after the court ruled in a 5-4 vote that President Donald Trumps 2017 move to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was unlawful, in Washington, on June 18, 2020. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

In fiscal year 2020, for example, roughly 85 percent of CBPs $14.9 billion pot of discretionary spending went to salaries and expenses. There is even less wiggle room at ICE, where nearly all of the agencys $8 billion discretionary spending in fiscal year 2020 went to staff salaries and other expenses associated with running the agency.

Mayorkas may have some flexibility, especially around funding for enforcement and deportation operations, said Sandweg, the former acting director of ICE.

Theres probably some things that can be moved around a bit. But the question is, where are you pulling from? You cant just unilaterally lay off or furlough or fire ICE agents. They have civil service and statutory protections, said Sandweg, who held several senior roles at DHS under Obama, including acting general counsel.

The current DHS budget illustrates the obstacles that lay ahead for Biden and his team.

The appropriations bill included detailed provisions dictating how DHS could use federal funding to implement Trumps immigration priorities. It included $1.37 billion in border wall funding and, as part of an agreement with Democrats, allowed Trump to redirect defense spending to pay for the project. The bill contained other less high-profile provisions as well, such as one blocking federal funds from being used to pay for pedestrian fencing in historic cemeteries in some areas along the border.

Biden has said he plans to stop new border wall construction, a move that he could likely do on his own without approval from Congress by revoking the national emergency declaration Trump issued in order to free up defense spending for the border.

But Biden will be constrained by Congress on most matters related to government spending on immigration, regardless of which party controls the Senate come January. Congress has the power of the purse. Whenever they appropriate money, they tell you exactly how to spend it to a certain level of detail, Sandweg said.

Despite all the obstacles Biden faces on immigration, advocates said they remain optimistic. Simply ending the Remain in Mexico policy, protecting the DACA program and putting more effort into reunifying separated families would be a great start, said Garcia, of the Border Network for Human Rights.

But Biden must go further, he said, by making long-term improvements to the asylum process, while also maintaining momentum for a comprehensive immigration reform bill. Anything less would jeopardize Biden and the Democratic Partys relationship with the countrys rising Latino electorate, he added.

Biden owes Latinos. They are expecting Biden to do something immediately, Garcia said. He added, Latinos are recognizing their own political power. If the Biden administration fails to deliver, I think Democrats are going to be in trouble.

Go here to read the rest:
The challenges Biden will face on immigration reform - PBS NewsHour

U.S. News Lawrence Hurley Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices on Monday appeared reluctant to block a vaguely defined plan by President Donald Trumps administration to exclude immigrants living in the United States illegally from the population totals used to allocate congressional districts to states.

The courts conservatives, who hold a 6-3 majority, signaled such a ruling might be premature based on the administrations admission that it does not yet know how or if it will be able to implement the proposal, a facet of Trumps hardline policies on immigration being pursued in his final weeks in office.

Challengers led by New York state and the American Civil Liberties Union have argued that Trumps proposal would dilute the political clout of states with larger numbers of such immigrants, including heavily Democratic California, by undercounting state populations and depriving them of House seats to the benefit of his fellow Republicans.

The administration has yet to disclose what method it would use to calculate the number of people it proposes to exclude or which subsets of immigrants may be targeted. Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall told the justices the administration could miss a Dec. 31 statutory deadline to finalize a Census Bureau report to Trump containing the final population data including the number of immigrants excluded.

The number of House districts in the 50 states is based on a states population count in the decennial national census, which was conducted this year. Democrat Joe Biden is set to become president on Jan. 20 and could reverse course if the apportionment numbers have not been finalized by then.

We dont know what the president is going to do, conservative Chief Justice John Roberts said. We dont know how many aliens will be excluded. We dont know what the effect of that will be on apportionment. All these questions would be resolved if we wait until the apportionment takes place. Why arent we better advised to do that?

The U.S. Constitution requires apportionment of House seats to be based upon the whole number of persons in each state. Until now, the governments practice was to count all people regardless of their citizenship or immigration status.

The justices were expected to decide the case on a expedited basis, with a ruling before the end of the year. The court potentially could dismiss the current legal challenge, a move that would leave open the possibility of subsequent lawsuits after the administration actually takes action.

Lawyers for the challengers urged the court not to toss out the lawsuit now, asking the justices to wait for a few weeks until more information is available on what data the Census Bureau intends to submit to the president.

There are an estimated 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally. The challengers have argued that Trumps policy violates both the Constitution and the Census Act, a federal law that outlines how the census is conducted.

The justices focused less on the underlying question of whether Trumps plan was lawful but conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, noted that the government during the entire history of the United States has included illegal immigrants in the population count.

A lot of the historical evidence and longstanding practice really cuts against your position, Barrett told Wall.

Barrett also challenged Wall on the administrations position that an immigrant in the country illegally cannot be considered an inhabitant for the purposes of House apportionment.

By statute, the president is required to send Congress a report in early January with the population of each of the states and their entitled number of House districts.

Wall told the justices that it is very unlikely the administration will amass data to exclude all immigrants in the country illegally. Instead, Wall said, it may propose excluding certain groups, such as the fewer than 100,000 in federal detention, and the total number may not be high enough to affect apportionment.

The administrations lack of detail on whether it could implement Trumps plan prompted justices including Trump appointees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to wonder if was premature to rule on the issue because the harm alleged by the challengers is speculative.

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito said that for the administration to exclude all of the immigrants living illegally in the United States from the population count seems to me a monumental task.

I would think you would be able to tell us whether that remains a realistic possibility at this point, Alito told Wall.

The challengers have argued that Trumps plan could leave several million people uncounted and cause California, Texas and New Jersey to lose House seats.

A three-judge panel in New York ruled against the administration in September.

Reporting by Lawrence Hurley in Washington and Andrew Chung in New York; Additional reporting by Ted Hesson; Editing by Will Dunham

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Link:
Conservative justices wary of blocking Trump immigrant census plan - Reuters

There are infinite ways that liberals in the news media try to convince people that what they see with their own eyes isn't what's actually happening, never more so than when it pertains to illegal immigration.

A new report at Axios purports to show that there's not much crime at all coming across the Southern border. What's that silly president been talking about these last five years?

The evidence to back up that absurd claim: "U.S. communities along the Mexico border are among the safest in America," the report said, "with some border cities holding crime rates well below the national average, FBI statistics show."

The report said that the information "contradicts the narrative by President Trump and others that the U.S.-Mexico border is a 'lawless' region suffering from violence and mayhem."

This is like when the leaders of Iran claim that they have no gay citizens. Well, no, they have plenty of gay citizens, just like everywhere, but the fact that it's illegal to be gay there might have something to do with the lack of drag shows.

Similarly, as Axios acknowledges in its own report, the number of U.S. Border Patrol agents has grown nearly three-fold between 1998 and 2018, the latest year of available data from the Customs and Border Protection. What a coincidence! More law enforcement, less crime!

But more importantly, while it's true that border cities have higher Latino populations by nature, it's not the case that illegal immigrants cross the Rio Grande, hit soil, and then find the nearest hotel. No, they continue moving and spread throughout the rest of the country. What sense would it make to know you're illegally entering the country, along with thousands of others on a daily basis, only to halt just on the other side? That's not what they do. They go to Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and other cities along the East and West Coasts.

That's why there are Latin-born gangs in public schools in Maryland.

Cities on the border aren't even what we should be looking at. We should be looking at the border itself. I went there twice in 2019 to tour the physical border and to visit the migrant detention and processing centers, and, of course, it's lawless. There technically are "laws" that govern the physical space, but they were never intended to cope with Mexican and Central American human traffickers pushing floats of migrants by the dozen across the Rio Grande onto U.S. soil, where they then seek asylum protection. They were never intended to cope with drug mules crossing the river in jeeps with hundreds of pounds of drugs, dodging authorities who are otherwise tied babysitting unaccompanied illegal immigrant minors.

Convicted rapists, child molesters, drug dealers, and human traffickers are apprehended at the border all the time, which isn't to say that all of them are caught. They're not, which is why they have prior convictions in states all across the country. (Quick, someone tell Axios.)

Illegal immigration and the crime that comes with it is devastating to the country, even if the media still pretend that it's not.

See the original post here:
Low crime rates in border cities say nothing about the chaos caused by illegal immigration - Washington Examiner

Amid rising violent crime rates in Texas cities, at least one alleged gang member illegally in the country has been removed from Houston streets and returned to his home country.

In November, officers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Houston arrested and deported 24-year-old Erick Giovanni Portillo-Ayala, an El Salvadoran national and documented MS-13 gang member who had been in the country for more than six years.

The International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) had issued a Red Notice for Portillo-Ayala as a member of a terrorist organization at the request of El Salvador.

According to ICE, Portillo-Ayala had entered the U.S. illegally on April 6, 2014, and although he was immediately taken into custody near Sarita, Texas, he was released a few months later after posting bond set by an immigration judge with the Executive Office for Immigration Review.

After he failed to attend his immigration hearing, in October of 2018 an immigration judge ordered Portillo-Ayala deported, but it took more than two years to locate and arrest him.

Portillo-Ayalas deportation came during the same month that five other MS-13 gang members, also illegal immigrants from El Salvador, were indicted for a brutal murder in which the men are alleged to have used a machete to hack a police informant to death in Houston.

According to Ryan K. Patrick, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, MS-13 often uses violence to terrorize the community.

MS-13 uses brutal killings, often by machete, to prove their worth to the clique and send a message to others, Patrick noted on announcing the indictments.

Another El Salvadoran national illegally residing in Houston, Elmer Rolando Manzano-Martinez, is being held on capital murder charges after allegedly shooting to death Houston Police Sergeant Harold Preston and wounding another officer. Although Manzano-Martinez had a criminal history including a conviction and jail time, he had not been identified for possible deportation until the October murder.

This week, Houston Police reportedly rescued 29 individuals from a possible human smuggling operation who were being held hostage in a home on the southwest side of the city. According to police, the victims had been stripped of all clothing except for briefs, and were from various Latin American countries, including El Salvador. ICE will be taking over the investigation of the incident, in which suspects may have tried to blend in with victims by removing their own clothing when police arrived.

Texas law specifically prohibits so-called Sanctuary City or Sanctuary County policies, but an estimated 412,000 illegal immigrants reside in the Houston and Harris County area according to county Judge Lina Hidalgo.

On Thursday, Houston Police reportedly rescued 29 individuals from a possible human smuggling operation who were being held hostage in a home on the southwest side of the city. The victims were from various Latin American countries, including El Salvador, according to police.

Last month on a party-line vote, the Harris County Commissioners Court approved spending more than $2 million over the next two years to provide legal services for illegal immigrants residing in the county. The county is also seeking to join the Vera Institute for Justices Safety and Fairness for Everyone Network, consisting of cities and counties nationwide allocating taxpayer funds to provide a public defender system for all immigrants regardless ofhistory with the criminal legal system.

At one time the county sheriffs department participated in the 287(G) program under which deputies were trained to identify suspects with deportation orders, but after taking office in 2017Sheriff Ed Gonzalez (D) announced that his department would opt out of the federal grant.

ERO Houston arrested Portillo-Ayala on November 5, 2020, and ICE Air Operations flew him from Alexandria, Louisiana, to the El Salvador International Airport on November 20 where he was turned over to Salvadoran authorities.

Disclosure: Unlike almost every other media outlet, The Texan is not beholden to any special interests, does not apply for any type of state or federal funding, and relies exclusively on its readers for financial support. If youd like to become one of the people were financially accountable to, click here to subscribe.

A free bi-weekly commentary on current events by Konni Burton.

Read the original here:
Houston MS-13 Gang Member Deported to El Salvador - The Texan

Editors note: A federal judge has struck down two Trump administration rules designed to drastically curtail the number of visas issued each year to skilled foreign workers in the latest battle over the issue. Steve Rao is a Council Member and Former Mayor Pro Tem for the Town of Morrisville and a Board Member of the New American Economy, a bi-partisan coalition of Mayors and Business Leaders, Committed to Comprehensive Immigration reform. This organization compiles research from economists to reveal the economic impact of immigration in the United States and in NC among a number of industries. He also serves as Of Counsel to State Federal Strategies, where he advises them on the Technology Practice.

MORRISVILLE Now that the election is over, President Elect Joe Biden has a chance to deliver on what President Trump had promised four years ago: more American Jobs, through an immigration policy that values global talent to meet the workforce needs of our state and nation.

The Trump administrations restrictions for H1-B highly skilled immigrants has hindered our global competitiveness, and does have an impact on a number of industries in NC, including the tech, manufacturing, seafood and hospitality industries. Let us also remember the 35,000 Dreamers in North Carolina, who bring in over $500 million to our economy, whose DACA status remains after a recent Federal Court ruling struck down recent Trump Administration restrictions on the program.

John Chambers, left, with Steve Rao

As the U.S. works towards economic recovery, these immigrants are vital to supporting industries and communities when they need it the most. In fact, H-1B visa holders, one of the newly banned groups, are job creators NAEs research shows that every H-1B holder creates about 1.83 American jobs.

Our recent Space X missions to the International Space Station would never have happened if Elon Musk had not received an H-1B, Zoom would not exist, and many companies, like Google, Yahoo, would have been founded in other nations if we closed off immigration of highly skilled immigration to the United States.

I do believe that we are encouraging the best and brightest in the world to start companies in other nations with such a closed immigration policy coming from the White House.

While many Americans continue to work remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, immigrant IT workers play an essential role in helping the U.S. economy move activities online and maintain the digital infrastructure so that businesses can keep running and people stay connected.

In North Carolina and much of the Triangle, I am still seeing firsthand, many Indian Americans and South Asian families affected by restrictions in the H-1B Program. These hard working, tax paying citizens are among the 300,000 H-1B holders in the US are in line for a green card.

Some families are being separated, spouses of the H-1B visa holders are not able to work, and I am hearing from many constituents, who have been waiting over ten years, for a green card. These are hard working tax payers, who are contributing immensely to supporting and creating the growing tech economy of North Carolina and the new jobs of the new economy.

Recently, I received a call from Anu Penenganti, a technologist at SAS Software, who pays twice the tuition for her daughter at NC State since her H4 visa in in backlog. Sometimes, she wonders if she should eventually move to Canada, a nation where it is easier to experience the benefits of citizenship.

Thousands in NC are in this situation, most in the Triangle and Charlotte region. Not only are they driving innovation and jobs at Technology companies, but also among the ranks of the 56,000 immigrant owned companies, employing over 151,000 citizens in our state.

Finally, Consider our universities. Theyre a critical part of our economy, producing wealth, innovation, and skilled workers our state urgently needs. But in recent months the Trump administration had considered blocking international students whose colleges switch to online teaching; to make it impossible for foreign students to complete PhDs; and to undermine the visas that allow U.S. businesses to hire foreign graduates with critically needed skills.

This type of action would have been a disaster for North Carolina. Our states 21,954 international students inject $722.3 million a year into the local economy, supporting over 9,000 jobs. International students also make college affordable for Americans: though they account for just 4.6% of the student population, foreign students pay 28% of all college tuition. By hurting international students, President Trump is depriving our colleges of vital revenues, and ultimately hurting all North Carolinians.

Some statistics worth noting from New American Economy:

As we face huge public health and economic challenges, immigrants are on the front lines helping us respond to both. Yet even as they fight alongside Americans, they are excluded from federal relief efforts (as are their U.S. citizen spouses), they are at risk of deportation if they are undocumented, and now legal workers that drive essential industries wont be able to enter the U.S. to spur additional job creation and help drive the economic recovery.

Let North Carolina be an example to both President Elect Biden and Vice President Elect Kamala Harris, the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, that comprehensive immigration reform can ensure that the United States is a destination for the best and brightest in the world to create more jobs now and in the future.

I strongly encourage President Elect Joe Biden to present an immigration proposal to the 117th Congress that accelerates the path to citizenship for highly skilled immigrants, extends protection for our Dreamers, and continues to address illegal immigration and border security in a reasonable fashion.

Continued here:
Guest opinion: Immigration means more jobs for NC and the US - WRAL Tech Wire