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US Immigration Reform: Obama Ignores Legal Immigrants & Embraces Illegal Immigration

On Friday June 15, 2012 via Homeland Security Security Janet Napolitano and then by President Obama himself, a new policy directive was announced that the US Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) arm of the USCIS (United States Customs and Immigration Services) would no longer deport many illegal immigrants originally brought into the country as children.

Essentially effective immediately children brought into the US under the age of 16 at the time of entry by illegal immigrant parents who are currently enrolled or graduated in High School,  College or Certificate level program or whom have served in the Military as well as now under the age of 30 with no criminal record would no longer be actively deported. Additionally they will be issued renewable 2 year work permits which essentially gives almost the same rights as a Green Card holder. It is estimated that this would cover around 800,000 kids mainly of Latino descent.

Now while it is clearly not these kids fault that they came into the country illegally and something should be done in this vein to resolve their status given they are actively and positively contributing to their local communities, it is a shame that again the legal immigrants have been ignored.

Legal Immigrants who have been working for many years on US working visas, some of which also have long standing Green Card PERM applications where they have been on waiting lists for years not only don’t benefit from this but quite possibly will have their own cases delayed with processing and longer waiting lists. Many residents of India, China and Mexico have waiting list times of 10 years and more, and those residents from all nations coming under the EB-3 visa (Green Card) classification have been on waiting lists for years, following the rules, paying extraordinary financial and legal costs related to immigration, paying thousands in taxes with no benefit and yet again they have to endure the bad end of the situation.

It is quite obvious the Obama Administration with the 2012 Presidential Election ahead in November are looking to shore up their large lead among Latino Voters and encourage that base to come out and vote with this directive that preempts a potential Republican led DREAM Act bill. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida (a Cuban American) a potential running mate of presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney  is soon to submit a different version of the DREAM Act to the Democratic version which has been on the Congressional agenda since 2000 that is very similar to this directive from the President which bypasses Congress.

Again it is not that we believe this directive is misguided and is probably a good step to ensuring ever more Immigrant Americans can help US Prosperity and the US Economy as they are already doing in disproportionate numbers today. It is the fact that the legal immigrants who have followed the rules again get nothing and no reward from the doing the right thing and taking the much harder road of getting Permanent Residency and potentially US Citizenship.

To give you an idea apart from the huge costs and massively years long waiting list, legal immigrants to get to permanency in the US often have to endure;

The message to legal immigrants is that you may as well break the rules because what have you got to lose and you may stand to gain from policy directives like this.

Let’s hope that Legal Immigrants don’t continue to be ignored because for once Republican political talking points are spot on, this creates completely the wrong Incentive system for foreigners all over the world wanting to move to the US.

Cj

US Deports 400,000 Foreigners In 2011

We don’t often write about the major political issues around US Immigration as the primary purpose of this site is to help foreigners to live, work and study in the United States. However we have been outspoken on occasion with some issues and legislation surrounding things like the H1B visa legislation, Employer hiring practices of Foreign Immigrants, Green Card Waiting Lists and the Start-Up Visa as well as report on things like the Dream Act and the plight of Illegal Immigrants.

Today we thought we give an update as released by the US Government as the nature of Deportations of foreigners from the US in the fiscal Immigration year FY-2011. We don’t really have an opinion on this as we don’t know anything about any of the individual cases or much about deportation generally as a US Immigration issue. Certainly for convicted violent felons who happen to be foreigners it is hard to feel much sympathy when you think the many thousands of foreigners who are want to come to the US legally or those that are already here on waiting lists for more permanent status like a Green Card or US Citizenship.

However deportation is something that any Immigrant who is not a US citizen certainly faces as a reality of the status whether due to fault of their own or things beyond their control. So it is important to be aware of what is going on in the world of US Immigration as far as deportation is concerned. In the past we have written specifically about the cases of deportation of people who were already approved and received an H1B visa from the US consulate for dubious and yet fully unknown reasons at best.

So exactly 396,906 foreigners were deported in FY2011 of which about 55% had either a felony or misdemeanor conviction for some crime committed within the US. Unfortunately this crime rate was up about 89% from 2008 levels and possibly could be attributed to the more bleak economic picture and bad job situation meaning many of these immigrants who are living close to the poverty line were following a trend that is all too common with crime and bad prospects for prosperity. This also includes people who were found to have re-entered the US after being ordered to leave or violating an earlier order to leave the country.

Let’s hope that these negative statistics with both deportation and violent crimes committed by foreigners trends back down in next period and that positive legislative efforts and reforms are made to make the whole US Immigration system fairer for all.

Cj