ReportWire

Tag: application

  • After National Guard shooting, administration cracks down on legal immigration

    [ad_1]

    WASHINGTON — Sophia Nyazi’s husband, Milad, shook her awake at 8 a.m. “ICE is here,” he told her.

    Three uniformed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were downstairs at the family’s home on Long Island, N.Y., on Tuesday, according to a video reviewed by The Times that she captured from atop the staircase.

    Nyazi said the agents asked whether her husband was applying for a green card. They told her they would have to detain him because of the shooting of two National Guard members a week earlier in Washington, D.C.

    “He has nothing to do with that shooting,” Nyazi, 27, recalled answering. “We don’t even know that person.”

    Her protests didn’t matter. The Trump administration has put into motion a broad and unprecedented set of policy changes aimed at substantially limiting legal immigration avenues, including for immigrants long considered the most vulnerable.

    Unfortunately, I think the administration took this one very tragic incident and politicized it as a way to shut down even legal immigration

    — Sharvari Dalal-Dheini, of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn.

    Milad Nyazi, 28, was detained because, like the man charged in the shooting which left one National Guard member dead, he is from Afghanistan.

    The administration has paused decisions on all applications filed with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, by people seeking asylum. The visa and immigration applications of Afghans, whom the U.S. had welcomed in 2021 as it pulled all troops from the country, have been halted.

    Officials also froze the processing of immigration cases of people from 19 countries the administration considers “high-risk” and will conduct case-by-case reviews of green cards and other immigration benefits given to people from those countries since former President Biden took office in 2021.

    Immigration lawyers say they learned that dozens of naturalization ceremonies and interviews for green cards are being canceled for immigrants from Haiti, Iran, Guinea and other countries on the list.

    In a couple of cases, immigration officers told immigrants that they had been prepared to grant a green card, but were unable to do so because of the new guidance, said Gregory Chen, government relations director at American Immigration Lawyers Assn.

    Although it is unclear exactly how many people could be affected by the new rules, 1.5 million immigrants have asylum cases pending with USCIS.

    “These are sweeping changes that exact collective punishment on a wide swath of people who are trying to do things the right way,” said Amanda Baran, former chief of policy and strategy at USCIS under the Biden administration. “I worry about all the people who have dutifully filed applications and whose lives are now on hold.”

    Administration officials called the Nov. 26 shooting a “terrorist attack” and defended the changes as necessary to protect the country. Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, faces charges stemming from the shooting that killed Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and critically wounded Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24.

    “The protection of this country and of the American people remains paramount, and the American people will not bear the cost of the prior administration’s reckless resettlement policies,” Joseph Edlow, director of USCIS, said in a message posted Nov. 27 on X. “American safety is non-negotiable.”

    Lakanwal pleaded not guilty last week and his motive remains under investigation. In Afghanistan, he served in a counterterrorism unit operated by the CIA.

    Lakanwal entered the U.S. in 2021 through a Biden administration program that resettled nearly 200,000 Afghans in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal, officials said. He applied for asylum in December 2024 and it was approved under the Trump administration in April, according to a statement by the nonprofit #AfghanEvac.

    Afghans who worked with U.S. troops were believed to face danger if left behind under the Taliban-run government. Along with undergoing routine security screening, they submitted to additional “rigorous” vetting, which included biometric and biographic checks by counterterrorism and intelligence professionals, the Department of Homeland Security said at the time.

    Two federal reports from 2024 and this year pointed to some failings of the screening, including data inaccuracies and the presence of 55 evacuees who were later identified on terrorism watch lists, though the latter report noted that the FBI had then followed all required processes to mitigate any potential threat.

    It’s unclear exactly how the administration will carry out reviews of thousands of people who already live legally in the U.S. The federal government can’t easily strip people of permanent legal status. The threat of reopening cases, however, has sparked alarm in immigrant communities across the country.

    About 58,600 Afghan immigrants call California home as of 2023, far more than any other state, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Interviews with a dozen local community advocates, immigration attorneys and family members of those detained paint an aggressive effort by the federal government to round up recent Afghan immigrants in the wake of the D.C. shooting.

    “Unfortunately, I think the administration took this one very tragic incident and politicized it as a way to shut down even legal immigration. And it’s definitely gone much broader than the Afghan community,” said Sharvari Dalal-Dheini, the director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Assn.

    Trump administration officials cited the shooting in a spate of policy changes last week.

    On Friday, USCIS announced it had established a new center to strengthen screening with supplemental reviews of immigration applications, in part using artificial intelligence. The USCIS Vetting Center, based in Atlanta, will “centralize enhanced vetting of aliens and allow the agency to respond more nimbly to changes in a shifting threat landscape,” the agency said.

    On Thursday, USCIS said work permits granted to immigrants would expire after 18 months, not five years. The change includes work permits for those admitted as refugees, with pending green card applications and with pending asylum applications.

    In a memorandum Tuesday outlining the pause on asylum applications and the immigration cases of people from the 19 countries also subject to a travel ban, USCIS acknowledged that the changes could result in processing delays but had determined it was “necessary and appropriate” when weighed “against the agency’s obligation to protect and preserve national security.”

    Immigrants already had been on high alert as the Trump administration canceled temporary humanitarian programs, cut back refugee admissions — except for a limited number of white South African Afrikaners — and increased attempts to send those with deportation orders to countries where they have no personal connection.

    Before the Washington shooting, a Nov. 21 memo showed that the administration planned to review the cases of more than 200,000 refugees admitted under the Biden administration. Although asylum seekers apply after arriving in the U.S., refugees apply for admission from outside the country.

    Nyazi questioned why Afghans are being singled out, noting that a white person allegedly assassinated Charlie Kirk, but “I don’t see any ICE agents going into white people’s houses.”

    Asked why Milad Nyazi was detained, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant public affairs secretary for Homeland Security, called him a criminal, citing two arrests on suspicion of domestic violence.

    “Under Secretary [Kristi] Noem, DHS has been going full throttle on identifying and arresting known or suspected terrorists and criminal illegal aliens that came in through Biden’s fraudulent parole programs and working to get the criminals and public safety threats OUT of our country,” McLaughlin said in a statement.

    Nyazi said the charges, which did not stem from incidents of physical violence, were dropped and his record was later expunged.

    She and her husband got engaged in 2019 in Afghanistan and applied for a fiance visa, because Nyazi is a U.S. citizen. Their application was approved in 2021. Soon after, with the Taliban takeover in full force, the U.S. government allowed Milad Nyazi to fly to the U.S. He has a pending green card application, Nyazi said.

    On Tuesday, the couple’s 3-year-old daughter screamed and cried as her father was handcuffed and taken away. He has a court hearing this week.

    Zahra Billoo, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and others say Afghans in various stages of their legal immigration process — not only those with deportation orders — have been targeted. She said at least 17 Afghans in the Bay Area have been detained since Monday.

    Lawyers said many of the Afghans detained last week had arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border, where they had sought asylum.

    Paris Etemadi Scott, legal director of the Pars Equality Center in San José, said three of her clients, an Afghan mother and her two sons who are both in their early 20s, were detained Dec. 1 during a routine check-in with ICE. All have pending asylum applications, she said.

    Rebecca Olszewski, managing attorney at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, said her Afghan client, who also has a pending asylum case, reported for his monthly virtual check-in Friday and was told to show up in person the next day, where he was detained.

    Since the shooting, administration officials and the president have used dehumanizing language to describe immigrants. In announcing the 19-country travel ban Dec. 1, Noem posted on X that she was recommending a “a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.”

    In a Cabinet meeting the next day, Trump referred to Somali immigrants as “garbage” who “contribute nothing.” (A few days later, Noem said the administration would expand the travel ban to more than 30 countries.)

    On Thanksgiving Day, Trump had said on his social media platform that he intends to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries” and deport those who are “non-compatible with Western Civilization.”

    In recent days, a ghostly quiet has overtaken Shafiullah Hotak’s regular haunts in North Sacramento, where the Afghan population in the city is especially dense. Hotak, 38, is an Afghan immigrant who served as a program manager at refugee resettlement organization Lao Family Community Development until layoffs due to federal cuts forced him out of work in May.

    On Thursday, immigration agents banged on doors at an apartment complex on Marconi Avenue, where hundreds of Afghans have resettled. Just one employee sat in an Afghan-owned tax and bookkeeping business that was typically buzzing with clients. A nearby park, where teenagers kick around soccer balls and giggling packs of children roam after school, was empty. And the lines at a halal market known for its sesame-topped Afghan bread had disappeared.

    “The situation we have in our community reminds me of when we used to go to work in Afghanistan,” Hotak said. “We had to take different routes every day because people who were against the U.S. mission in Afghanistan were targeting people. There were bombings and shootings.”

    Hotak said “Kill the eyes,” is what the enemies of the U.S. in Afghanistan used to advise as to how to deal with local Afghans aiding the military, in order to blind their operations.

    “But nowadays those ‘eyes’ are here in the U.S. and the U.S. government is looking to pick them up and put them in jail,” Hotak said.

    Times staff writers Castillo reported from Washington and Hussain and Uranga from Los Angeles.

    [ad_2]

    Suhauna Hussain, Andrea Castillo, Rachel Uranga

    Source link

  • A shadowy L.A. crime ring is hijacking the IDs of foreign scholars, fraud expert says

    [ad_1]

    Using apartments in the San Fernando Valley and Glendale area, a shadowy group of identity thieves has been quietly exploiting a new kind of victim — foreign scholars who left the U.S. years ago but whose Social Security numbers still linger in American databases, according to a cybercrime expert.

    Criminals are resurrecting these dormant identities and submitting hundreds of applications for bank accounts and credit cards, says David Maimon, head of fraud insights at SentiLink and a criminology professor at Georgia State University. The Southern California-based fraudsters can then max out lines of credit while unknowing victims live halfway across the world, he says.

    Sgt. Frank Diana, with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department Fraud and Cyber Crimes Bureau, said organized crime rings in the county are highly skilled at stealing identities, concealing their IP addresses and laundering their loot to make it hard to detect.

    Local identity crime rings “are doing it to make millions of dollars, live in nice houses, all at the expense of taxpayers,” Diana said. “It’s not their money, but they’re living like kings.”

    Maimon and his colleague Karl Lubenow said they uncovered this tactic of stealing foreign scholars’ IDs through their work at SentiLink, a company that works with financial institutions to verify identities and detect fraud.

    At first they were asked to examine applications where foreign movie stars and athletes were probably being impersonated.

    In the process, they said, their investigation unearthed something much larger: hundreds of applications submitted to major credit issuers from a set of similar California street addresses and IP addresses in September.

    As they sifted through the files, they saw that, in addition to targeting a handful of foreign celebrities, the fraudsters were impersonating scores of former foreign scholars who had come to the U.S. as long ago as 1977 and left as recently as 2024.

    These scholars were required to obtain Social Security numbers to work on campus in roles such as research or teaching assistants, postdoctoral fellows or visiting lecturers. They are no longer living in the U.S., but their personal information remains scattered across school databases and credit bureaus, which according to Maimon makes them prime prey for opportunistic hackers and fraudsters.

    Should victimized scholars seek to return to the U.S., they would encounter a massive pile of debt and a crippling credit score that could prevent them from gaining work or housing, Maimon said. Meanwhile, financial institutions are liable for the debt, which can ultimately increase the cost of their services to all customers, he added.

    Most of the applications that Maimon identified as fraudulent originated at apartments at six key addresses in Van Nuys, North Hollywood, Toluca Lake, Glendale and Thai Town. It’s likely that crime ring members use addresses they have access to so that they can pick up credit cards, checks and other sensitive documents sent in the mail, Maimon said.

    The nexus of these addresses falls in the Burbank and Glendale area, which Maimon points out is the home of Armenian Power, an organized crime group known for conducting sophisticated financial crimes.

    He also noted that scholars from Turkey, Armenia’s historical rival, accounted for about half of all fraudulent applications. The remainder were impersonating scholars from a variety of countries such as Japan, India, the Netherlands, Portugal and Greece.

    “They [Armenian Power] have been involved in identity theft and white-collar crime for the last 15 years or so,” Maimon said. “It leads us to believe that these guys are essentially stealing all these identities and using them in order to create all those bank accounts and credit lines.”

    Sgt. Diana said that the tactics used by the alleged identity theft ring that Maimon discovered align with those often used by Armenian crime groups, which tend to be based in the Burbank and Glendale areas.

    Although Diana does not know whether Armenian groups are behind fraud attempts targeting foreign scholars, he said these groups are responsible for a significant portion of organized financial crime in L.A. County.

    “We run into a lot of sophisticated Armenian crime groups that are experts on identity theft,” he said. “That’s what they do for a living and [they] make a lot of money.”

    The Sheriff’s Department is not currently investigating any identity theft cases involving foreign scholars, he said. A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department said the department did not currently have any investigations related to this topic. The Burbank Police Department declined to comment.

    Maimon has not reported his findings to authorities, in part due to fear of retaliation from the criminals involved, he said. His previous efforts to shine a light on fraudsters led to his Social Security number and personal information being released on the dark web, resulting in years of identity theft attempts, he said.

    He has reported his findings to the affected financial institutions through his role as a fraud investigator.

    One of the financial institutions, which did not wish to be named due to security concerns, said in a statement that it first realized something was awry after seeing a series of suspicious high-dollar transactions in L.A. and Kern counties coming from accounts in the Glendale area. The majority of the account holders only had addresses dating back to 2023 and very limited credit history.

    The institution said it was continuing to receive fraudulent applications using the identities of former foreign scholars. Once applications are flagged, the institution asks for additional verification information, which it very rarely receives.

    Major data hacks have exposed millions of Americans’ personal information, which is now readily available for purchase on the dark web, Diana said.

    In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission received more than 1.1 million identity theft complaints and about 2.6 million complaints of related fraud resulting in total financial losses of more than $12.7 billion, according to a report by consumer credit reporting company Experian.

    Maimon said that artificial intelligence has increased the ease with which criminals can carry out identity theft.

    Once fraudsters have obtained a victim’s name, date of birth and Social Security number, they can easily use AI tools to generate a picture of a driver’s license or passport. They can even create a realistic-looking video of an AI person holding the photo ID and turning their head side to side, which is an additional security requirement at some institutions.

    Both the ID and the person are fake in this video, an example of how AI can be used to try to evade security measures at financial institutions.

    Identity fraud cases are also notoriously difficult to prosecute as criminals hide behind a web of shadowy IP addresses. In addition, there is typically a significant delay between when fraud is committed and when the victim finds out — often by receiving a letter from a collection agency months later, at which point the evidence trail may have gone cold, Diana said.

    “We’re often a day late and a dollar short,” Diana said.

    In the case of the foreign scholars’ stolen identities, the victims may never find out, providing even more protection for the Southern California perpetrators.

    Diana warns all Angelenos to remain vigilant for signs of identity theft by frequently checking their credit score.

    He recommends people lock their credit at the three major credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. That way, if someone tries to open a fraudulent line of credit, the financial institution will be unable to access their credit report and probably will deny the application.

    Lastly, if anyone is a victim of identity theft, they should report it to a credit bureau, the FTC and local law enforcement, he said.

    [ad_2]

    Clara Harter

    Source link

  • She helped get her violent husband deported. Then ICE deported her — straight into his arms.

    [ad_1]

    Carmen’s abusive husband came home drunk one night last summer. He pounded and kicked the door. He threatened to kill her as her young son watched in horror. She called police, eventually obtaining a restraining order. Months later he returned and beat her again. Police came again and he was eventually deported.

    Thinking she finally escaped his cruelty, Carmen applied for what is known as a U-Visa. The visa provides crime victims a way to stay in the United States legally, but the Trump administration has routinely ignored pending applications.

    During a regular immigration check-in in June, Carmen was detained. Two months later, she was put on a plane with her 8-year-old son, who just completed second grade. She was headed to her home country, terrified her husband would find her.

    Lawyers for Carmen along with several immigrant victims of human trafficking, domestic violence and other crimes last month sued the Trump administration in the Central District of California for detaining and deporting survivors with pending visa applications, some of whom have been granted status to stay and sometimes work.

    They argue that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement implemented a policy in the early days of the administration that upended decades-long standards aimed at protecting victims with pending applications for a class of visas known as survivor-based protections.

    Congress created those visas to ensure immigrant victims would report crimes to law enforcement and be safe, but lawyers for the victims argue the administration has reneged on those promises.

    “These laws have existed because they keep us all safe, and there is a process and legal rights that attach when you seek out those protections,” said Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, who is one of the lead attorneys on the case.

    Carmen’s real name and certain details about her case weren’t included in the lawsuit because her lawyers say her life is still at risk.

    But others were.

    Immigration agents arrested Kenia Jackeline Merlos, a native of Honduras, during a family outing near the Canadian border. The Portland, Ore., mother of four U.S. citizen children had been given deferred status allowing her to reside in the U.S. after a man pulled a gun and threatened to kill her. Merlos has been in detention for about four months in Washington state. She was released late last month, weeks after a judge threw out her case.

    Yessenia Ruano self-deported after immigration agents told her she would be removed, despite her pending T-Visa application for trafficking survivors. Ruano, a teacher’s aide in Wisconsin, fled El Salvador and had been trafficked in the United States. A mother of twins girls, she had been living in the U.S. for 14 years, fighting a removal order. Rather than have her children see her arrested and removed, she decided to leave.

    Yessenia Ruano on her last day at the Milwaukee public school where she was a teacher’s aide. Ruano, who was a victim of human trafficking, self-deported along with her twin daughters in June.

    (Yessenia Ruano)

    Under the Trump administration, immigration agents no longer routinely check or consider a detained immigrant’s status as a crime victim before deporting or detaining them. The policy only makes an exception if it will interfere with law enforcement investigations.

    The administration’s actions affect nearly half a million immigrants who are awaiting a decision on a pending application for survivor-based protections, the most common of which is the U-Visa. Because Congress capped the number of visas that can be issued annually at 10,000, it can take a person 20 years to have their application processed.

    Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, defended the practice of deporting those stuck in limbo, saying every unauthorized immigrant ICE removes “has had due process and has a final order of removal — meaning they have no legal right to be in the country.”

    The lawsuit argues the administration violated procedural rules in referencing the executive order “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” as the main justification for the policy.

    The invasion, it states, is “fictional” but the rhetoric has allowed Department of Homeland Security Sec. Kristi Noem and the immigration agencies to wage an “arbitrary, xenophobic and militarized mass deportation campaign that has terrorized immigrant communities and further victimized survivors of domestic violence, human trafficking and other serious crimes who Congress sought to protect.”

    The lawsuit is one of several challenging the agencies’ practice as the administration focuses its enforcement campaign in Democratic-led cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland and Washington, D.C.

    “They just detain and deport them,” said Rebecca Brown, with Public Counsel, one of the groups litigating the case. “It’s is a policy of arrest first, ask questions later.”

    Kenia Jackeline Merlos is seen during a family trip in 2023.

    Kenia Jackeline Merlos is seen during a family trip in 2023.

    (Kenia Jackeline Merlos)

    In Carmen’s case, according to a sworn declaration filed in the lawsuit, she arrived in 2022 to the United States and sought asylum. A judge denied her case. She scraped together money and found an attorney to file an appeal. She later learned he didn’t correctly fill out the forms and the case was denied. In the meantime, she did regular check-ins with immigration officials as the abuse worsened.

    “I was terrified of these appointments, but I never missed a single appointment,” she said in the declaration.

    The night her husband tried to knock down the door, her son was hysterical. The restraining order helped for a while, but a few months later, he showed up again.

    Law enforcement eventually placed an ankle monitor on her husband, but he came to her son’s soccer games, stalking them and watching from afar.

    Carmen submitted the U-Visa in March and learned he had been deported that same month. Finally, she thought she would be free.

    Months later, she was summoned to an immigration check-in. She arrived alone. Officials told her to return the next day for an appointment with ICE. When she did, an officer told her she was being detained and would be deported.

    Was there someone who could care for her son, the officer asked.

    “I didn’t have anyone,” she said in the statement.

    A family member brought her boy to the facility and the two were transferred to a recently reopened family detention center in Texas. There, her son, distraught, slept all hours of the day.

    “My son suffered so much,” she stated. “He would try to sleep in the morning so the day would go faster and he wouldn’t have to endure the many hours imprisoned.”

    After a month at the facility, Carmen’s new attorney informed authorities of the pending application and asked for her release because her son suffered from medical issues, as did she. The request was denied, as were others to pause the removal.

    At the end of July, she and her son were deported.

    “I had nowhere to go,” she stated.

    She emerged from the plane to her nightmare.

    “I saw a man standing across from us and my heart sank,” she said. “It was my husband.”

    “My husband told me it was such a coincidence that he was there when we arrived,” she said. “I knew he was lying. He had found that we were being deported and he was there to take us.

    “I had no choice, I had nowhere else to go and there was no one speaking up for me.”

    Now she says she is even more trapped than before.

    He took her passports, so she can’t travel. She must ask permission just to leave the house, and if she is allowed to, give him constant updates while she is away. At night, he takes her phone and checks it, interrogating her about every call she made.

    “I never know what will make him angry,” she said. “We live in constant fear.”

    [ad_2]

    Rachel Uranga

    Source link

  • More human-trafficking survivors are seeking visas but face longer waits and risk deportation

    [ad_1]

    The T visa, an underutilized lifeline for immigrant survivors of human trafficking, is experiencing a sharp rise in applications, despite increasing processing times and deportation risks.

    Also known as T nonimmigrant status, the visa allows people who have experienced severe forms of human trafficking to remain in the country for up to four years if they are helpful to law enforcement in the investigation and prosecution of their trafficker. Approved applicants can work in the U.S., are eligible for certain state and federal benefits, and can apply for a green card after three years on the visa (or earlier if the criminal case is closed).

    Julie Dahlstrom, founder and director of the Human Trafficking Clinic at Boston University, said increased awareness of the visa and the courts’ expanding definitions of trafficking may have contributed to the increase, along with mounting barriers to other pathways for immigrant relief.

    Congress created the T visa in 2000 as part of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, intending to bolster law enforcement agencies’ capabilities to prosecute human trafficking crimes while offering protections to survivors. The same law also established the U visa, which provides legal status for victims who have suffered substantial abuse as a result of serious crimes including trafficking, domestic violence and sexual assault. U visa applicants must also be willing to assist law enforcement in their investigation of these crimes.

    “Many [applicants] are eligible for the U visa as well, but they’re taking now over 20 years for an individual to get access … so I think that has influenced lawyers and survivors, if they are eligible for the T visa … to go ahead and also file T visa applications,” Dahlstrom said. “Especially under the Trump administration, we’ve seen more barriers to asylum access, special immigrant juvenile status access, so I expect we’ll continue to see that move.”

    USCIS updated the T visa rules in August 2024 with a process called called bona fide determination that gave survivors earlier access to benefits while their application is pending approval. It also granted them deferred action, which places individuals on a lower priority for removal proceedings.

    Erika Gonzalez, training and technical assistance managing attorney from the Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking, explained that although early access to benefits had existed in the federal statute, it was never implemented because applications were processing fast enough to not need it.

    “They have updated the [bona fide determination] process to now have a formal process to engage with, and it does parallel with the sharp increases in filing,” Gonzalez said.

    As T visa applications rose, so too did approvals. Last year, the number of approvals broke 3,000 for the first time though it still fell short of the 5,000 cap.

    Processing times for T visas have also increased, jumping from a median of 5.9 months in 2014 to 19.9 months this fiscal year.

    Denial rates for T visas, meanwhile, have fluctuated.

    “We were seeing increased denial rates under the prior Trump administration and then improved rates under Biden,” Dahlstrom said.

    Denials can leave T visa applicants vulnerable to deportation. In 2018, USCIS began allowing removal proceedings if an application was rejected with a notice to appear (NTA).

    According to a 2022 report co-written by Dahlstrom, which obtained USCIS data through Freedom of Information Act litigation, USCIS issued a total of 236 NTAs to denied T visa applicants from 2019 to 2021. President Biden rescinded this policy with a January 2021 executive order, but last February, USCIS published new guidance once more expanding the circumstances where the agency could issue NTAs.

    These policies, alongside escalated coordination between law enforcement and other agencies, have heightened fear among survivors applying for the T visa, Dahlstrom explained.

    “We are seeing in real time the results of including requirements around law enforcement engagement, especially when there’s greater cooperation with ICE and greater concerns about deportation,” Dahlstrom said. “These programs are being politicized and, in some ways, weaponized if you’re denied and you’re placed in proceedings.”

    Since February’s policy update, at least one person has self-deported after Immigration and Customs Enforcement denied her stay despite her pending T visa application.

    So far in the fiscal year 2025, USCIS has approved 1,035 T-visas and rejected 693, which surpasses the number rejected in each of the last four years.

    “It’s too early to tell what we’re going to see, but if we continue to see these numbers, it’s both going to mean a rise in denials and very few cases adjudicated amidst more and more applications being filed, which is really troubling,” Dahlstrom said. “These are statutorily protected programs, but what they can do is really slow them down, make them ineffective just in the way that they’re processing applications.”

    [ad_2]

    Phi Do

    Source link

  • Undocumented immigrants should soon be able to get state cell service subsidy

    Undocumented immigrants should soon be able to get state cell service subsidy

    [ad_1]

    Even Californians without Social Security numbers should soon have access to a state subsidy that will make cellphone service more affordable.

    The California Public Utilities Commission issued a proposed decision last week that the California Universal LifeLine Telephone Service Program, known as California Lifeline, be offered to Californians without a Social Security number.

    The commission needs to formally vote on the matter, with its first opportunity at its Aug. 22 meeting.

    The move comes 10 years after the CPUC decided to stop requesting Social Security information from applicants — but then never did. The issue was first reported by CalMatters.

    The commission is in charge of California Lifeline. The service offers qualifying participants discounts of up to $19 monthly on cellphone service, up to $39 off a service connection and eliminates a range of local, state and federal fees.

    There is also a federal Lifeline program, but its discounts are less, including up to $9.25 off monthly service. Both are concurrently available to customers, according to the commission, but the federal program continues to require a Social Security number.

    Chinese national Zhang Hao uses his phone at Iris Avenue Station in San Diego, where he and other asylum seekers were dropped off by Border Patrol agents.

    (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

    The service consists of unlimited talk and texts, and varying amounts of data.

    Users in certain government programs may be eligible for the discounts. Anyone already enrolled in a public assistance program, such as Medicaid and Medi-Cal, Section 8 housing, CalFresh or the Women, Infants and Children Program, also known as WIC, qualifies under program-based assistance.

    Applicants can also qualify based on income. For instance, a family of four would qualify with a total annual gross income of $48,400 or less.

    It’s unknown how many people the commission’s latest move will affect. About 1.4 million Californians use the service, according to the commission, with program enrollment up 31.1% since June 2023.

    Pew Research estimated there were 1.8 million unauthorized immigrants in California in 2021.

    Participants are enrolled with a private phone provider. This is generally done by third-party vendors, often “street teams,” who solicit in front of public buildings — such as social service benefits offices — or near supermarkets.

    The service is funded by surcharges applied to California cellphone users.

    The Public Utility Commission’s ruling isn’t new, however.

    The group decided to drop Social Security numbers on applications in 2014, arguing that such an ask was a barrier to usage for some. At the time, the move was opposed by Cox Communications and other telecommunications companies that were concerned with fraud.

    In place of Social Security numbers, the commission asked for government-issued identification.

    The Public Utility Commission’s decision came two years after the Federal Communications Commission revised the federal Lifeline program to require applicants to provide the last four digits of a Social Security number on applications.

    The state Public Utility Commission previously told CalMatters in February that it had already “implemented its 2014 decision.” Yet, California Lifeline applications still asked for Social Security information.

    The nonprofit Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles put this issue back in front of the commission with a letter on Aug. 30, 2023, requesting immediate implementation of the 2014 ruling, according to commission documentation.

    Once the decision is formally approved, Social Security number requests are expected to be removed from the LifeLine application within three months, according to the commission.

    [ad_2]

    Andrew J. Campa

    Source link

  • As court overturns a lot-splitting law, SB 9, one early adopter asks why

    As court overturns a lot-splitting law, SB 9, one early adopter asks why

    [ad_1]

    Sam Andreano is currently putting the finishing touches on his split-lot property in Whittier. He’s a guinea pig for state Senate Bill 9, a housing law that allows homeowners to divvy up their properties and build two or even four units on a once-single-family lot.

    Andreano, 59, was one of SB 9’s earliest adopters. He bought a single-family home for $790,000 in 2021, split the property in half and sold the existing home on half of the original lot for $777,777 in 2023 — essentially coming out with an empty lot for a little over $12,000, around what it would have cost in the 1970s.

    Then, Andreano spent around $400,000 building a home onto the back half of the original lot. He estimates it’ll be worth around $850,000 when it’s finished next month.

    The project was an absolute success; Andreano added density to a single-family lot and came out well financially.

    That’s why he was so shocked when an L.A. County judge struck down the law last month.

    Superior Court Judge Curtis Kin determined that SB 9 is unconstitutional because it doesn’t provide housing restricted for low-income residents, which he said was the law’s stated purpose. For now, it affects five cities: Redondo Beach, Carson, Torrance, Whittier and Del Mar. But the ruling clears the way for the law — one of many designed to alleviate California’s housing crisis — to be invalidated in cities across the state.

    Few took advantage of the law, especially compared with other state laws created to increase density. A study from Bay Area NPR affiliate KQED-FM found that 16 California cities — including San José, San Francisco, Long Beach and Sacramento — approved just 75 split-lot applications and 112 applications for new units under SB 9 from 2022 to 2023, while approving 8,800 accessory dwelling units during the same stretch.

    Andreano thinks he knows why. He said some property owners he spoke to were hesitant to build SB 9 projects because they were afraid it would be overturned, and now their fears have come true. His project is fine because the property has already been divided, but he said others still applying will surely lose money due to the ruling.

    “You have to pay the architect, the engineer and others. Then the ruling comes down saying it’s overturned, and you’re out $50,000,” he said.

    Andreano was able to push his project through before the court decision because he moved quickly. He bought the Whittier property in December 2021 with the intention to split it up under SB 9 and officially started his application four months later.

    The process took two years, hundreds of phone calls and tens of thousands of dollars.

    The law allows a single-family-zoned lot to be split into two, and owners can build either a single-family home or a duplex on each lot, for a total of up to four units. But it requires the two lots to be split somewhat evenly, with a maximum difference of 60-40, and also requires each new lot to be at least 1,200 square feet.

    Under these restrictions, the ideal properties for SB 9 are big lots with small houses. So Andreano specifically bought a property that would work well under the guidelines: a 1,200-square-foot house on a 6,232-square-foot lot. Big(ish) lot, small house.

    He had to file two applications: one with the L.A. County Department of Regional Planning, and one with the Whittier Public Works Department. He addressed easements, sewer lines, power lines, where water would flow when it rains, etc.

    Then he brought in an architect, which cost about $20,000; a grading engineer, which cost around $15,000; a soil engineer, which cost around $8,000; and a surveyor, which cost around $5,000. The L.A. County Fire Department did three inspections, which cost around $1,500 each, and he also spent around $3,000 on application fees.

    “It was a lot of back-and-forth,” he said. “I’d submit my application, and the city would ask for revisions on A, B and C. Then I’d submit the revisions, and they’d ask for revisions on D, E and F.”

    He’s in the final stages of finishing the back house, bringing the timeline of the project to roughly two years. He said it’s definitely been worth it.

    The property now features two single-family homes separated by a fence: a 1,200-square-foot front house with three bedrooms and 1.5 bathrooms on a 3,349-square-foot lot, and an 1,100-square-foot back house with three bedrooms and two bathrooms on a 2,893-square-foot lot, where he plans to live. The lot-size split is 53.65% to 46.35%, well within the 60-40 restrictions.

    “People want to buy houses, and this is a way to increase density while also letting people work out the details on their own,” he said.

    Andreano hired Dennis Robinson, owner of Custom ADU Builder, to build the back house. Robinson has constructed seven SB 9 projects, and he’s completing seven more.

    Robinson handles both ADUs and SB 9 projects and said each type has it own perks.

    “ADUs are faster and cheaper, and you save around $20,000 in the permitting process alone,” he said. “But if you want to add multiple units to your property, SB 9 is better.”

    Robinson was surprised when the law was overturned. He was about to break ground on a project in Long Beach, where a family wanted to expand its garage into a 1,000-square-foot home and add a unit above, but now it’s in jeopardy.

    If the ruling is appealed and upheld, it would expand to affect California’s 121 charter cities, including Long Beach, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

    The law was declared unconstitutional on the grounds that it didn’t provide housing for low-income residents, but Andreano said that if he had to sell or rent the home as low-income, he would’ve lost money.

    “That affordability factor makes sense for a 100-unit condo, where a developer can set a few units aside for low income, but it doesn’t work for an individual home,” he said. “The goal for SB 9 should be to add housing in order to make the market more affordable in general.”

    [ad_2]

    Jack Flemming

    Source link

  • La Cañada Flintridge must process ‘builder’s remedy’ affordable-housing plan, court rules

    La Cañada Flintridge must process ‘builder’s remedy’ affordable-housing plan, court rules

    [ad_1]

    A court ruled on Monday that La Cañada Flintridge violated the state Housing Accountability Act when it denied an application for an affordable-housing project last year.

    Under the ruling, the city will be forced to process the application, which was filed under a little-known but increasingly relevant provision in California housing law known as “builder’s remedy.” The provision serves as a punishment for cities that are out of compliance with housing element regulations that require local governments to develop specific zoning plans to address population increases.

    Builder’s remedy is a massive boon for developers, allowing them to build whatever they want — even outside local zoning restrictions — so long as it has a certain number of low- or middle-income units.

    The proposed project in this case, located at 600 Foothill Blvd., would replace an aging Christian Science church with a five-story building that includes 80 mixed-income units and a 14-room hotel, totaling nearly 120,000 square feet, bringing density and affordable housing to a city that has very little.

    La Cañada is a city of single-family homes, and the average value is $2.317 million, according to Zillow. It has added virtually no multifamily housing in recent years, and as a result, the population has hovered around 20,000 for the last four decades while surrounding communities swelled with residents.

    The court’s decision is a big win for affordable-housing advocates as well as the developers behind the project, who’ve been fighting to get the multiuse development approved for nearly half a decade.

    It’s a setback for officials and others in the city who have resisted the project, drawing criticisms of having a “not in my backyard” attitude along the way.

    “La Cañada Flintridge is the latest community that has failed in their effort to override state housing laws. Today’s favorable ruling should serve as a warning to other NIMBY jurisdictions that the state will hold every community accountable in planning for their fair share of housing,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement.

    Newsom, along with state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, had intervened in the situation in December, filing a legal action asking the court to reverse the city’s denial of the project.

    “We are pleased that the court agrees with us that La Cañada Flintridge must follow state housing laws to facilitate affordable housing and alleviate our housing crisis,” Bonta said in a statement. “The California Department of Justice is committed to enforcing state laws that increase housing supply and affordability.”

    The three partners behind the project have strong ties to the city: Alexandra Hack grew up in the area; Garret Weyand lives a few blocks from the site; and Jonathan Curtis was once the mayor.

    “This should be a sign for other cities that may be thinking about taking similar steps to La Cañada on builder’s remedy applications,” Weyand said. “The city’s reluctance to do this is one of the reasons housing is so expensive to build and develop in California.”

    The trio filed the application under the builder’s remedy provision in November 2022, but city officials rejected it. They claimed La Cañada wasn’t subject to the provision since it had already “self-certified” its housing element plan, which had yet to be approved by the state Department of Housing and Community Development.

    The city has since come into compliance, but because the developers submitted their application before Housing and Community Development approved La Cañada’s housing element plan, the builder’s remedy provision remained an option.

    “Builder’s remedy is probably going to be one of most successful laws to build housing in the state of California,” Weyand said.

    [ad_2]

    Jack Flemming

    Source link

  • L.A. tenants awaiting emergency rental assistance receive eviction protection

    L.A. tenants awaiting emergency rental assistance receive eviction protection

    [ad_1]

    The Los Angeles City Council adopted an ordinance Friday that prevents the eviction of tenants who are waiting to receive emergency rental assistance from the city.

    The vote came one day after the deadline to pay rent debt accumulated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    More than 3,200 residents have been approved for the United to House L.A. Emergency Renters Assistance Program, which provides up to six months of unpaid rent for accepted applicants. Only 25% of the $30.4 million allocated for rental assistance has been distributed.

    That means a significant number of renters who have been promised emergency funds have not yet received their money. Thousands more are waiting to hear if they have been approved for the program, which has received more than 31,000 applications.

    Only those who have been approved will receive eviction protection.

    Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who introduced the motion to draft the ordinance last week, said prevention is essential while fighting homelessness. She wants to stem the eviction-to-homelessness pipeline, she said.

    “I don’t see us getting out of this homelessness crisis unless we as a city truly make transformational policy decisions around keeping people in their housing,” she said.

    There are not enough funds to assist every United to House L.A. applicant — according to Los Angeles Housing Department data, there were $472 million in claims from applicants, nearly $454 million more than the total available. Applications closed in October.

    It will take roughly 120 days from now for all applications to be processed. All applicants approved on or before May 31 will be protected from eviction, according to the draft ordinance the City Council voted to adopt Friday. Renters waiting to hear back will be at risk of eviction until their application is approved.

    Eviction protection applies only if the sole reason for eviction is nonpayment of rent.

    An earlier version of the motion that led to the ordinance would have protected all renters who applied for emergency funds regardless of their application status. Groups representing property owners raised concerns that this would lead to an indefinite delay of rent payments without the option to evict.

    “We’re thankful that the council narrowed it down to a smaller pool of individuals who have been approved,” said Fred Sutton, senior vice president of local public affairs for the California Apartment Assn.

    “But there remains the concern that this whole item was really rushed in a manner that isn’t acceptable,” he said.

    The City Council motion that prompted the ordinance was introduced Jan. 24 and approved Jan. 26. The ordinance was then drafted and adopted Feb. 2. Hernandez said it was necessary to move fast considering Thursday’s deadline.

    Rental arrears from Oct. 1, 2021, to Jan. 31, 2023, were due Thursday, the same day rent increases became allowed for units that fall under the city’s rent stabilization ordinance. Tenants living in rent-stabilized units could see rent increases of up to 4%, or 6% if the landlord pays for gas and electricity.

    “Housing is a human right,” Hernandez said. “For the Feb. 1 rent deadline to happen on the same day that rent increases take place, it’s just really sad.”

    Amid the challenges renters face, Hernandez said she hopes this ordinance will provide the protection necessary to keep people off the street.

    “With just a little bit of help, they will stay in their housing,” she said.

    [ad_2]

    Caroline Petrow-Cohen

    Source link

  • ‘Everything’s like a gamble’: U.S. immigration policies leave lives in limbo

    ‘Everything’s like a gamble’: U.S. immigration policies leave lives in limbo

    [ad_1]

    One day.

    For Judith Ortiz, whose parents brought her to this country from Durango, Mexico, when she was 2, a mere 24 hours have made the difference between a life of freedom and opportunity and one constrained by limits and obstacles.

    Ortiz and her twin sister, Janette, were raised in suburban Dallas, where Judith was her high school’s valedictorian, graduating with a 3.96 GPA.

    Both girls had remained in the country illegally as toddlers when their family overstayed a tourist visa. When they turned 18, they became eligible for benefits under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era program designed to shield from deportation young people brought to this country illegally as children.

    Drawing on an unprecedented poll, this series tells the stories of immigrant life in America today, putting their voices in the foreground.

    Because the girls have the same birth date, the same address and the same surname, their lawyer suggested Judith mail her application a day after her sister to avoid confusion.

    Janette’s paperwork was approved six months later, in June 2021. Shortly after, a federal judge in Texas blocked the government from approving additional DACA petitions. Judith’s application — and her future — have been on hold ever since. She can’t be sure that the mailing date, not some other arbitrary bureaucratic quirk, caused the fateful difference, but in her mind, that one-day delay in sending off the application is what has set their lives on different courses.

    “Having DACA would make my life 100 times easier,” said the 21-year-old, who attends classes at Texas A&M alongside her sister. “I was always scared of getting pulled over. There’s things that people don’t really think about sometimes.”

    Judith took the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, hoping to enlist in the military, and scored well enough to enter West Point, only to be rejected because of her immigration status. Because of that status, she can’t legally get a job or a loan because she can’t get a Social Security number.

    Her twin, who entered the country on the same day and grew up in the same house, has a job, an apartment and a car loan.

    Judith, who is slated to graduate in December, is eligible to be deported back to a country she never knew and can’t remember while her twin sister can legally remain, work and study.

    “I grew up in America. I don’t know [Mexican] culture very well. It’s not the same,” she said.

    Few who work in immigration law are surprised by the story; the capriciousness of America’s broken immigration system seems to be the rule, not the exception.

    “It’s a bit of layer cake,” said Travis Murphy, a former U.S. diplomat who is the founder and CEO of Jetr Global Partners, a Washington-based firm that works to solve visa and immigrant issues for athletes and sports franchises. “Policies have been enacted year over year that don’t necessarily work directly, in a coherent way, with previous policies.”

    Janette Ortiz's DACA paperwork was approved in June 2021.

    Janette Ortiz’s DACA paperwork was approved in June 2021.

    (Jordan Vonderhaar / For The Times)

    “We don’t have consensus in what we want the outcome to be,” he added. “That’s the problem.”

    The sometimes arbitrary and frequently confusing nature of American immigration law enforcement constrains the lives of millions of immigrants — those who live in the country legally as well as those here without legal status.

    More than 4 in 10 immigrants who participated in a wide-ranging survey conducted earlier this year by the Los Angeles Times and KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation, said they don’t understand how the country’s immigration policies work, nor how those policies affect their families. Yet they have no choice but to rely on those policies to be able to live, work, study and sometimes simply exist in this country.

    Roughly 1 in 4 immigrants said they worry that they or a family member could be deported. The number is highest among the undocumented, but the fear is shared by one-third of legal permanent residents and 1 in 8 naturalized citizens. Many immigrants who have legal status have family members who do not.

    Some 10.5 million people — precise estimates vary — lived in the U.S. without authorization in 2021. Roughly 1.8 million live in uncertainty, recipients of temporary protected status, student visas, DACA and other protocols that either have limited length or can be revoked, with little notice, at any time. Tens of thousands more are apprehended at the southern border each month trying to join them.

    Twin sisters Judith Ortiz, left, and Janette Ortiz, right, study between classes

    Judith Ortiz, left, was her high school’s valedictorian, graduating with a 3.96 GPA.

    (Jordan Vonderhaar / For The Times)

    Meantime, the pathway to legally immigrate to the U.S. has become so constrained that for many, it doesn’t truly exist.

    The Cato Institute, in a June report titled, “Why Legal Immigration Is Nearly Impossible,” estimated that fewer than 1% of the people who apply to move permanently to this country are now able to do so.

    “The government’s restrictive criteria render the legal paths available only in the most extreme cases,” wrote David J. Bier, Cato’s associate director for immigration studies. “Legal immigration is less like waiting in line and more like winning the lottery: It happens, but it is so rare that it is irrational to expect it in any individual case.”

    The U.S. caps the number of permanent employment-based immigrants at 140,000 annually, with no more than 7% allowed from any one country. As a result, people in countries with large numbers of applicants could wait a lifetime. The wait for an employment-based green card for residents of India is 134 years, according to Cato’s estimate, based on government data. A U.S. citizen who wants legal permission for their married adult child to immigrate to the U.S. from Mexico would have to wait 160 years at the current rate of approval.

    Combination of quotes from interviewees: "Everything's always like a gamble"

    Those who do enter the U.S. legally aren’t exempt from the law’s complexities.

    Six years ago, Agustina Vergara packed up her life and moved from Argentina to Southern California to finish a master’s program at USC.

    With her employer’s help, she applied to exchange her student visa for one reserved for workers in fields requiring special knowledge. That’s when things went off the rails.

    As she waited, Vergara’s father was diagnosed with cancer. She couldn’t go back to Argentina without abandoning her visa application, which would have meant starting the process over again with less chance of success. When he died, she couldn’t attend the funeral.

    Weeks later, her lawyer gave her more bad news: She wasn’t going to get the visa anyway. The government offered no explanation why. Vergara was crushed.

    “My thinking was perhaps a little too optimistic,” she said. “There is no way that a hardworking person that really loves America and wants to build a life here and contribute to make America the amazing country that it is, there is no way that they won’t have me.”

    flag icon

    Like Judith Ortiz, Vergara, 35, had filed every form, paid every fee, followed every rule. She was, by all accounts, an outstanding student and a model citizen. Her background check came back as clean as hospital linen.

    “There’s a point where it is so convoluted, so complicated, so nonsensical,” she said. “It cannot be an accident. It is, in a way, kind of designed to make it really difficult,” said Vergara, now an associate fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, a libertarian organization based in Santa Ana. “Is this an immigration system or an anti-immigration system?”

    Most immigrants, 84%, say they feel the U.S. immigration system has treated them and their families fairly, the Los Angeles Times/KFF poll found. But that number is notably lower among immigrants from Mexico, Central America and India, who face some of the longest wait times. It is also lower among the undocumented.

    And even those who feel the process was fair can often find it an ordeal.

    Vergara was eventually allowed to stay in this country after moving up her long-planned wedding and marrying her fiance, a U.S. citizen, at the Laguna Hills courthouse. Millions of others, however, have had to put their lives on hold.

    Elvina Kovaleva and her husband were welcomed into this country, but it could be years before they know if they’ll be able to stay. A respondent to The Times/KFF poll, Kovaleva agreed to a follow-up interview by email.

    “Our status,” Kovaleva wrote, “is ‘seeking asylum.’”

    Kovaleva, 28, and her husband, Yaroslav, both Russian citizens, left well-paying jobs in Moscow last year after Yaroslav was mobilized to fight in Ukraine, a war the couple strongly oppose.

    “We don’t want to take part in an awful war against a brotherly nation,” said Kovaleva, who was pregnant at the time they left. They had just a day to pack and make travel arrangements, but she and her husband didn’t have to discuss where they would go. “The country of freedom and human rights,” she said.

    They don’t regret the choice.

    “We have already received great help from the United States,” said Kovaleva. “Everywhere we meet people who are ready to help with anything. USA is really a country of migrants.”

    The couple, who settled in Brooklyn, have permission to live and work here legally as their asylum petition is reviewed. Yaroslav, who was an engineer in Russia, has a driver’s license and is working as a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning technician while Elvina, who gave birth to a daughter this spring, is a stay-at-home mom.

    But the Kovalevas are reluctant to make any long-term plans until their case is heard by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

    Should they buy a house? Expand their family? Start a business? How can they when their future is so uncertain. They would like to petition to bring their elderly parents to the U.S. because they believe they’re not safe in Russia, but they can’t do that until their immigration paperwork is approved. Nor can they exit the U.S. without abandoning their asylum request.

    They have no idea when they will have answers.

    The U.S. had 1.6 million pending asylum applications as of the start of this year, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, which compiles and analyzes immigration data.

    “We’re still waiting,” Kovaleva said. “We are told some people have been waiting eight to 10 years.”

    In the meantime, she keeps her fingers crossed.

    “The U.S. is a land of freedom, opportunity and choice,” she wrote. “And we do hope that this will never change.”

    It’s certainly been a land of opportunity for Julio Calderon. But as for freedom and choice, well, not so much.

    In 2005, Calderon fled the poverty and gang violence of Honduras for the U.S., entering illegally 30 days after his 16th birthday. That made him a month too old to apply for DACA when the program was introduced in 2012.

    He also entered a few years too late to qualify for Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a government designation that gave Hondurans in the U.S. employment authorization and guarded them from deportation after Hurricane Mitch devastated their country in 1998. TPS status has been extended multiple times since it was first established and now covers around 76,000 Hondurans.

    “It’s like an invisible wall that keeps me away from building wealth,” Calderon, who has an economics degree from Florida International University, said of his undocumented status. “It’s difficult to learn when you’re hungry.”

    Even as he fears being deported to Honduras, a country he hardly knows, Calderon said he’s not letting his immigration status hold him back.

    “I want people to see the opportunities that you have even if you’re undocumented because I don’t think we’re talking about that. We focus too much on the limitations,” he said.

    “So I am undocumented, but I graduated high school and college,” he continued. “I got scholarships. Now, whenever I go to a place, I know that [my] immigration status might have taken me to a different path. And sometimes I have to be the one creating those paths for those who are coming after me.

    “I am qualified. I am qualified to do a lot of things. But just because I don’t have immigration status, I’m limited. At the end of the day, I am losing, but also this country is losing because I can give so much.

    “Like myself, there are many out there ready to give back. Politics is what keeps us away from a solution.”

    Even among immigrants, however, little consensus exists about what that solution might be. About 8 in 10 immigrants say that allowing people like Judith Ortiz, who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, to apply for citizenship would be a good idea.

    Much like the native-born population, however, they’re more divided on other proposals. Asked about allowing people without documentation to apply for government-provided health insurance, 59% of immigrants called that a good idea and 37% said it would be a bad idea. Immigrants who are undocumented heavily supported that idea, but naturalized citizens split evenly, The Times/KFF poll found.

    Immigrants divided closely on what they think of enforcement of U.S. immigration policies, with about 1 in 5 calling it too tough and another 1 in 5 saying it’s not tough enough. The rest said either that enforcement is about right (27%) or that they weren’t sure (35%).

    Twin sisters Janette Ortiz, left, and Judith Ortiz, right, take a break at a park

    Because of the capriciousness of the American immigration system, one of the Ortiz twins stays and works in the U.S. legally and the other remains without legal status.

    (Jordan Vonderhaar / For The Times)

    Calderon’s lack of documents costs him more than just economic opportunities. In Florida, where he lives, Gov. Ron DeSantis has required hospitals to ask patients about their citizenship or immigration status and has expanded penalties for employers who hire undocumented workers. Undocumented residents are blocked from applying for IDs or a driver’s license, and it is illegal for undocumented people to use driver’s licenses legally issued in other states.

    “Mobility, it’s a big one,” Calderon said of the limits his immigration status has placed on his life. “Not being able to travel outside of the U.S., to have a driver’s license, I rely upon [other] transportation.”

    About 4 in 10 poll respondents said they had avoided things like talking to the police, applying for a job or traveling out of fear of drawing attention to their status or the status of someone in their family.

    Even among those in the U.S. legally, significant numbers say the same.

    “It’s difficult,” said Santos González, 48, a construction worker from El Salvador who has lived nearly half his life in the U.S.

    “I’ve been here more than 20 years, working every day. But in Washington they can’t come to an agreement to give us some kind of permanent status,” he said, speaking in Spanish.

    González is covered by TPS, which the U.S. granted to Salvadorans after the Central American country was hit by a series of earthquakes in 2001. As with Hondurans, TPS for Salvadorans has been extended multiple times since, most recently for an additional 20 months beginning in July.

    Under TPS, González has been able to work, buy a house in San Bernardino, build a family and pay taxes.

    The Trump administration tried to end TPS for El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and several other countries, but courts blocked that. As Congress continues to kick the idea of a more stable solution down the road, González and hundreds of thousands of others covered by temporary status are left in limbo, fearing the next president could move to end the program again.

    “Then we’d basically be done,” González said.

    “TPS has a lot of benefits,” he said. “But they’re benefits that can be taken away. It’s complicated because I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

    “Just having to navigate that whole thing has been very nerve-racking,” said his 23-year-old son, Oscar González, a DACA recipient with a college degree and a job in the pharmaceutical industry. His two younger sisters, both born in the U.S., are American citizens.

    “I don’t really know how it’s going to play out, so it’s just, I guess, figuring it out in the moment. You don’t have that security. Everything’s always like a gamble, really.”

    [ad_2]

    Kevin Baxter

    Source link

  • Is ’90 Day Fiancé’ having an effect on visa approvals? A new report argues it is

    Is ’90 Day Fiancé’ having an effect on visa approvals? A new report argues it is

    [ad_1]

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — 

    Since it first aired in 2014, TLC’s “90 Day Fiancé” has shown viewers the complexities of long-distance, international romances between U.S. citizens and people from foreign countries. But as the reality TV series has grown in popularity over the last decade, the approval rate for fiancé visas has dropped.

    Those things could be linked, according to a report released Monday by Boundless Immigration, a tech company that helps people navigate immigration processes. The organization is looking into the ways in which the series might be affecting regular visa applicants, and says that while the show raised awareness about the visa process, it may have led to increased scrutiny of applications.

    U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, however, said there isn’t any correlation between the show and the approval process.

    “Requests for immigration benefits are not determined based on television entertainment or other forms of media content,” spokesman Matthew Bourke said.

    “USCIS adjudicators individually evaluate every request for immigration benefits fairly, humanely and efficiently before issuing a determination,” Bourke said.

    Viewership for “90 Day Fiancé” has steadily increased since the show launched in 2014, according to the report. Meanwhile, the approval rate for fiancé visas dropped nearly by a quarter, from 87% in fiscal year 2015 to 63% in 2022, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data.

    Before the show started, the approval rate was 75% in 2013. Data through the third quarter of this fiscal year show a 75% approval rate of applications processed so far. Still, Boundless Immigration said, the drop after “90 Day Fiancé” began airing is worth continuing to examine.

    “The vast majority of Americans and even members of Congress would agree that keeping people in purgatory or keeping families from starting their lives together is probably not the best way of operating for the country,” said Boundless Immigration’s chief executive Xiao Wang, adding that the company has had clients who were featured on the show.

    Representatives for TLC did not respond to requests for comment.

    The K-1 visa is designed to reunite U.S. citizens with their foreign fiancés, giving them 90 days to get married before the visa expires.

    But as with all immigration processes, the pandemic caused significant delays for fiancé visas. Early this year, the average processing time for the I-129F petition by the U.S. citizen fiancé for their foreign partner — a critical step in the visa process — ballooned to 21 months from seven months, according to the report.

    On an episode of “90 Fiancé: Before the 90 Days,” participant Gino Palazzolo lamented how difficult it was leaving his partner, Jasmine Pineda, after he proposed to her in Panama.

    “As soon as I got home, I filed the K-1 visa to bring Jasmine to the United States,” Palazzolo says on the episode. “But, you know, it’s taken a long time to process. We’re at, like, 12 months. So that makes Jasmine frustrated, because she wants to be with me now, and it causes friction between us.”

    Though the show hasn’t led to an increase in fiancé visa applications, the backlog of applications waiting to be processed has more than doubled since before the pandemic to 51,500, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data.

    Although visa issuances have risen since 2020, they are still nowhere near pre-pandemic levels, according to the report. Fiancé visas make up less than half a percent of all yearly non-immigrant visa admissions.

    Bourke of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said the agency recently implemented changes to reduce the backlog of fiancé visa cases after the pandemic caused an agency-wide hiring freeze. Appropriations by Congress last year have been critical to reducing the backlog, he said, and proposed application fee increases would also help.

    California is among the most common states for fiancé visa holders, as well as Texas, Florida and New York, according to the report.

    [ad_2]

    Andrea Castillo

    Source link

  • Struggling to Become a Twitch Partner? Even the CEO Faces Rejection!

    Struggling to Become a Twitch Partner? Even the CEO Faces Rejection!

    [ad_1]

    Difficult to become a Twitch Partner, for everyone…even the big boss!

    The world of streaming on Twitch is more competitive than ever and even the CEO of the platform, Daniel Clancy, experienced it first hand. The CEO of Twitch, who streams on the platform in his spare time, revealed on Twitter/X that he had submitted a secret application to the Twitch Partner Program, but it was rejected. To be admitted to the Twitch Partner Program, streamers must meet several strict criteria, including an average of around 75 viewers per broadcast, excluding views from hosting, raids, first page or integrations. Clancy’s candidacy was rightly rejected because the attendance of his streams was too fluctuating.

    A Partner Program too difficult to reach?

    This rejection recalls the challenges many streamers face when aspiring to become Partners on Twitch. Streamers who are not CEO of a multinational, and often have more need of the income that could result from it. Even though we can regularly hear criticism on this subject, the Partner Program is still quite strict. And for good reason, it offers Streamer-exclusive benefits, such as monetization opportunities, channel customization, expanded VOD storage, and priority support. The requirement for a constant and high attendance makes accessing the Partner Program difficult, even for established streamers. This is, among other things, what pushes a very large number of them to stream every day of the year or almost.

    It’s not humans who decide?

    The rejection of the CEO’s candidacy sparked amused reactions from many Internet users, because it is funny to say the least. We also saw some encouraging reactions to push Dan Clancy to persevere, because one day, he will have his partnership! Above all, for some, it may have proven one thing. One thing Twitch – like most social platforms – wouldn’t easily admit: that many things, and in particular the Partner Program, are not managed by humans, but robots. Indeed, a robot does not differentiate between Dan Clancy or another streamer, but judges them all the same way. A human on the other hand… One wonders if a Twitch employee had had to evaluate Dan Clancy’s Partner Program application, would he have validated it? even if it did not completely meet the required criteria?

    Find our guide to choosing the best streaming hardware if you want to get started on Twitch or another platform.

    [ad_2]

    Alice Zampa

    Source link