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A federal court has temporarily blocked a steep increase in fees for such services as citizenship and asylum application that was set to take effect Friday. Thats good news for migrants, but it poses a challenge for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which gets almost all its budget from fees for services. (Photo by University of Findlay/Creative Commons)

WASHINGTON A federal judge late Tuesday blocked a steep increase in application fees set to take effect Friday for people seeking U.S. citizenship, an increase that advocates feared would have locked many immigrants out.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White said that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services did not follow proper procedures when it ordered the higher fees. He also said the two men running USCIS and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, did not have the authority to approve the increases because both men serve in acting roles.

Arizona advocates welcomed the courts action, saying the increases would have almost doubled the cost of naturalization, from $650 to as much as $1,170, putting the cost of citizenship out of reach for many.

These community members are landscapers and they clean houses, so theyre not in the high-income bracket, said Petra Falcon, executive director of Promise Arizona. Applying for citizenship is a luxury.

A USCIS spokesperson said in an email that the agency is reviewing the ruling on the fee rule and has no further comment at this time.

While the ruling helps migrants in the short term, it could have long-term implications for the agency, which draws almost all of its budget from fees and currently faces a $1 billion shortfall.

Migration Policy Institute researcher Sarah Pierce said the ruling is a win for USCIS customers people seeking permanent residency, work permits and naturalization, among other services.

But of course theres a lot of concerns about USCISs budgetary problems, Pierce said.

Migration Policy Institute said fees were last raised in 2016, when the cost for a non-military immigrant to apply for citizenship was set at $650.

The new fees that were set to take effect Friday would have raised citizenship application fees to between $1,150 and $1,170. Asylum seekers would have had to pay a $50 fee previously covered by other application charges and the cost of suspending a deportation would have grown more than five times.

When the new fees were proposed on July 31, USCIS said the increases were in line with previous years when the agency set a weighted average increase of 20% to help recover its operational costs. The July 31 statement said revenue from the fee increases would go toward increased costs to adjudicate immigration benefit requests, detect and deter immigration fraud, and thoroughly vet applicants.

Ira Mehlman, the media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, disagreed with the courts ruling that blocked the increase, saying USCIS should be able to charge what it needs to keep operating.

In order to be able to keep the agency afloat they needed to have the people who are directly using the services pay for the cost of maintaining this organization, Mehlman said.

But the agencys budget deficit has only become an issue in recent years, Pierce said, as business has declined and it has invested more in fraud detection and enforcement.

Applications to the agency, and thats fees to the agency, have significantly decreased over the last two years, Pierce said. In addition to that while their (USCIS) income was decreasing, their costs were increasing.

Pierce said the agency has been pushing austerity measures to cut costs or raise prices on customers moves that Falcon said targets poor immigrants and keeps them from becoming citizens. It would also increase the burden on nonprofit organizations like hers that may provide financial help to those seeking citizenship.

But that means were going to have to step up and raise money to support the people who normally would be afforded a waiver of application fees, Falcon said.

In August, USCIS made drastic cuts to its services to avoid furloughs for nearly 70% of its workforce.

Theres a good chance that this could be the final straw that pushes USCIS over the edge and make them go through the furlough that they have threatened twice before this year, Pierce said of the court ruling.

Theres another element of the ruling that could affect the agency, said Ilya Shapiro, an expert at the Cato Institute who wrote a brief opposing the fee increases: Its questioning of the authority of acting USCIS Director Ken Cuccinelli and acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf.

A Government Accountability Office report in August found that Wolf and Cuccinelli are serving improperly because their appointments violated the laws governing federal nominations.

Shapiro said that makes it not a fees case, its a government structure case. Because their appointments were not made as required by law, their exercise of authority under the relevant immigration laws was improper as well.

That could have larger consequences for Trump administration immigration policy, Pierce said.

If other judges agree with this judge, then that could mean we have a domino effect of a series of decisions that unravel a lot of the Trump administration immigration policies, she said. It could be the start of a really significant and interesting trend.

The ruling came one day before the Senate Homeland Security Committee voted 6-3 to send Wolfs nomination to the full Senate. The party-line vote came more than a year after Trump nominated Wolf.

Shapiro said Wolf will likely win confirmation, which could make Whites ruling moot. At least until the next election.

Chad Wolf and maybe even Ken Cuccinelli will be approved by the Senate and then they can start the process of reimposing the fees again, Shapiro said. Ultimately this will be decided by whether the Trump administration is reelected or not.

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Judge halts fee hike that would have nearly doubled cost of citizenship - Cronkite News

KNKX's Take the Mic and South Seattle Emerald present Election 2020 - The Youth Vote: A conversation about leadership, ethics and values and how they factor into choosing a candidate, a free Zoom event on October 14 at 4 p.m. PT. The event will be hosted by KNKX News Director Florangela Davila and South Seattle Emerald Editor-in-Chief/Publisher Marcus Harrison Green.REGISTER HERE.

Young people make up a projected 37% of the 2020 electorate, yet historically they vote less than other age groups. Will it be different this time? The pandemic crisis and the call for racial justice and institutional changes are top concerns as we move closer to this high stakes election. Ethics and values also underpin our decisions. This virtual event aims to bring together first-time and new voters with older adults with a track record of civic leadership to discuss a number of issues through the lens of beliefs and values, touching on things like:

Because this is leading up to the general election, we want to frame this conversation around the power to change systems for the greater good and how that ties in with being an informed voter.

The six young interviewers will ask the four speakers questions relating to the themes of conflict/failure, challenges, accountability, transparency, priorities and representation, with the speakers drawing on their personal and professional experiences; and offering examples of how they have faced challenging situations and how that speaks to leadership and community building.

Speakers

Gary Locke - As Governor of Washington State (the first Chinese American to be elected governor in United States history and the first Asian American governor on the mainland), U.S. Secretary of Commerce, and U.S. Ambassador to China, Gary Locke has been a leader in the areas of education, employment, trade, health care, human rights, immigration reform, privacy, and the environment. Currently, Gary Locke serves as the interim president of Bellevue College, which is the third largest higher education institution in Washington State serving nearly 30,000 students annually.

Victoria Woodards - Victoria Woodards has called the City of Destiny her home for nearly her entire life. She is a proud graduate of Tacomas Lincoln High School and served as a soldier in the United States Army. Before becoming Mayor of Tacoma in 2018, she served for seven years as an at-large member of the City Council. During that time, she launched the Citys Equity and Empowerment initiative which led to the establishment of its Office of Equity and Human Rights. She spearheaded the Citys Project PEACE initiative which bridged community members with the Tacoma Police Department and has worked to more fully engage the City's youth in community decisions that impact them every day, by expanding Student Government Day and establishing the Mayor's Youth Commission of Tacoma..

TraeAnna Holiday - TraeAnna Holiday is a true Seattleite who has watched her city change in many ways. She took her creative passion to Howard University, where she studied theater management in her first year of college. Then through the communications program at UW Tacoma, she began to understand her value in the field; always wanting to tell the stories she saw before her. In a Communities in Economics course, she learned about the academic version of displacement- gentrification. Through studying abroad and being displaced by gentrification, she's now fueled to tell her neighborhood's story through film and education while working on the solutions. Working with Africatown Community Land Trust and producing content with Converge Media are two of the ways shes begun to do just that. As a steward of community with a passion for storytelling, she brings her ideals to life and strives to help others do the same.

Michael Liang Since 2018, Michael has been Program Director of Spaceworks, with the aim of making Tacoma culturally vibrant and economically strong by providing space, training and resources for artists and creative entrepreneurs. Prior to that, he spent ten years as a designer and creative leader with the National Park Service. Michael has a B.F.A. in art and design from the University of Michigan, a certificate in natural science illustration from the University of Washington, and is currently finishing his M.S. in Education. He is passionate about building community and tapping into the transformative power of the arts for social good.

Young Interviewers

Bitaniya Giday, age 17, is the 2020-2021 Seattle Youth Poet Laureate. She is a first-generation Ethiopian American residing in Seattle. Her writing explores the nuances of womanhood and blackness, as she reflects upon her familys path of immigration across the world. She hopes to restore and safeguard the past, present, and future histories of her people through traditional storytelling and poetry.

Alicia Ing, age 18, is a freshman at the University of Washington, pursuing her studies in International Business and Diversity. Alicia has been active in community advocacy and leadership for over four years, and currently works as the Program Coordinator for the Seattle-based nonprofit Hey Mentor.

Mia Dabney, age 16, is in the 11th grade at Cleveland High School in Seattle, and is a youth council member for Skyway Youth Network Collaborative. She is currently working with the NAACP youth council to bring ethnic studies to the Seattle School District. Mia says, I believe changes will come if we continue to rise up together and value and respect each others differences.

Brooklyn Hose, age 18, graduated from Curtis Senior High School and is currently a student enrolled at the University of Washington with an interest in either a major in English or Business and a minor in Ethnic Studies. She is a local artist in the Tacoma community and emphasizes through her work the importance of empowering the voices of the underrepresented and marginalized.

Dylan Tran, age 22, is a full-time educator at Lincoln High School in his hometown of Tacoma, Washington. He is a child of Southeast Asian refugees and a graduate of Lincoln High School and the University of Washington.

Maeve Glackin-Coley, age 17, is currently a junior at Stadium High School in Tacoma. Shes interested in social justice, philanthropy, painting, and skiing. Maeve is a member of Greater Tacoma Community Foundations Youth Philanthropy Board and the Tacoma Mayors Education Youth Committee.

Event Hosts

Florangela Davila has been the News Director at KNKX since 2019. She spent 14 years working in both news and features at The Seattle Times, earning local, regional and national awards. As the managing editor at Crosscut/KCTS9, she helped transform the newsroom, driving online and broadcast coverage about immigration, equity and the arts; she hosted the TV news segment Crosscut Now; and she chaired the organization's Race and Equity Committee. A former faculty member in the Department of Communications at the University of Washington, she also worked in communications at Forterra, an environmental nonprofit where she curated and produced the Ampersand stage show. She has a B.A. in both Political Science and French from University of California-Berkeley and a Master's in Journalism from Columbia University. She got her start in public radio as a freelancer at KPLU in 2008.

Marcus Harrison Green is the publisher of the South Seattle Emerald, and a columnist with The Seattle Times. Growing up in South Seattle, he experienced first-hand the neglect of news coverage in the area by local media, which taught him the value of narratives. After an unfulfilling stint working for a Los Angeles based hedge-fund in his twenties, Marcus returned to his community determined to tell its true story, which led him to found the South Seattle Emerald. He was named one of Seattle's most influential people by Seattle Magazine in 2016.

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Join Us For Election 2020 - The Youth Vote Event - knkx.org

Had Amendment 3 the proposed Constitutional amendment that promises to tear down Floridas political primaries and build them anew been the law in 2018, the general election candidates for governor that year arguably might have been two Republicans.

The Democratic candidate, Andrew Gillum, would already have been eliminated.

We can explain:

The amendment, if approved by 60 percent or more of the voters on Nov. 3, would throw open Floridas primary elections to the states nearly 3.7 million voters who arent affiliated with any party.

Significantly, it also would throw candidates for any office into one pool for voters to select from, sending the top two vote-getters into the general election, regardless of their party. Meaning that the general election could involve two Republicans or two Democrats.

Its called a top two or jungle primary and would apply to elections for governor, the Florida Cabinet, and the Legislature.

Republican Ron DeSantis won 916,298 votes in the 2018 GOP primary. Republican Adam Putnam won 592,518. Gillum won 522,164 in his partys primary. Gillum might have been finished even before his narrow loss to DeSantis in the general election that year.

Of course, thats one scenario that opponents of the proposal have been highlighting supporters of Amendment 3 note that it doesnt account for the no-party-affiliation voters who they predict would flock to the primaries if allowed.

And the amendment is all about bringing those voters into the candidate selection process, where the sponsors hope they will help provide a cooling influence in a hot political environment that promotes extremism and polarization.

Supercharged rhetoric and raw meat

Glenn Burhans Jr., chairman of the sponsoring organization, All Voters Vote, notes that, between 1990 and now, non-affilated voters have expanded their share of the electorate from about 7 percent to 26 percent.

Voters are rejecting the two major parties because of the political divisiveness, because of rhetoric that is supercharged, highly heated, raw meat to the extreme ends of both parties. The vast majority of Americans are tired of that, Burhans said in a telephone interview.

As a consequence, things are not getting done by government, things that really need to be addressed, he said. When youve got nearly one third of Florida voters shut out of the process, how can our government truly be reflective of and responsive to the diversity of Floridas voters? I dont think it can be.

Florida is one of 16 states that hold closed primaries, in which only registered members of a party may help select its nominees.

Another 15 states hold open primaries, in which any voter may vote in any partys primary in other words, voters may cross party lines. Additional states use mixed systems and four states California, Louisiana, Nebraska, and Washington deploy the top two system.

At All Voters Vote, we are committed to the proposition that every voter in Florida should have the right to cast a meaningful ballot, the committee says on its website.

The committee has been raising money since March 2015, with its first big donation of $25,000 coming from Burhans law firm, Stearns Weaver Miller Weissler Alhadeff & Sitterson, which went on to invest heavily in the campaign.(Burhans, by the way, is the registered agent for Gillums Forward Florida political committee.)

The really big money, though, has come from Miguel Mike Fernandez, billionaire chairman of MBF Healthcare Partners L.P., a Coral Gables hedge fund that operates in the health care sector. Hes contributed nearly $6.8 million from his own pocket as well as family and trust accounts, according to Florida Division of Elections records.

Fernandez, a former major GOP fundraiser who left that party following Donald Trumps election, and who also backs immigration reform, didnt respond to requests for comment. He told the Miami Herald in 2018: I believe our nations founding principles provide that all who register should be able to vote. While three-quarters of all Americans support immigration reform, this wish is not represented by the majority of those currently in public office.

The Dems and GOP wanted the amendment kicked off

Attorney General Ashley Moody, a Republican, urged the Florida Supreme Court to kick the amendment off the ballot. The Florida Democratic Party and the Republican Party of Florida supported her in that request.

Among other complaints, the GOP argues the measure would freeze grass-roots Republicans out of the candidate selection process and will charge taxpayers millions to make us vote like they do in liberal states like California and Washington.

We support the democratic process and a system that gives voters more opportunities to choose a candidate that reflects their values. This ballot initiative would do the opposite, said Democratic chairwoman Terrie Rizzo has said. A proposal which eliminates the chance for a Democrat to make the ballot is not democratic.

Arguments Moody filed with the court raised two main points. One is that the ballot language would confuse voters used to Floridas established partisan primaries. The second is that the amendment would still allow parties to nominate candidates to participate in the top-two primary, but doesnt explain how that would work or ensure rank-and-file party members may participate.

The court disagreed in a ruling handed down in March. The majority noted that its review is restricted to determining whether the ballot language is clear, and the justices concluded that it is; and whether sponsors engaged in logrolling (assembling multiple purposes into one initiative). Again, the justices concluded they did not.

The minority vote

Other opponents include the Florida Legislative Black Caucus, which argues it would dilute the minority and progressive votes. If you are for Amendment 3, you are not for the minority community period, Audrey Gibson of Jacksonville, who leads the Senate Democratic caucus, said during a news conference in early September, according to a report in the Tallahassee Democrat.

The reason is that white non-aligned voters could flood the polls in districts now dominated by Black Democratic voters, caucus members explained. The district might still produce a Democratic officeholder, but he or she might not be Black.

Former House member Sean Shaw, the 2018 Democratic nominee for attorney general, argued that although a few minority House members represent predominantly white districts, none do in the Senate.

When you diminish the power of the Black electorate, you will necessarily, as a direct consequence of that, have less Black state senators, he said.

Burhans counters that, of the independent voters in Florida, who cannot now participate in party primaries, 1 million are minorities.

Whats the message were sending to those voters? Unless you join a political party youre vote doesnt matter? Your voice doesnt count? Thats not right. Its not fair, he said. These are people who are paying taxes to fund the elections that theyre blocked from participating in.

Still, concern about dilution of the minority vote persuaded the League of Women Voters of Florida to come out against this amendments language, notwithtstanding that organizations overall support for opening up the primary system.

It is our belief that top-two open primaries would have a strong adverse impact on African-American representation in Florida, the League says in a written statement posted on its website. The League of Women Voters of Florida is very much in support of open primaries and would wholeheartedly support this measure if it were not tied to top two.

The ACLU of Florida came out against the measure on Thursday, citing the effect on minority voters and the possibility that party members might lose the chance to vote for one of their own in general elections.

The organization added: The measure also raises First Amendment concerns by hindering political dissent and a political partys freedom of association, as well as the ability to select its candidates and messaging.

Here is the text of Amendment 3:

All Voters Vote in Primary Elections for State Legislature, Governor, and Cabinet

Allows all registered voters to vote in primaries for state legislature, governor, and cabinet regardless of political party affiliation. All candidates for an office, including party nominated candidates, appear on the same primary ballot.

Two highest vote getters advance to general election. If only two candidates qualify, no primary is held and winner is determined in general election. Candidates party affiliation may appear on ballot as provided by law. Effective January 1, 2024.

It is probable that the proposed amendment will result in additional local government costs to conduct elections in Florida. The Financial Impact Estimating Conference projects that the combined costs across counties will range from $5.2 million to $5.8 million for each of the first three election cycles occurring in even-numbered years after the amendments effective date, with the costs for each of the intervening years dropping to less than $450,000.

With respect to state costs for oversight, the additional costs for administering elections are expected to be minimal. Further, there are no revenues linked to voting in Florida. Since there is no impact on state costs or revenues, there will be no impact on the states budget. While the proposed amendment will result in an increase in local expenditures, this change is expected to be below the threshold that would produce a statewide economic impact.

See the article here:
Should all voters participate in the primaries regardless of political parties? - Florida Phoenix

While one may like the Trump administrations tax policy, or its policy on cutting unnecessarily burdensome regulations or the presidents nomination of conservative judges, Donald Trump has deviated 180 degrees from past Republican administrations on U.S. immigration policy.

Trump commenced his 2016 campaign claiming Mexico was sending rapists and murderers to the U.S., promising to build a great wall across our southern border one that Mexico would pay for. In fact, only five miles of new border wall has been constructed, with the rest replacing existing border barriers. And, of course, Mexico did not pay for it.

While illegal border-crossings were at historic lows, he painted a picture of our country being invaded by criminal immigrants even though undocumented immigrants commit crimes at far lower rates than the general population.

Trump repeated those claims in the 2018 midterm elections, saying we were being invaded by Central Americans, although statistically we were still at relatively low numbers. Even at that, the vast majority were not seeking to enter illegally, but to apply for political asylum based on well-founded fears of persecution in their home countries, primarily El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Contrary to his actions, Trump has repeatedly claimed he was only against illegal immigration and wanted to leave open a big, beautiful door in the wall for legal immigrants.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that Trump has had the most anti-legal immigration presidency in history. From the outset, his administration has waged an all-out assault on the very few options available to foreign nationals to legally immigrate. In an Oval Office meeting with congressional leadership, the president even lamented that immigrants were coming from shithole countries instead of countries like Norway.

Trump has outsourced his immigration policy to Stephen Miller, a well-known anti-immigrant restrictionist. Miller, in turn, has awarded key policy positions in immigration agencies to senior executives from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Numbers USA and the Center for Immigration Studies, all of which are committed to reducing legal immigration.

In his effort to ban or significantly reduced all legal immigration, Trump in early 2017 banned immigration from 13 countries on dubious national security grounds, and has subsequently banned the issuance of temporary work visas, banned the issuance of employment- and most family-based immigrant visas, urged the abolishment of birthright citizenship, gutted our legal asylum system, slashed our refugee program to virtually zero, abolished DACA, cancelled TPS, implemented punitive policies separating children from their parents, reduced the number of foreign students in the US, increased processing times and denied applications for legal status that are approvable under existing law and previous interpretations.

Each new generation of immigrants has only strengthened America. Every American is proud of their own immigrant heritage, be it the Chinese and Irish workers who built the transcontinental railroad, Italian and other immigrant workers who built the infrastructure of big cities from the subways to the skyscrapers, Hispanic workers who are always the first on the scene to help rebuild America following natural disasters, do the backbreaking work of building our homes, and harvest our vegetables and fruits, or top scientists from China, India and elsewhere who have led the US in developing many of our great technologies and win most U.S. Nobel prizes in science.

One in six U.S. workers is an immigrant. In cities like Houston, a quarter of our population is foreign born.

Policies like those pursued by Trump do not protect America, they only diminish America, our economy and our future.

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Trump has mounted an unprecedented attack on legal immigration. America will be worse for it. - Arizona Mirror

WednesdayonThe Chad Hasty Show,Theo Wold, Deputy Assistant to President Trump, joined the broadcast to talk about the progress the Trump administration is making on immigration reform.

While speaking about merit-based immigration policies, and whatPresident Trump is doingto changeUnited States' policies in that direction, Wold said,

Just think of it as skills-based immigration. We want people who come here to be able to have a job, day one, we want them to be able to speak our language, and we want them to know a little bit about our culture, our history and our government. And as you said, that's not controversial, because there are countries all over the world, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, who have have these systems. The same countries that the left always says have great health care systems, education systems and the like.

Wold continued, saying of the administration's work on immigration policy,

We are putting in place, as we speak, the building blocks to realign our legal immigration system. A realignment that hasn't happened since 1963, before we put a man on the moon, and a lot has changed since 1963. So the president's full steam ahead, and when we flip the lights on a second term in January of next year, people are going to be very surprised at what we've built.

Listen to the entire interview with Theo Woldin the video above.

The Chad Hasty Show airs weekday mornings live, from 8:30 AM to 11:00 AM on News/Talk 95.1 FM and 790 AM KFYO. You may also listen to the show live online atKFYO.com, on the fantastic, free and easy to useKFYO App, all Alexa-enabled devices using theKFYO Skill, as well as on Google Home devices. You may follow Chad on Twitter:@ChadHastyRadio, Instagram:instagram.com/chadhastyradio, Snapchat: @ChadHastyRadio. Much more information about Hasty, as well as his extra-show content and commentary may be found atkfyo.com/author/chadhasty. Be sure to tune indailyto KFYO and check our website for the latest news and commentary, follow KFYO Radio on Twitter:@KFYO, and subscribe toKFYO's YouTube channel.

Smiling Bush Turns Into the Masked Rider

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Theo Wold Says Trump Immigration Reform 'Full Steam Ahead' - News/Talk 790 KFYO