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In a welcome immigration-related development, the Trump administration has proposed increasing the annual allotment of H-2B visas for temporary nonagricultural workers. As employers have long argued, the current cap is woefully inadequate to meet the demand for workers in seasonal industries. The H-2B program is designed for seasonal work. Some of the most common occupations […]

The post 30,000 More Seasonal Worker Visas to Become Available After a Bipartisan Push appeared first on Immigration Impact.

In this blog post, AILA member Tracie Klinke shares some situations and tough questions she has encountered recently in practicing family immigration law and how her experiences have fed into the development of sessions for AILA’s Annual Conference Family Track.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ international field offices provide critical services to Americans living abroad, as well as refugees and other immigrants. But in a supposed effort to cut costs, the Trump administration plans to close all 23 offices than span 21 countries by the end of 2019. These offices are a lifeline for those […]

The post Closing USCIS International Offices Will Leave US Citizens, Military Members, and Refugees Abroad Without Help appeared first on Immigration Impact.

AILA member Jeremy Weber shares insights into the vital role USCIS International Operations serve and highlights how closure of those offices will negatively impact all too many Americans, their families, American businesses, and refugees.

In a disheartening decision on Tuesday, Attorney General William Barr announced he plans to eliminate bond hearings for asylum seekers who pass an initial asylum screening interview after entering the United States. However, this new anti-immigrant policy will face legal challenges before it goes into effect. The Attorney General’s decision, in a case called Matter […]

The post The Trump Administration Plans to Incarcerate Some Asylum Seekers Indefinitely appeared first on Immigration Impact.

The Trump administration has agreed to reverse course and begin the process of reuniting 2,700 children living in Central America with their parents in the United States. The decision comes as part of a lawsuit that challenged the termination of the Central American Minors (CAM) program. This program allowed parents legally living in the United […]

The post Government Will Help 2,700 Central American Children Reunite With Their Families After Court Settlement appeared first on Immigration Impact.

The survival of the nation’s Social Security system depends upon the taxes paid by each new generation of workers. As older workers enter retirement and draw upon Social Security, the continued tax payments of younger workers keep the system solvent and ensure that it will still be there when they, too, reach retirement age. In […]

The post Immigrants’ Taxes Help Save the Social Security System appeared first on Immigration Impact.

The biased and narrow portrayal of immigrants and people of color in Hollywood is not a new phenomenon. However, some are beginning to turn the tide. As a 2017 study points out, 50 percent of Latino immigrants on television are portrayed as criminals. 33 percent of Black immigrants are portrayed as criminals or incarcerated. The same is true for […]

The post Director Jordan Peele Casts More Immigrant Actors, Tells More Inclusive Stories  appeared first on Immigration Impact.

American businesses rely on foreign-born workers in many industries and the country’s immigration system has channels specifically dedicated to employment-based immigration. The Trump administration, however, has deliberately restricted and slowed the pace of these legal immigration channels. This is reflected in an abrupt jump in immigration application denial rates, increased scrutiny of nonimmigrant and immigrant […]

The post Why It’s Critical to Take a Closer Look at Foreign-Worker Petitions Data appeared first on Immigration Impact.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned from her position on Monday. She was reportedly forced from office after President Trump grew frustrated with the government’s inability to stop asylum seekers from arriving at the southern border. Her departure marked an extraordinary week in which most DHS leadership faced the chopping block. These […]

The post Chaos Continues at DHS as Trump Purges More of His Senior Immigration Team appeared first on Immigration Impact.

Border apprehensions are rising quickly and the demographic profile of apprehended migrants is changing.

The post What’s happening at the U.S.-Mexico border in 6 charts appeared first on Pew Research Center.

AILA member and Senior Legal Editor Rizwan Hassan writes about the recent New York State Scholastic Chess child champion Tanitoluwa Adewumi as an example of the asylum seekers and refugees who have made America great over generations, urging that we take action and call for good immigration policy.

Asylum seekers are often imprisoned in immigration detention for weeks or months before they can ask a judge to release them, even though they’re entitled to bond hearings. But this injustice may soon be corrected for some asylum seekers. On Friday, a U.S. district court judge ruled that certain detained asylum seekers must receive a […]

The post Certain Detained Asylum Seekers Must Receive a Bond Hearing Within 7 Days, Judge Orders appeared first on Immigration Impact.

As another H-1B season comes to an end, one thing is clear: the demand for educated foreign workers is as high as ever. The annual H-1B cap was reached within a mere 5 business days. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began accepting petitions for Fiscal Year 2020 on April 1. On April 12, the […]

The post USCIS Hits H-1B Cap Within Days, Showing America Needs Foreign Workers appeared first on Immigration Impact.

Oswaldo Barrientos has lived as a legal immigrant in Denver, Colorado for almost his entire life. Now 30, he and his mother immigrated to the United States from El Salvador when he was a year old. But in his recent interview with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), he was denied American citizenship—simply because he […]

The post Immigrants Denied Citizenship for Working in the Legal Marijuana Industry appeared first on Immigration Impact.

The scene outside a technology repair company in Allen, Texas on Wednesday was bleak. In the aftermath of an immigration raid, family members gathered to make phone calls, connect with attorneys, and give support to the workers arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that afternoon. ICE agents arrested more than 280 employees suspected of […]

The post ‘We Just Heard Screaming.’ ICE Arrests 280 Workers in the Largest Immigration Raid in a Decade appeared first on Immigration Impact.

  April 1, 2019 Immigration policy and enforcement are in flux under the Trump administration. The separation and detention of families at the Mexico-U.

Texas—and specifically El Paso—has been ground zero for many of the incredibly harmful policies introduced under the Trump administration, such as family separation, returning asylum seekers to Mexico to wait for hearings, and keeping migrant families under an overpass for days to wait for processing. Findings uncovered in a new complaint, however, reveal profound deficiencies […]

The post ‘Your Client Is Going Bye-Bye.’ New Investigation Details Immigration Judges’ Cruel Behavior in El Paso Court appeared first on Immigration Impact.

Worldwide, an estimated $625 billion (USD) was sent by migrants to individuals in their home countries in 2017, a 7% increase from 2016, when the amount was $586 billion, according to economists at the World Bank. This increase follows two consecutive years of decline.

The post Remittance flows worldwide in 2017 appeared first on Pew Research Center.

President Trump has threatened to close the U.S.-Mexico border—again. As families continued to arrive at the border in March—typically the busiest month for border crossings—Trump declared he would close the border and cut off aid to three Central American countries for not stopping people from coming to the United States. This marks at least the […]

The post Trump Threatens to Close the Border After Cutting Aid to Central American Countries appeared first on Immigration Impact.