Welcome to the National Immigration Forum’s weekly bulletin! Every Friday, our policy team rounds up key developments around immigration policy in Washington and across the country. The bulletin includes items on the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, as well as some coverage at the state and local levels.
Here’s a breakdown of the bulletin’s sections:
DEVELOPMENTS IN IMMIGRATION THIS WEEK
BILLS INTRODUCED AND CONSIDERED
SPOTLIGHT ON NATIONAL IMMIGRATION FORUM RESOURCES
DEVELOPMENTS IN IMMIGRATION THIS WEEK
Immigration policy is a dynamic field subject to constant change. Here, we summarize some of the most important recent developments in immigration policy on the federal, legal, state, and local levels.
Content warning: This section sometimes includes events and information that can prove disturbing.
Federal
Biden Delivers State of the Union Address, Draws Contrasts With Trump on Immigration
On March 7, President Joe Biden used his State of the Union address to call on Congress to pass the bipartisan border security compromise developed by senators and his administration in recent months, which in part would fund thousands of new immigration personnel and create a new, controversial presidential expulsion authority.
“Look, folks, we have a simple choice. We can fight about fixing the border, or we can fix it. I’m ready to fix it. Send me the border bill now,” Biden said.
Yet even as the commander-in-chief took a tough stance on border crossings, he still differentiated between his position on immigration and his predecessor Donald Trump’s, with whom he’ll likely face off in a rematch during this year’s general election.
Biden said that — unlike Trump — he refused to demonize immigrants, separate families, or ban people based on their faith.
“I know who we are as Americans. We are the only nation in the world with a heart and soul that draws from old and new,” he said. “Home to Native Americans whose ancestors have been here for thousands of years. Home to people from every place on Earth. They came freely. Some came in chains. Some came when famine struck, like my ancestral family in Ireland. Some to flee persecution, to chase dreams that are impossible anywhere but here in America.
“That’s America, and we all come from somewhere, but we’re all Americans.”
Yet Biden also raised eyebrows when he apparently improvised a response to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), who yelled out the name of Laken Riley, a young woman who was allegedly murdered by a noncitizen. Biden called Riley’s killer “an illegal,” a label that his administration ordered to stop using in July 2021.
Riley’s death — a horrific tragedy — has trumped up criticism of Biden’s border policies and galvanized support for extreme legislative proposals, including a bill named for the victim that passed the House Thursday with some Democratic support.
February 2024 Refugee Numbers Put U.S. Refugee Program on Track to Resettle Over 100,000 This Fiscal Year
The U.S. resettled 10,252 refugees in February 2024, an increase of 1,054 from the 9,198 refugees resettled in January. This is the highest monthly arrival number since fiscal year 2016, some eight years ago. The five-month total of refugee arrivals for fiscal year 2024 is 41,243.
Overall, FY 2024 is shaping up to be strong for refugee resettlement. If the U.S. refugee pipeline can push the monthly arrivals even higher, on a monthly basis, we could be close to reaching the cap of 125,000 refugees for the fiscal year. The last time the U.S. resettled 125,000 refugees or more was back in FY 1992, around 32 years ago.
Canada Reinstates Visa Requirements for Most Mexicans After Uptick in Asylum Claims, Border Crossings into the U.S.
On February 29, Canada announced it was reimposing a visa requirement for most Mexicans after a growing number of asylum seekers have flown directly to Canada to evade the dangerous trek across the U.S.’s southern border.
Under the new rules, Mexicans with a current temporary U.S. visa or a Canadian visa from the past decade need only receive an electronic travel authorization.
Since Canada forwent visa requirements for Mexicans in 2016, Mexican asylum claims there have multiplied exponentially to reach 24,000 last year. Some migrants have also been flying to Canada and then crossing south to reach the U.S.
“We needed to give Mexico, because of our friendship, the chance to rectify things,” said Marc Miller, Canada’s immigration minister.“This clearly was not done, so we had to take a decision.”
For his part, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador offered a “small, fraternal, respectful reproach” to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau but in turn promised “prudence” from his government.
H-1B Registration Process Begins for Fiscal Year 2025
On March 6, the much anticipated yearly H-1B visa registration process began at noon eastern time, with a first round scheduled to end at noon eastern on Friday, March 22. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the benefit-granting arm of the U.S. immigration system, hopes this year to curtail the number of fraudulent and duplicate registrations they process based on a new rule announced in January.
Most H-1B visas are subject to a strict numerical cap each fiscal year. 65,000 spots are filled by skilled professionals whose positions require a bachelor’s degree, while an additional 20,000 are granted to professionals with a U.S. master’s or higher. Skilled professionals who work for institutions of higher education, nonprofit research, and government research organizations are excluded from these caps. Still, demand for the valuable visas — which last for three years, can generally be renewed for another three, and allow applicants to apply for permanent residency, unlike most nonimmigrant visa categories — has vastly outpaced supply for years.
Recently, some employers had tried to game the H-1B lottery system by submitting multiple registrations for the same prospective employee. By doing so, employers effectively put their prospective employees’ names in the proverbial hat many times, hoping to raise their chances of being selected to submit a petition and eventually be granted a visa.
Amid these bad-faith dealings, USCIS has changed the registration process to be “beneficiary-centered,” meaning each potential employee can only count once for lottery purposes, regardless of how many different organizations register to petition for them. USCIS also plans to drastically increase the fee required to file a registration from $10 to $215 following the initial registration period for fiscal year 2025.
Legal
SCOTUS Temporarily Blocks Texas’s S.B. 4 From Taking Effect
On March 4, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily stalled Texas’s Senate Bill 4 from taking effect until at least March 13, once again weighing in on the state’s heated battle with the Biden administration over who has the authority to control immigration enforcement.
Justice Samuel Alito issued an order halting the Fifth Circuit’s previous go-ahead for Texas officials to soon begin enforcing S.B. 4, but he also gave the state an opportunity to respond by March 11.
The aggressive new law creates state-level criminal penalties for irregular border crossings and effectively enacts a state deportation regime, through apparent violations to the federal Supremacy Clause that critics — and at least one judge — have suggested are unconstitutional.
Meanwhile, in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday, former Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz criticized both Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and the White House for their responses at the border.
“The National Guardsmen even, to some degree, the Border Patrol agents have become pawns in this political game between the two sides,” he said.
“The cartels, the criminal organizations, that’s who’s winning in all of this,” he added. “They’re sitting back reaping all the benefits while they watch the state of Texas and Washington D.C. go at it.”
Court Filing: CBP Risking Children’s Safety in ‘Open-Air Detention Sites’
On February 29, children’s rights lawyers filed a new legal action detailing egregious conditions where migrant kids are being forced to wait in “open-air detention sites” along the U.S.-Mexico border in California.
One anecdote involved a young Colombian girl who was rushed to the hospital after she began convulsing from the wind and cold pummeling one of the outdoor camps. Another story — shared by an aid worker — told of how a mother and her one-year-old daughter had plummeted from the border wall but refused hospitalization out of concern it would affect their immigration case.
Theresa Cheng, a doctor and civil rights lawyer who had witnessed the camps’ conditions, “said she saw a young woman suffering from a stroke, a pregnant woman about to give birth, tiny newborns in need of more formula and elderly people crossing the border using walkers,” according to CNN.
“This population,” she said, “is a lot more vulnerable than what people expect it to be.”
Yet even as federal officials have allegedly directed migrants and asylum seekers — including children — to wait in these makeshift outdoor encampments, they haven’t provided sufficient food, water, shelter, or services, attorneys say.
Meanwhile, preliminary data indicate irregular border crossings were up in February after dropping significantly the month before, CBS News reports. Early figures for March suggest another uptick, with over 7,000 migrants processed on some days.
State and Local
Man Who Wrongly Became Face of Times Square Police Attack Cleared of Wrongdoing
On March 1, Jhoan Boada — a 22-year-old Venezuelan man — was cleared of any wrongdoing after prosecutors revealed he had been misidentified as one of the people involved in a Times Square melee between police and migrants that has stoked nationwide outrage.
Boada has endured intense media scrutiny and vilification during the highly publicized aftermath of the brawl. He is one of several individuals who were falsely accused or have had their charges downgraded after further investigation into the incident.
“It was a political football, and people were attacked with a broad brush,” said Javier Damien, an attorney for Boada. “It’s very sad.”
New footage has also thrown into question the series of events that led to the fight, as it’s unclear why police officers approached the group of migrants in the first place — or why an officer cornered one of the men against a wall even though he appeared to be walking away.
“Why were the cops giving them a hard time, when they didn’t seem to be doing anything that calls for that?” said Robert Gangi, the director of the Police Reform Organizing Project. “It does not justify the men throwing them on the ground and kicking them. But it seriously calls into question the behavior of these cops.”
BILLS INTRODUCED AND CONSIDERED
It can be challenging to keep up with the constant barrage of proposed legislation in Congress. So, every week, we round up new bills. This list includes federal legislative proposals that have recently been introduced and that are relevant to immigration policy.
Please follow this link to find new relevant bills, as well as proposed legislation from past weeks.
LEGISLATIVE FLOOR CALENDAR
The U.S. Senate is expected to be in session from Monday, March 11 through Thursday, March 14, 2024.
The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to be in session from Monday, March 11 through Wednesday, March 13, 2024.
UPCOMING HEARINGS AND MARKUPS
Here, we round up congressional hearings and markups happening in the field or in Washington.
Organizational Oversight: Examining TSA’s Post-Modernization Efforts
Date: Tuesday, March 12, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. EST (House Homeland Security)
Location: 310 Cannon House Office Building, Washington, D.C.
Witnesses: TBA
GOVERNMENT REPORTS
Reports by bodies such as the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Research Service, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General provide invaluable information on immigration policy and practice. Here, we give brief summaries of new immigration-related reports, with links to the resources themselves in case you want to learn more.
Congressional Research Service (CRS); Can the President ‘Close the Border’? Relevant Laws and Considerations; Updated February 29, 2024
This legal sidebar considers the executive branch’s extensive authority to regulate borders and noncitizen entries, looking at prior executive action, existing relevant laws, and potential legal points of contention.
SPOTLIGHT ON NATIONAL IMMIGRATION FORUM RESOURCES
The Forum is constantly publishing new policy-focused resources that engage with some of the most topical issues around immigration today. Here are a few that are particularly relevant this week:
Border Security and Asylum Reform in the Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024: Bill Explainer
This explainer breaks down the major immigration and border policy changes in the bipartisan compromise that was defeated in the Senate earlier this week.
Still More Room to Grow: Immigrants Can Reverse the U.S. Population Decline and its Economic Consequences
In 2024, the United States continues to face significant demographic challenges. Propelled by falling birth rates, the U.S. population is rapidly aging and population growth is steadily declining. In turn, the country is experiencing economic and social pressures caused by labor shortages. This article provides a follow-up to “Room to Grow,” a 2021 white paper where the National Immigration Forum proposed a methodology that showed the country needed a 37% increase in net immigration levels over those projected for fiscal year 2020 (approximately 370,000 additional immigrants a year) to prevent the U.S. from falling into demographic deficit and socioeconomic decline.
Six Actionable Recommendations to Improve Safety and Wellbeing for Asylum-Seeking Families in the Context of the Biden Administration’s Fast-Tracked Deportations
This position paper details realistic policy changes that the Biden administration could make to help ensure asylum seekers enrolled in the Family Expedited Removal Management (FERM) program have access to a process that is as fair, efficient, and humane as possible in the context of fast-tracked proceedings.
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*This Bulletin is not intended to be comprehensive. Please contact Alexandra Villarreal, Senior Policy and Advocacy Associate at the National Immigration Forum, with comments and suggestions of additional items to be included. Alexandra can be reached at avillarreal@immigrationforum.org. Thank you.