The Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday it was replacing its longstanding lottery system for H-1B work visas with a new approach that prioritizes skilled, higher-paid foreign workers.The change follows a series of actions by the Trump administration aimed at reshaping a visa program that critics say has become a pipeline for overseas workers willing to work for lower pay, but supporters say drives innovation.”The existing random selection process of H-1B registrations was exploited and abused by U.S. employers who were primarily seeking to import foreign workers at lower wages than they would pay American workers,” said U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Matthew Tragesser.Earlier this year, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation imposing a $100,000 annual H-1B visa fee on highly skilled workers, which is being challenged in court. The president also rolled out a $1 million “gold card” visa as a pathway to U.S. citizenship for wealthy individuals.A press release announcing the new rule says it is “in line with other key changes the administration has made, such as the Presidential Proclamation that requires employers to pay an additional $100,000 per visa as a condition of eligibility.” Historically, H-1B visas have been awarded through a lottery system. This year, Amazon was by far the top recipient, with more than 10,000 visas approved, followed by Tata Consultancy Services, Microsoft, Apple and Google. California has the highest concentration of H-1B workers.The new system will “implement a weighted selection process that will increase the probability that H-1B visas are allocated to higher-skilled and higher-paid” foreign workers, according to Tuesday’s press release. It will go into effect Feb. 27, 2026, and will apply to the upcoming H-1B cap registration season.Supporters of the H-1B program say it is an important pathway to hiring healthcare workers and educators. They say it drives innovation and economic growth in the U.S. and allows employers to fill jobs in specialized fields.Critics argue that the visas often go to entry-level positions rather than senior roles requiring specialized skills. While the program is intended to prevent wage suppression or the displacement of U.S. workers, critics say companies can pay lower wages by classifying jobs at the lowest skill levels, even when the workers hired have more experience.The number of new visas issued annually is capped at 65,000, plus an additional 20,000 for people with a master’s degree or higher.
WASHINGTON —
The Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday it was replacing its longstanding lottery system for H-1B work visas with a new approach that prioritizes skilled, higher-paid foreign workers.
The change follows a series of actions by the Trump administration aimed at reshaping a visa program that critics say has become a pipeline for overseas workers willing to work for lower pay, but supporters say drives innovation.
“The existing random selection process of H-1B registrations was exploited and abused by U.S. employers who were primarily seeking to import foreign workers at lower wages than they would pay American workers,” said U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Matthew Tragesser.
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation imposing a $100,000 annual H-1B visa fee on highly skilled workers, which is being challenged in court. The president also rolled out a $1 million “gold card” visa as a pathway to U.S. citizenship for wealthy individuals.
A press release announcing the new rule says it is “in line with other key changes the administration has made, such as the Presidential Proclamation that requires employers to pay an additional $100,000 per visa as a condition of eligibility.”
Historically, H-1B visas have been awarded through a lottery system. This year, Amazon was by far the top recipient, with more than 10,000 visas approved, followed by Tata Consultancy Services, Microsoft, Apple and Google. California has the highest concentration of H-1B workers.
The new system will “implement a weighted selection process that will increase the probability that H-1B visas are allocated to higher-skilled and higher-paid” foreign workers, according to Tuesday’s press release. It will go into effect Feb. 27, 2026, and will apply to the upcoming H-1B cap registration season.
Supporters of the H-1B program say it is an important pathway to hiring healthcare workers and educators. They say it drives innovation and economic growth in the U.S. and allows employers to fill jobs in specialized fields.
Critics argue that the visas often go to entry-level positions rather than senior roles requiring specialized skills. While the program is intended to prevent wage suppression or the displacement of U.S. workers, critics say companies can pay lower wages by classifying jobs at the lowest skill levels, even when the workers hired have more experience.
The number of new visas issued annually is capped at 65,000, plus an additional 20,000 for people with a master’s degree or higher.
CHICAGO — Barely half an hour had passed since the flight landed at O’Hare International Airport, and the Army combat veteran’s palms were already sweating.
Spencer Sullivan, 38, situated himself at the front of a crowd of people waiting near the exit for international arrivals. He knew it could be hours before his friend got through customs.
Still, he said, “I’ve been waiting so long for this moment. I don’t want to miss it.”
It had been just over 13 years since Sullivan, who now works in corporate development, first began helping his former interpreter in Afghanistan petition for a visa to live in the U.S.
The process had been full of big hopes and bigger letdowns. Then, after they finally secured the visa in September, an Afghan immigrant was accused of shooting two National Guard members in Washington.
In the politicized aftermath, Sullivan wondered: Would his friend get in?
Abdulhaq Sodais, left, and Spencer Sullivan have breakfast at a hotel in Skokie, Ill., a day after Sodais’ arrival in the U.S.
After the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, teenage Abdulhaq Sodais enrolled in English classes with the goal of becoming an interpreter for coalition forces. Nearly a decade later in 2010, employment records show he was contracted by Mission Essential, one of the largest companies that supplied interpreters in Afghanistan to Western forces.
Sodais, 33, and Sullivan, then a platoon leader, met two years later at a military base in the remote Zabul Province.
Together they would go on intel-gathering missions, talking to village leaders, scouting unfamiliar terrain and observing the Taliban from hilltops, where Sodais interpreted their radio transmissions for Sullivan in real time.
In December 2012, Sullivan returned to the U.S., though he and Sodais stayed in touch. The following year, the blast of an improvised explosive device left Sodais with a concussion and a bulging spinal disk. He returned to his parents’ home in Herat to recover.
After his convalescence, he said, his supervisor told him to take a dangerous road back to the Zabul base — a day’s drive for a journey commonly traveled by air. Afraid it would be a suicide mission, he declined to take the land route and was fired for job abandonment.
The denial of his first Special Immigrant Visa application soon followed.
Those visas offer a pathway to citizenship for Afghans who were employed by the U.S. government or its private contractors. In establishing the program, federal officials acknowledged a moral obligation to protect allies who risked their lives to help the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.
More than 50,000 such visas have been approved since 2009, according to the State Department.
One requirement is “faithful and valuable service to the U.S. government.” Applicants denied visas are often deemed to have failed that provision, though interpreters and advocates have said the smallest inconsistency could trigger a denial. Over the next few years, Sodais said, three more visa applications would be denied.
In a Nov. 23, 2014, recommendation letter, Sullivan, by then an Army captain, wrote that granting Sodais a visa “is the least that can be done in order to express America’s gratitude for his services.”
“On multiple missions in enemy controlled villages, his life was threatened by local nationals in support of the Taliban for his assistance of [coalition] forces,” Sullivan wrote. “Abdulhaq did not cover his face while on mission, leaving him recognizable to Taliban informants, further endangering his life.”
He was rehired by Mission Essential in 2014, but fired again in 2016, with a civilian contractor writing in his file that he had an “incompatible skill set with [the] unit’s mission.” She accused him — falsely — Sodais says, of checking his personal Facebook at the office.
Mission Essential later told The Times that he was terminated by the military for poor performance but that it had no record of the incident he referred to.
Sodais said he was confronted by his local mullah, or Muslim clergy leader, in 2015 for working with Western armed forces. The mullah said he was labeled an infidel, and his death had been sanctioned by the Taliban. He went into hiding at his parents’ home.
Then, in July 2017, the Taliban killed Sayed Sadat, another interpreter who had worked with the platoon Sullivan had led. Devastated by the news, Sullivan reached out to Sodais, asking if he was OK.
Sodais had gotten a new phone and didn’t reply. Sullivan, who now wears a metal memorial band with Sadat’s name and date of death, feared Sodais also was dead.
Abdulhaq Sodais and Spencer Sullivan walk through a park in Bremen, Germany, in 2021. Sodais fled Afghanistan for Germany, and Sullivan worked for years to get him a visa to travel to the U.S.
(Peter Dejong / Associated Press)
What Sullivan didn’t know was that Sodais had fled Afghanistan and arrived in Germany in 2018 after seven months of travel with smugglers by land.
After his first German asylum claim was rejected, a lawyer told Sodais he needed more evidence to back up his claims of working for the U.S. So, that Christmas Eve, he messaged Sullivan asking for photos from their missions together. He told Sullivan that if he couldn’t find safety and stability, he would take his own life before the Taliban could.
Sullivan had been wracked with guilt since Sadat’s death and vowed to help. He sent the photos Sodais requested, wrote a letter of support and helped him navigate German bureaucracy. He even flew to Germany from his home in Virginia in 2019 to offer encouragement.
But the asylum process moved slowly. By March 2021, Sodais, overwhelmed by fear of deportation, became deeply depressed and attempted suicide. At a psychiatric hospital, medical records show, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
That August, as the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, Sullivan returned to Germany to help Sodais prepare for his final asylum appeal hearing.
The verdict arrived a month later. He’d won.
Sodais found succeeding in German society difficult. He felt a palpable sense of discrimination and was laid off from various contract jobs, including as a forklift operator and an aid helping special needs children on and off school buses.
While Sullivan was happy his friend had found safety, he was disappointed that the country he had served continued to reject his requests for a visa.
“He should be in America,” he said at the time. “We failed him.”
In the meantime, life continued. Sodais married another Afghan refugee, Weeda Faqiri, in 2022. Sodais’ and Sullivan’s families met for the first time in 2022 when Sullivan, his wife and son visited Germany.
Also that year, Sodais said, he won a $15,000 legal judgment against Mission Essential over lack of medical care after the explosive device blast more than a decade earlier.
He and Sullivan decided to write a book about Sodais’ life and their friendship. “Not Our Problem: The True Story of an Afghan Refugee, an American Promise, and the World Between Them” is scheduled to publish in April.
Last year, Sodais decided to make a final pitch to the U.S. government. On Feb. 4 came a reply unlike the others: “Approval of Appeal for the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa Program.”
Abdulhaq Sodais and his wife, Weeda Faqiri, share their first meal in the United States at a restaurant in Chicago on Dec. 17.
On Sept. 25, Sodais was issued a visa valid for just over five months, until March 3. Overjoyed, he and Faqiri, 26, began planning their move.
Two months later, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, was charged in the shooting that killed Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and critically wounded Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24.
Lakanwal, who pleaded not guilty, entered the U.S. in 2021 through a Biden administration program for Afghans in the wake of the military withdrawal, and his asylum application was approved in April. In Afghanistan, he served in a counterterrorism unit operated by the CIA.
After the shooting, the Trump administration enacted sweeping restrictions to legal immigration programs, including halting visa applications for Afghans and others.
Worried that further restrictions could follow, Sullian called Sodais and told him there were likely two options: stay permanently in Germany, or attempt to move immediately to the U.S.
Sodais chose the move.
Sullivan learned that RefugeeOne, a Chicago-based group that aids refugees, could help. Using money from their book advance, Sullivan booked Sodais and Faqiri flights from Munich to Chicago, arriving Dec. 17.
“Well, this confirms our decision to get them here as fast as possible,” he said that night. “This is a deliberate dismantling of the SIV program, one brick at a time.”
Then he learned the proclamation wouldn’t take effect until Jan. 1. The panic subsided a little.
A woman is taken into custody by Border Patrol agents after she was accused of using her vehicle to block their vehicles while they were patrolling in a shopping center in Niles, Ill., on Dec. 17.
(Scott Olson / Getty Images)
On the day of Sodais’ arrival, Border Patrol leaders returned to Chicago for a fresh round of immigration raids and patrolled a neighborhood near the hotel where he and Faqiri would be staying.
Sullivan said he would put himself physically between Sodais and immigration agents. He was half-joking, but it underscored the political moment.
After Sodais’ plane landed, Sullivan knew he had seen one of his WhatsApp messages because of the two blue checkmarks next to it. But others were unread. Had he been denied entry?
“After so many disappointments over the years, it’s hard to believe that anything’s going to go right,” Sullivan said, later admitting that “I was convinced they were cuffed face-down on the linoleum somewhere.”
Spencer Sullivan, left, guides Abdulhaq Sodais to a parking garage at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago on Dec. 17.
The arrival of three giddy RefugeeOne employees lifted the mood. After years of serving mostly Afghans, Syrians and Ukrainians, they hadn’t picked up an arriving refugee since January, said Emily Parker, who oversees contract compliance.
Parker said a private donor had paid for Sodais and Faqiri to stay a week in a hotel. They qualified for food stamps, three months of rental assistance, cash assistance and four months of Medicaid, a welcome provision because Sodais still suffers back pain from the explosion.
On the other side of the arrivals door, Sodais and Faqiri were stuck in a winding line with hundreds of other foreigners. Sodais later said they were nervous — they had been questioned for an hour in Munich and nearly just as long on their layover in Lisbon.
When they finally got to the front, the customs officer asked what Sodais did for work in Afghanistan. Sodais said he had been an interpreter for U.S. forces. Great, he recalled the agent replying, before welcoming them through.
At 5:24 p.m., Sullivan’s phone rang. Sodais had exited through a different door, so Sullivan rushed to another part of the airport and pointed excitedly when their eyes locked.
“You made it!” Sullivan said, pulling his friend in for a bear hug as they both sobbed.
Without Sullivan, Sodais told the RefugeeOne workers, he would never have made it to the U.S.
“He saved my life.”
Abdulhaq Sodais, right, listens to Adriano Gasparini, a housing manager with RefugeeOne, after viewing potential apartments in Chicago.
The next morning, Parker conducted an intake interview with Sodais to determine potential job placements and explain the services her organization would provide. She said Sodais had technically entered the U.S. as a lawful permanent resident, and his green card should arrive in the mail within a few months.
“That’s how it works with SIVs,” she said. “They’re already 100 steps ahead of any asylee or other refugee.”
Sullivan let out a deep breath. “In my mind, we were playing a long gamble on the courts challenging the executive orders, so that’s good news,” he said.
Sodais, who had applied for the visa with only Sullivan’s help and no lawyer, was also pleasantly surprised.
“This is very exciting for me, because I heard Donald Trump say he stopped everything about refugees,” he said.
Spencer Sullivan looks out of a living room window in a potential apartment for Abdulhaq Sodais and his wife in Chicago.
After dinner — the couple’s first Chicago tavern-style pizza — Sullivan offered Faqiri a box to save her last slice, and she hesitated. Sodais gently explained that in Afghanistan, it’s not cultural norm to take food home from restaurants.
“I just realized something,” Sullivan said. “You’re going to be my interpreter for the rest of our lives.”
Big Tech companies, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, and ServiceNow, have warned employees on visas to avoid leaving the country amid uncertainty about changing immigration policy and procedures.
Following an attack on National Guard members in Washington, the Trump administration expanded travel bans earlier this month, and beefed up vetting and data collection for visa applicants. The new policy now includes screening the social media history of some visa applicants and their dependents.
Soon after the announcement, U.S. consulates began rescheduling appointments for future dates, some as late as summer 2026, leaving employees who required appointments unable to return.
“Please be aware that some U.S. Embassies and Consulates are experiencing significant visa stamping appointment delays, currently reported as up to 12 months,” noted an email sent by Berry Appleman & Leiden LLC, the immigration firm that represents Google. The advisory also recommended “avoiding international travel at this time.”
Microsoft’s memo noted that much of the rescheduling is occurring in India, in cities such as Chennai and Hyderabad, and that new stamping dates are as far out as June 2026.
The company advised employees with valid work authorization who were traveling outside the U.S. for stamping to return before their current visa expires. Those still in the U.S. scheduling upcoming travel for visa stamping should “strongly consider” changing their travel plans.
Apple’s immigration team also recommended that employees without a valid H1-B visa stamp avoid international travel for now.
ServiceNow, a business software company, similarly issued an advisory recommending that those with valid visa stamps return to the U.S.
Microsoft declined to comment on its memo. Apple, Google and ServiceNow did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Companies warned that delays due to enhanced screening is for H-1B, H-4, F, J and M visas.
H-1B is a high-skilled immigration visa program that allows employers to sponsor work visas for individuals with specialized skills. The program, capped at 85,000 new visas per year, is a channel for American tech giants to source skilled workers, such as software engineers.
Big Tech companies such as Amazon, Google, and Meta have consistently topped the charts in terms of the number of H-1B approvals, with Indian nationals as the largest beneficiaries of the program, accounting for 71% of approved H-1 B petitions.
H-1B visas are awarded through a lottery system, which its critics say has been exploited by companies to replace American workers with cheap foreign labor.
In September, the Trump administration announced a $100,000 fee for new H-1B employee hires. But after severe pushback, it clarified that it applied only to employers seeking to use the H-1B visa to hire foreign nationals not already in the U.S.
The H-1B program is an issue that has not only animated the right but also splintered it. Those on the tech-right, such as Elon Musk and David Sacks, are strongly in favor of strengthening skilled immigration, while the core MAGA base is vehemently opposed to it.
Proponents of the program often highlight that skilled worker immigration made the U.S a technological leader, and nearly half of the fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children, creating jobs for native-born Americans.
Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar speaks during the General Debate of the United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York City on Sept. 26, 2025.
LEONARDO MUNOZ
AFP via Getty Images
The Trump administration’s build-up of warships near Venezuela, its recently imposed visa restrictions on two island-nations and the decisions by some countries to grant the U.S. military access to their territories have brought tensions in the Caribbean to a new high.
One of the U.S. military campaign’s staunchest supporters, Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, is accusing two fellow Caribbean leaders of triggering visa restrictions for their citizens by “bad-mouthing the U.S.” over American strikes on vessels in the southern Caribbean. The U.S. military build up, which began in September and has since expanded to the eastern Pacific, has led to the deaths of at least 104 people Washington says were drug traffickers.
“Why are you badmouthing the people? You want to go to the people’s country, but you want to badmouth them. Isn’t that hypocrisy?” Persad-Bissessar said from Port-of-Spain Friday as she warned her 1.5 million residents to “behave.”
More than 250,000 Trinidadians and Toboggans live in the United States, she said, while over 300,000 hold U.S. visas. “Careful you don’t end up like Antigua and Barbuda and Dominica, who bad-mouthed the U.S. and guess what happened? All their visas are restricted now. They’ve cut their visas.”
Her comments drew an immediate rebuke from Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne, who said in a Facebook post that after being informed “that one of our colleague heads, instead of standing in solidarity, publicly accused us of cursing the U.S. administration,” he challenged “that leader to back her statement with facts.”
Both countries are part of the 15-member Caribbean Community regional bloc known as CARICOM, which has been divided over the Trump administration’s buildup in the Southern Caribbean, whose legality has been questioned by U.S. lawmakers amid the president’s escalating pressure campaign against Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
Late Saturday, Persad-Bissessar accused CARICOM of not being “a reliable partner.” The organization “is deteriorating rapidly due to poor management, lax accountability, factional divisions, destabilizing policies, private conflicts between regional leaders and political parties and the inappropriate meddling in the domestic politics of member states,” she said.
Partial travel ban
Last week Antjgua and Dominica, both located in the eastern Caribbean, were placed under a restricted travel ban by the Trump administration, which cited their Citizenship by Investment programs, saying their lack of residency requirements pose challenges for screening and vetting.
Sometimes referred to as a “golden passport,” the program is offered in five of the six independent Caribbean countries that make up the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States and allows foreigners to gain a second citizenship in exchange for making an economic investment in the countries.
The governments of Antigua and Dominica both immediately expressed concerns over the decision. Antigua said that it had previously amended its laws to address the residency requirement.
In separate statements on Friday, Antiguan Prime Minister Browne and Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said their nations had been removed from the list of 15 newly announced countries. However, a State Department spokesperson responding to an inquiry from the Miami Herald on Saturday said both countries are still on the visa restriction list.
The measure goes into effect on Jan. 1.
CARICOM demands clarity
Amid the confusion, CARICOM leaders are asking for clarity from U.S. officials and urged “an early engagement” with the affected Caribbean countries “to address outstanding concerns, consistent with the strong and longstanding partnership between the United States of America and CARICOM.”
In a statement issued late Friday, the Bureau of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community, also stressed that the “decision was taken without prior consultation, especially in circumstances of its potential adverse effects on legitimate travel, people-to-people exchanges, and the social and economic well-being of these small states.”
In response, Persad-Bissessar sais Saturday that “the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is not a party to the statement,” and “maintains its own position on the matter and recognizes the sovereign right of the United States to make decision in furtherance of its best interests.”
Browne told the Miami Herald that in January, the U.S. plans to hold biometrics training to assist island-nations to strength their capacity to stop criminals from accessing their Citizenship by Investment Program.
Persad-Bissessar said that’s not why Washington singled out two of the five Caribbean countries that offer the golden passports.
A radar, a warning from Trinidad’s prime minister
Amid the brewing tensions, Trinidad’s Foreign Ministry announced it would allow the U.S. military access to its airports after Persad-Bissessar acknowledged that the oil-rich country had also agreed to let the U.S install a radar in Tobago. She claimed that the installation is part of the U.S. efforts to go after drug smugglers.
Trinidad is only seven miles from Venezuela. Browne and other leaders have said the Caribbean should remain a zone of peace amid the conflict and have spoken out about unintended consequences of the U.S. military strikes.
During her address on Friday, Persad-Bissessar told Trinidadians not to “worry” about the radar or Venezuela.
“I say it again, I stand within the bilateral relationship with the United States of America,” she said.
“Understand where our help comes from. Understand who can protect and defend Trinidad and Tobago. Right now, there is only one country in the world can do it. They have the money. They have the equipment. They have the assets,” she said. “Trinidad and Tobago first.”
Jacqueline Charles has reported on Haiti and the English-speaking Caribbean for the Miami Herald for over a decade. A Pulitzer Prize finalist for her coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, she was awarded a 2018 Maria Moors Cabot Prize — the most prestigious award for coverage of the Americas.
Millionaire status ain’t what it used to be. Sure, having a net worth over $1 million may still sound like a goal worth chasing. But according to a new report from Visa, it’s no longer a great benchmark for measuring what affluence actually looks like in America.
Indeed, thanks to strong stock and real estate markets, 1,000 Americans a day reached a net worth of $1 million or more last year, the credit card company reports, bringing the number of millionaires in the U.S. to more than 23 million.
In an effort to better capture what constitutes affluence today, Visa’s new “Redefining rich” report proposes an alternative benchmark: entry into the top 10 percent of American households. That metric would qualify just over 12 million households as affluent, defined by having a $210,000 annual income or $1.8 million net worth.
“We probably spent a week figuring out, ‘How do we actually define the affluent?’” says Michael Brown, principal U.S. economist at Visa. “We need to be more flexible with our definition, so we use that top 10 percent as the guidepost.”
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Thinking about wealth through this new lens also allows you to draw new conclusions about wealthy consumers. For instance, Visa’s team used credit transactions from the past year to identify which categories of spending affluent Americans over-index on relative to their non-affluent peers, and found that the top categories included apparel, airlines, lodging, professional services, restaurants and education.
But affluence isn’t just a numbers game. It’s also location-dependent, because cost-of-living differences mean your dollar will go further in some parts of the country than others.
Consider that prices in California are typically 13 percent higher than the national average, so the report adjusts the “affluence” cutoffs accordingly, to $236,000 in annual income and $2 million in net worth.
Arkansas, meanwhile, is about 13 percent cheaper than the national average, so you’d only need a yearly income of $182,000, or a net worth of $1.6 million, to qualify as affluent there.
Regional dynamics also shape how wealth is distributed in the country—and it may not be where you’d expect. According to Visa’s report, affluence is most concentrated in the South, where there are comparatively lower income and net worth thresholds to enter that upper wealth bracket. That’s left the region with 4 million affluent households and an outsized “affluent spend share” of 33 percent.
“If we’re thinking about how a business is trying to capture market share in an economy that is as dynamic as the U.S. economy, looking at a local definition of the affluent is critically important,” Brown says. “We get into the mindset, especially as economists, that there’s some national definition of an affluent consumer and that they all behave the same way—and this geographic dimension thoroughly debunks that myth.”
There’s also a relationship between geography and age, the report notes, which has further bearing on the texture of American wealth. The South claims the largest share of affluent Boomers and Gen Xers—“the primary drivers of spending”—whereas the Northeast has the highest share of affluent Zoomers, meaning less actual spending by upper-echelon consumers.
“In the South, you’re skewing towards the Boomer population, [which] means that old school advertising techniques work quite well,” Brown notes, citing TV ads and word-of-mouth.
And all generations aren’t made equal, at least when it comes to consumer behavior.
“Baby boomers make up just 12 percent of affluent households, yet they account for 42 percent of affluent spending,” Visa’s report notes. “This outsized influence stems from one key fact: affluent boomers control the bulk of their generation’s $85 trillion-plus in wealth.”
That’s a big difference when you compare them to Gen X-ers, who make up 57 percent of affluent households but only 33 percent of affluent spending. (The report chalks this up to student debt and mortgages as well as the costs of child and elder care.)
Those age groupings sometimes interact with affluence in weird ways: for instance, when it comes to lawn and garden-related purchases.
“If you’re in the non-affluent, lawn and garden equipment spending [tops off] right around age 48. That’s a chore, right?” Brown says. “You’re buying this equipment to try to make your life as easy as possible, given the task. My father falls into this affluent bucket of lawn and garden equipment, and that’s a hobby—and so he has multiple pieces of equipment in order to facilitate his hobby.”
These generational splits are also key to keep in mind as we enter the purchasing-heavy holiday season. Brown notes that America’s aging population means there’s less gift-buying happening than in the past, thanks to fewer children—but adds that the large population of affluent Boomers does give holiday retail something of a boost.
“They have grandchildren,” the economist notes, and “they’re going to spoil them.”
Societies are shifting away from cash, and embracing new ways to make payments and transfer money. In Asia, many have turned to e-wallets, QR codes, and super apps—skipping physical credit cards entirely.
Traditional card companies are reinventing themselves to stay ahead of the game. “These days, when people talk about ‘cards’, it’s not just a piece of plastic. It’s a digital network proposition where you can pay or be paid,” Stephen Karpin, Visa’s Asia-Pacific president, told Fortune on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, on the sidelines of the Singapore FinTech Festival, Visa revealed two new features for its regional clientele: AI-enabled payments and stablecoin settlements.
The first marks the company’s expansion into agentic commerce, where consumers across Asia can tap on AI-powered agents to shop and pay on their behalf.
OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT catalyzed a fundamental shift in commerce, Karpin said. “The breadth with which it’s transforming how one understands and finds things in the world is quite profound. Yet one of the things missing from the current state of a LLM-powered chatbot is the ability to make payment via an agent,” he said.
This means that online shoppers can use AI chatbots to discover, browse and select items—but can’t yet use them to complete payments.
Customers can load their Visa cards on an agent system—just as they might with Apple or Google Pay. They are then given the option to opt in for ‘personalization’, to receive recommendations of “intelligent shopping decisions” based on their past preferences.
Users are then prompted to make payment within the AI platform—securely, with tokenization and authentication—completing an end-to-end online shopping process.
Stablecoins
The second initiative is Visa’s stable settlement pilot, which enables select partners to pay using stablecoins across supported blockchains. Stablecoins are digital currencies designed to have a stable value, by pegging them to less volatile assets such as fiat currencies, most commonly the U.S. dollar).
“We want to make [stablecoins] one of the options to make and receive payments all around the world, when the regulatory environment is ready,” Karpin added. “We’ve got some assets in the form of technology and capability, and want to help businesses large and small start conducting commerce in Web3.”
Asia’s shifting payments space
Karpin has worked at Visa for over a decade, cutting his teeth in the South Pacific, Southeast Asian, and Japanese markets—before becoming the firm’s Asia-Pacific president in 2023.
Things are shifting in Asia’s payments space, he said, noting that more change has happened in the last five years as compared to the previous fifty.
Super apps—single apps consolidating multiple services like ride-hailing, food delivery and digital payments—is one such disruptor, he said.
They first took off in mainland China, with the founding of Alipay in 2004 and WeChat Pay in 2013. Southeast Asian tech giant Grab followed suit, launching GrabPay in 2016.
But instead of regarding super apps and e-wallets as competition, Visa is looking for ways to work with them.
“You can live your life on a super app now, so we’re partnering with them to digitalize the Visa credential,” Karpin said.
He cited Visa’s partnership with Taiwan’s Line Pay as an example, which allows Taiwanese users to travel abroad and pay by scanning any QR codes connected to the Visa network.
Visa is also widely accepted in global destinations beyond Asia, making it easier for long-distance travelers to make seamless payments overseas.
“[When traveling further abroad], you can’t use a super app with a QR. We’re partnering with e-wallets so you can use your phone to tap to get onto the New York subway, or buy lunch in London,” Karpin said.
Visa is the world’s second-largest card payment organization based on the annual value of card payments transacted and the number of issued cards, after being surpassed by China’s UnionPay in 2015. Yet Visa, No. 127 on the Fortune 500, leads in global transaction volume.
Premium credit card users and small merchants could soon feel the effect of a decades-long battle over swipe fees.
A newly proposed settlement between Visa and Mastercard could reshape how much merchants—and ultimately, consumers—pay to use their payment networks, while giving stores more flexibility to treat high-end and mid-tier cards differently.
If approved by the court, the payment giants would reduce interchange fees by 0.1% over the next five years and cap standard consumer credit rates at 1.25% for eight years. It would also scrap a rule requiring merchants to accept all cards from a given network. That change could open the door for stores to reject credit card tiers—such as higher-fee, high-reward cards like the Chase Sapphire Reserve or Capital One Venture X—or further pass fees directly to consumers.
The current system has long frustrated merchants, especially small businesses, who must decide whether to absorb rising swipe fees or pass costs to customers. Visa and Mastercard collected $111.2 billion in credit card swipe fees in 2024—up 10% from the year prior and quadruple the level from 2009, according to the National Retail Federation.
With the new move, merchants could more easily add surcharges selectively who are less price-sensitive, John Cabell, managing director of payments intelligence at J.D. Power, told Fortune. Premium cardholders, with annual fees above $500, spend an average of $2,736 a month, nearly three times as much as those with cheaper cards. Only 22% of those cardholders report they select alternate payment methods when faced with a surcharge, according to J.D. Power data. That’s compared to 33% of holders of no-fee cards.
But while some merchants might be tempted to trim costs by limiting which cards they accept, doing so could alienate big spenders and disrupt the lucrative rewards ecosystem that fuels consumer spending.
“Over time, if premium cards become even more expensive to use at the point of sale, this type of change might reign in the upward spiral of rewards and benefits that consumers have grown to appreciate,” Cabell added. “Even relatively modest cards might see a reduction in offerings as well if surcharges become generally more prevalent with mid-tier and premium card groupings.”
But others argue merchants will think twice before turning away big spenders. Brian Kelly, founder of The Points Guy, told Fortune he didn’t expect the deal’s potential results to be dramatic because if businesses refuse top-tier rewards cards, they’d likely lose more revenue than they save on interchange fees.
“If this settlement proceeds, merchants may continue adding small fees for credit card transactions, which they’re already allowed to do today,” Kelly added.
In a statement, Mastercard said they believe the settlement is the best solution for all parties.
“Smaller merchants will gain in this settlement – more acceptance choices, reduced costs and simplified rules,” the company said in a statement. Even more, it allows us to focus our energies on continuing to give consumers, small businesses and larger merchants what they expect from Mastercard – a better payments experience, strong value and peace of mind.”
Visa told Fortune the deal would “provide meaningful relief, more flexibility and options to control how they accept payments from their customers.”
Trade group argue the deal fails to protect merchants
Many trade groups criticized the settlement, arguing it doesn’t go far enough to protect merchants.
“Once again, this proposal is all window dressing and no substance,” National Retail Federation Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel Stephanie Martz said in a statement. “The reduction in swipe fees doesn’t begin to go far enough, and the change in the honor-all-cards rule would accomplish nothing. If the courts can’t fix this, it’s time for Congress to take action.”
The National Grocers Association added that the proposed settlement does not address the “anticompetitive price-setting in the credit card industry.”
“Independent grocers, operating on net margins of less than 2%, have been hit hardest by rising swipe fees, which grow faster than inflation and cost consumers and businesses over $100 billion annually,” wrote Chris Jones, NGA chief government relations officer and counsel.
A previous Visa-Mastercard agreement was denied earlier this year, so it remains to be seen if this new proposal will ultimately be approved.
Lawmakers have also floated reform through the bipartisan Credit Card Competition Act, which would reduce swipe fees and target the “Visa-Mastercard duopoly” by requiring secondary networks on credit cards. The measure, which was first introduced in 2023 and backed by then-U.S. Senator J.D. Vance, could put additional pressure on payment giants if the settlement doesn’t satisfy regulators—or merchants.
A veteran of the Cuban Air Force has been arrested on charges of lying to the federal government when he applied for a visa and permanent residency in the United States by omitting his military history, authorities said Wednesday.
Luis Raul Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez, 64, pleaded not guilty last week in Jacksonville federal court to charges of committing fraud on his visa form and making a false statement on his residency application to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. On Friday, a magistrate judge ordered that he be held before trial because he was deemed a risk of flight to Cuba.
He was appointed a lawyer with the Federal Public Defender’s Office. His trial was scheduled for Jan. 6, 2026.
If convicted, Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in federal prison.
“This man’s past as a longtime military pilot for the evil Castro regime — which has wrought untold suffering on the Cuban people — should have been front and center in his immigration file,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “This Department of Justice will vigorously prosecute anyone who lies about their past to take advantage of America’s immigration system.”
According to an indictment, Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez submitted false applications in May 2017 for a U.S. visa and again in April 2025 for permanent residency with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. In both instances, he omitted his prior membership in the Cuban Revolutionary Air and Air Defense Force from 1980 to 2009, the indictment says.
Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez is accused of falsely stating he had never served in the Cuban military, when in reality, he had been a member of the country’s Air Defense Force for nearly three decades.
A photo included in the indictment shows Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez actively serving in the Cuban military.
The case is being investigated by the FBI in Miami and Jacksonville and prosecuted by federal prosecutors Kelly Milliron and Abbie Waxman.
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)
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.”
Visa Inc. reported fiscal fourth-quarter earnings that topped estimates as consumers continued to swipe, tap and insert their credit cards to transact globally. Adjusted net income totaled $5.8 billion, or $2.98 a share, up 7% from a year earlier. That slightly exceeded analysts’ estimates of $2.97 a share. Visa said in July that it expected earnings per […]
The number of international student arrivals in the U.S. dropped by nearly a fifth at the onset of this academic year, according to federal data, the latest sign of a hit to colleges’ foreign student enrollment as the Trump administration has ratcheted up scrutiny of their visas.
International visitors arriving in the U.S. on student visas declined 19% in August compared with the same month in 2024, according to the preliminary data released by the National Travel and Tourism Office. The numbers also declined in June and July, but August is the summer month that typically sees the most international student arrivals — 313,138 this year.
As the federal government has clamped down on student visitors, industry groups have warned of international enrollment declines that threaten school budgets and American colleges’ standing in the world. Although the extent of the change remains to be seen, the new data suggest a turnaround in international enrollment that had been rebounding in the U.S. from a decline worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
About 1.1 million international students were in the United States last year — a source of key revenue for tuition-driven colleges. International students are not eligible for federal financial aid, and many pay full tuition.
The picture in California
Many California campuses, including the University of California system, have not yet released data on fall enrollment but prepared for potential hurdles in attracting internationals.
For fall 2025 admissions — not enrollment — UC said its nine undergraduate campuses had offered seats to 3,263 more first-year international students, an increase of 17% over last year, according to data reported over the summer. UC also admitted 100,947 first-year California students, up more than 7% from last year,
UC said it increased international admits because of “rising uncertainty of their likelihood of enrollment.” It noted that the share of accepted internationals who choose to enroll is generally “substantially lower” than that of California residents and that the cost of being a non-Californian at UC has gone up. Last year, the UC Board of Regents approved a 10% increase of the “nonresident” tuition fee from $34,200 to $37,602.
At USC, the California campus that typically attracts the largest share of internationals in the state, there were also concerns over a potential dip in foreign student enrollment.
The campus saw a small decline in overall international enrollment, from 12,374 last academic year to 11,959 this fall. Chinese and Indian students made up more than half of the total foreign population, matching trends statewide.
But USC also grew its first-year international community, according to university data about this fall’s new undergraduate class.
Of the 3,759 new first-year students enrolled this fall, about 21%, or 789, are internationals. Last year, about 17% of the 3,489 first-years — 593 — were in the U.S. on visas.
California usually attracts the largest international college community of any state. In 2024, in addition to USC, the biggest draws were UC Berkeley, which enrolled 12,441 students; UC San Diego, 10,467 students; and UCLA, 10,446 students, according to data from the Institute of International Education. STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and math — were the most popular.
Visa challenges and travel bans blocked some students
Nationally, many students who had plans to study in the U.S. could not enter the country because of difficulty lining up visas. In late May, the State Department paused the scheduling of visa interviews for foreign students, which resumed three weeks later with new rules for vetting visa applicants’ social media accounts.
The timing of the pause had “maximum possible impact” for visa issuances for the fall semester, said Clay Harmon, executive director of the Assn. of International Enrollment Management, a nonprofit membership association.
The federal data on international dips show those regions experienced the largest declines in international student arrivals this August, with drops of 33% from Africa, 17% from the Middle East and 24% from Asia — including a 45% decrease from India, the country that sends the most students to the U.S.
The data include new as well as returning students, but some who were already in the U.S. avoided traveling outside the country this summer for fear of problems reentering.
Students have concerns about the political climate, research funding and cost
Some international students and their families have been wary of the Trump administration’s wider crackdown on immigration. In the spring, the federal government stripped thousands of international students of their legal status, causing panic before the Trump administration reversed course. Trump also has called for colleges to reduce their dependence on foreign students and cap international enrollment.
Syed Tamim Ahmad, a senior at UCLA who grew up in Dubai, said he was considering applying to medical school in the U.S. before last spring, when sudden student visa cancellations and government suspensions of research funding to Harvard and other elite campuses began to intensify.
“When I was a freshman, it seemed that out of every country the U.S. provided the most opportunities in terms of access to research funding and resources,” said Ahmad, whose major is physiological science. “But by my senior year, a lot of these pull factors became push factors. Funding was cut down, affecting labs, and there is fear among international students about what they put on social media and what they put online. That sense of having freedom of speech in the U.S. isn’t the same.”
Ahmad is now planning to enroll at medical school in Australia.
“There is a similar feeling among many students — that if they are going to graduate school or continuing their studies they should go outside the U.S.,” said Ahmad, who previously served in UCLA’s undergraduate student government as an international representative. “But it’s not everyone. There are also still many people who believe that there are good opportunities for them in the United States.”
Zeynep Bowlus, a higher education consultant in Istanbul, said interest in U.S. universities among the families she works with had been declining over the last few years largely because of financial reasons and skepticism about the value of an American degree. Policy changes in the U.S. are adding to their concerns, she said.
“I try not to make it too dramatic, but at the same time, I tell them the reality of what’s going on and the potential hurdles that they may face,” Bowlus said.
Institutions in other countries have seized the opportunity to attract students who might be cooling on the U.S. Growing numbers of Chinese students have opted to stay in Asia, and international applications to universities in the United Kingdom have surged.
Elisabeth Marksteiner, a higher education consultant in Cambridge, England, said she will encourage families looking at American universities to approach the admissions process with more caution. A student visa has never been guaranteed, but it is especially important now for families to have a backup plan, she said.
“I think the presumption is that it’s all going to carry on as it was in the past,” Marksteiner said. “My presumption is, it isn’t.”
Kaleem is a staff writer for The Times. Seminera and Keller write for the Associated Press.
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Jaweed Kaleem, Makiya Seminera, Christopher L. Keller
Sami Hamdi, a British political commentator who was on a speaking tour in the U.S., was detained by immigration enforcement officers on Sunday at San Francisco International Airport after his visa was revoked.
A Muslim civil rights group said his arrest was retaliation for his criticism of Israel.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, announced on social media that Hamdi’s visa had been revoked, that he was being held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement until he could be removed. In her post, she also made unsubstantiated claims that Hamdi supported terrorism.
“Under President Trump, those who support terrorism and undermine American national security will not be allowed to work or visit this country,” McLaughlin wrote in her Sunday social media post.
Hamdi, who is based in London, had been on a speaking tour in the United States, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights advocacy group. His visitor visa was supposed to last for several months, a leader at the organization said.
The group said in a statement that Hamdi had been detained “because he dared to criticize the Israeli government’s genocide” while on his tour, and called his detention “a blatant affront to free speech.”
Hamdi had attended the organization’s annual gala on Friday night in Sacramento and was scheduled to speak at an event in Florida on Sunday night.
Hamdi is a journalist and commentator who appears on British television networks to analyze developments in the Middle East, as well as domestic U.K. politics. According to his LinkedIn page, he is the managing director and editor in chief of International Interest, which “advises on political environments across the globe.”
Hamdi appears to be the latest of several immigrants and international travelers to have a U.S. visa revoked over political speech. The Trump administration was rebuked in September by a federal judge, who ruled that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had unconstitutionally targeted noncitizens for their pro-Palestinian advocacy in order to suppress critiques of Israel and the war it has waged in Gaza for two years with backing from the U.S.
Hussam Ayloush, chief executive of CAIR’s California chapter, said he attended the Sacramento gala with Hamdi and was shocked to receive a text from him Sunday around 7 a.m. informing him that Hamdi had been stopped by federal agents who told him he had to come with them.
Ayloush visited Hamdi along with two attorneys on Monday afternoon at the Golden State Annex, an ICE detention center in McFarland, where he is being held.
“When I went inside to meet him and check on him, I felt embarrassed that my country treated him that way,” Ayloush said. “He hasn’t caused or instigated any harm to our country.”
Ayloush said Hamdi was only guilty of “being critical of what Israel is doing to Palestinians, and the complicit role the U.S. government has played.”
CAIR said that its legal team as well as attorneys from the Muslim Legal Fund of America were working toward Hamdi’s release.
The organization said Hamdi’s arrest came after pressure from right-wing activist Laura Loomer, who publicly took credit for his detention. She said on social media that ICE acted in response to her “relentless pressure.” Loomer had smeared Hamdi with anti-Muslim conspiracy theories, the organization said.
Loomer has said she successfully lobbied the U.S. government to bar Palestinian children injured by American weapons in Israel’s war from seeking medical care in the U.S. In August, the Trump administration announced it had stopped approving visitor visas for Palestinians from Gaza, including young children in need of serious medical care.
In response to a question from The Times about whether Hamdi’s detention came in response to his critiques of the U.S. and Israel, the Department of Homeland Security linked to a statement the U.S. State Department made on its X account, in which it reposted McLaughlin’s announcement about Hamdi and added a comment: “We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: The United States has no obligation to host foreigners who support terrorism and actively undermine the safety of Americans. We continue to revoke the visas of persons engaged in such activity.”
Tariffs And Visa Add To The Cannabis Industry’s Misery, squeezing profits, talent, and innovation nationwide.
The U.S. legal cannabis industry has been suffering over the last two years under an indecisive federal government — and now it’s getting squeezed from two unexpected angles: Tariffs and Visas add to the cannabis industry’s misery. For businesses and workers alike, what once looked like a budding success story is showing greater turbulence.
The first punch comes via international trade policy. Many cannabis-adjacent businesses — from vape cartridge manufacturers to packaging suppliers and cultivation equipment importers — rely heavily on overseas inputs, especially from China. Recent U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods — in some cases raising rates to 30–50% or more — have forced costs up, and the ripple is hitting weed-industry players hard.
According to one industry analysis, the cost to produce a typical vape unit is rising by a few cents apiece because of tariffs on hardware and packaging. With thousands of units produced monthly, it adds up quickly. Some companies are absorbing the hit, but others expect the increases to eventually land on consumers — or push buyers back into illicit markets.
What makes this especially tough for cannabis businesses: margins are already razor-thin, regulatory burdens are high, and the domestic supply chain just isn’t built out. Switching suppliers takes time; finding U.S.-based manufacturers meeting regulatory compliance is even harder.
Now consider the human side of the workforce. The immigration and “visa” side of the equation rarely gets front-page attention in cannabis, but it’s quietly important. The federal government still classifies cannabis (marijuana) as a Schedule I controlled substance, despite many states legalizing it. That creates complications for foreign nationals trying to work in or invest in cannabis-related businesses.
For example, non-U.S. citizens on visas or applying for visas risk denial or revocation if they have past cannabis use, or if they’re working or investing in the cannabis industry—even when it’s legal in the state. This means companies would otherwise recruit international talent, or rely on global investment, may find restrictions.
At the same time, broader visa policy changes are making the environment more uncertain. Recent shifts on H-1B visas, fees, and work permits are complicating cross-border mobility for skilled workers.
The combination of higher input costs and a more restrictive workforce/immigration pipeline is a double whammy for cannabis entrepreneurs. It means:
Higher retail prices or slimmer margins
Supply chain disruption (imports delayed, domestic alternatives still catching up)
Caution around hiring international talent or tapping global investment due to immigration uncertainty
Potential slowdown in growth or innovation as more resources are diverted to coping
For millennial cannabis consumers and industry watchers: yes, you might start seeing slightly steeper prices or less product innovation. And for workers and founders: borders, visas, and trade policy are no longer side conversations — they’re central to whether the business thrives.
In short: the cannabis boom isn’t immune to macroeconomics and immigration policy. If anything, it’s among the more vulnerable sectors, since it straddles imports, regulation, and workforce mobility all at once.
Following the state department’s review of their social media accounts, six foreigners have had their visas revoked for allegedly making light of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Charlie Kirk, a conservative figure, was killed on September 10 while speaking at Utah Valley University on behalf of his organization Turning Point USA. As President Trump was posthumously awarding Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the announcement of visa revocation was made by the State Department.
Kirk was revered by Trump as a “Great American Hero” and even a “martyr” for freedom. As such, the Trump administration has targeted people for comments about Kirk. Although these individuals are from Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Paraguay and South Africa, the names and types of visas these individuals had are yet to be revealed.
Nhlamulo Baloyi, a South African national, has come forward to confirm that the State Department revoked his visa that was supposed to expire in 2032. This took place after uploading a post that said “Charlie Kirk won’t be remembered as a hero” and suggesting that his followers were a “movement of white nationalist trailer trash.”
Baloyi says that “this goes against all the values that one has known about America”, contending that the revocation of his visa is a free speech violation. He mentions that he condemns political violence and that his post was simply intended to shed light on some of the double standards surrounding race.
The State Department has commented in a post on X that “The United States has no obligation to host foreigners who wish death on Americans”. These actions, an effort to silence criticism of the passed political figure.
The United States has no obligation to host foreigners who wish death on Americans.
The State Department continues to identify visa holders who celebrated the heinous assassination of Charlie Kirk. Here are just a few examples of aliens who are no longer welcome in the U.S.:
Many companies and institutions have fired, suspended, and otherwise disciplined people for making social media posts regarding Kirk’s death. David Axelrod, former advisor to Barack Obama, argues, posting on X, that “U.S. revokes visas for 6 foreigners for derisive posthumous comments about Charlie Kirk–who was ironically, a self-styled champion of free speech!”
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Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said they “will defend our borders, our culture, and our citizens by enforcing our immigration laws”. Other top officials, such as Vice President JD Vance, have encouraged people to call out any offensive language about Kirk they may find online.
A South African music executive whose visa was revoked over his post about late conservative activist Charlie Kirk told Newsweek he believes the revocation was a “gross violation” of freedom of speech.
Why It Matters
The U.S. State Department announced on Tuesday that the visas of several individuals accused of celebrating Kirk’s assassination were revoked. The announcement intensified debate about the limits of free speech, as well as whether the government can limit immigration based on speech and expression.
Kirk, the co-founder of the conservative student organization Turning Point USA, was fatally shot during his American Comeback Tour event at Utah Valley University on September 10. Police later arrested suspect Tyler Robinson. The 22-year-old has been charged with aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury, two counts of obstruction of justice, two counts of witness tampering, and commission of a violent offense in the presence of a child.
What To Know
Nota Baloyi, a South African music executive, was among those who lost their visas for their Kirk-related posts. He said he believes the decision to revoke his visa violated his free speech rights.
“It was a gross violation of the virtues that America espouses to the world as defenders of the free world and the paragons of virtue when it comes to free speech,” Baloyi told Newsweek on Wednesday.
The State Department announced this visa would be revoked in a post on X, in which the department said the United States “has no obligation to host foreigners who wish death on Americans.”
The thread included a screenshot of a post made by Baloyi, though it removed identifying information.
The post read: “Neanderthals can’t have their cake & eat it… This weekend they went openly anti-black racist & now they’re hurt that the racist rally ended in attempted martyrdom? Charlie Kirk won’t be remembered as a hero. He was used to astroturf a movement of white nationalist trailer trash!”
Baloyi told Newsweek he initially found out about the revocation on October 9 and was at first concerned, as the email notifying him didn’t mention the post.
“I was concerned that it might have something that maybe I had done wrong during my trip in the U.S. that led to its termination,” he said. The State Department’s announcement that the revocation was because of his Kirk post was something of a “relief,” because it was a “rather innocuous reason.”
Baloyi said his last trip to the U.S. was due to a threat on his life.
He said he travels to the U.S. on a B1/B2 visa for work purposes but was not in the country when he learned of the revocation. He plans to reapply for the visa and wants to persuade the State Department to change its mind.
In a post on X, Baloyi apologized “to all those that felt my post was insensitive & ill-timed in any context.” He deleted the original post and said he condemns political violence.
“I’m an advocate for free speech much like Charlie Kirk was famous for & as a Christian with conservative leanings, I am a supporter of President Trump,” he wrote, adding that he does “not always agree with either Charlie Kirk nor Donald Trump,” which is why he disagrees with this decision.
What People Are Saying
Representative Ben Cline, a Virginia Republican, on X: “Being in the United States on a visa is a privilege, not a right. The cancellation of a visa or green card falls within the executive discretion of @SecRubio. Those who celebrate or incite violence have NO place in our country.”
Conservative attorney Mike Davis, on X: “Foreigners who celebrate the assassination of an American have no business being in America. They can go to hell. In the meantime, they can go home.”
Journalist Billy Binion, on X: “Asking without snark: Does anyone think the federal government would be deporting people for making gross comments about a leftist? The answer isn’t hard to figure out, which tells you what you need to know.”
Gregg Nunziata, a conservative lawyer and former Department of Justice official, on X: “Making visas conditional on speech is a bad look for our country and ultimately harmful to the national interest.”
What Happens Next
The decision to revoke these visas reflects the ongoing efforts to scrutinize immigrants and visa holders based on factors such as their speech.
Uniting the strength of Visa’s trusted infrastructure with HotelRunner’s deep presence in hospitality, this strategic preferred partnership sets the foundation for a new era of embedded finance in travel. By bringing Visa’s products directly into HotelRunner’s platform, this collaboration will enable seamless, secure, and scalable cross-border payments and settlements for thousands of travel businesses worldwide.
LONDON, UK, October 7, 2025 (Newswire.com)
– HotelRunner, a leading travel and hospitality technology platform, and Visa, a global leader in digital payments, have announced a global strategic preferred partnership to empower businesses of all sizes across the travel and hospitality industry. The collaboration brings together Visa’s trusted global infrastructure and secure cross-border payments capabilities with HotelRunner’s deep presence and extensive reach in hospitality technology. Solving the “last-mile” challenge in tourism and democratizing financial access for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in emerging markets, HotelRunner is collaborating with Visa to provide robust technology infrastructure and B2B connectivity that enables accommodation providers, from boutique hotels in Morocco to guesthouses in Bali, to get paid quickly and securely across borders.
By uniting their strengths, the two companies aim to accelerate economic growth across the global travel and hospitality ecosystem while delivering seamless, secure, and scalable financial solutions. This partnership sets the foundation for a new era of embedded finance with a specific focus on independent hotels by providing access to global payment rails.
“Travel runs on trust, and trust depends on secure, reliable infrastructure,” said Ali Beklen, Founder and Managing Partner of HotelRunner. “By combining HotelRunner’s global hospitality network with Visa’s unmatched expertise, we are building the autonomous financial infrastructure of travel. This is not only about payments; it is about building the financial rails that will power the next decade of global tourism. We are reshaping the future of cross-border travel commerce, making it safer, smarter, and more inclusive for businesses worldwide.”
On this partnership, Arden Agopyan, Founder and Managing Partner of HotelRunner, said, “HotelRunner has spent more than a decade building the digital backbone of hospitality. For too long, small and independent accommodations and travel agencies have been excluded from global financial flows and the payments economy. Together with Visa, we’re changing that. We’re combining our reach and reliable platform with one of the world’s most trusted networks to create a new standard for autonomous, secure, seamless, and scalable travel payments.”
“Our collaboration with HotelRunner demonstrates how together we can drive innovation across the B2B travel ecosystem. By combining Visa’s trusted global payments network with HotelRunner’s hospitality platform, we’re enabling travel businesses to connect, transact, and grow more seamlessly and securely. Together, we’re helping to unlock new opportunities, and strengthen the global travel ecosystem” Tania Platt, Global Head of B2B Travel, Visa.
Operating globally, this collaboration will bring Visa and HotelRunner together with key travel companies in Europe, APAC, the Middle East, Africa, and beyond. This partnership is set to deliver innovative embedded and autonomous finance services supporting millions of travel businesses worldwide.
BEIRUT — The ad was straightforward: Sign up for one year to fight on Russia’s side in “the special military operation zone” — i.e. the war in Ukraine — and get citizenship, free healthcare, money and land.
It was one of many promotions cropping up on the messaging platform Telegram beginning in 2024, shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin decreed foreign nationals fighting in the army’s ranks would receive passports for themselves and their families. Since then, travel agencies and brokers have drawn people from all over the world to join what they call Russia’s “elite international battalion,” dangling a raft of benefits to attract would-be recruits.
For Raed Hammad, a 54-year-old Jordanian man who worked as a cab driver until a herniated disk made sitting in a car seat all day untenable, it seemed like the opportunity he never found in his home country. He contacted a Russian businesswoman, Polina Alexandrovna, whose number was on the Telegram ad, and sent his passport information. In August, he received a visa and flight ticket and flew to Moscow.
(Other media reports put Alexandrovna’s last name as Azarnykh. It’s unclear if her name is a pseudonym.)
“As a 54-year-old who was sick, he had a hard time finding employment here in Jordan. When he found this job, and they accepted him with a very attractive salary and benefits, he didn’t think twice,” said Lamees Hammad, his wife, in a tearful video address she posted on social media in September. Because of his age, Lamees Hammad added, her husband assumed he would work as a driver or a cook; she insisted he repeatedly confirmed with Alexandrovna that he wouldn’t serve on the front line.
“He wanted to provide for our kids, to give them what he couldn’t give them in the past,” Lamees Hammad said. Hammad is a father of four sons, the youngest of whom is 13.
But days after signing a 17-page army contract that Hammad couldn’t read — he was denied a Russian translator and wasn’t given access to WiFi to translate using his phone, according to his wife — he found himself bunkered in a drone-stalked forward position somewhere in Russian-occupied southeastern Ukraine.
“He’s facing all kinds of danger … If a rifle is raised in his face, he can’t even run. They’re being treated like livestock over there,” Lamees Hammad said in a recent interview with a Jordanian TV channel, adding that Hammad contacted Alexandrovna and begged to break his contract but was told he would have to pay 500,000 rubles — almost $6,000 — to do so.
Russian military personnel, draped in Russian flags, appear after a prisoner swap with Ukraine on June 24.
(Russian Defense Ministry/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Accurate figures are hard to come by, but it’s clear that Hammad isn’t alone in fighting under Russia’s banner for benefits, with estimates putting the number of foreign fighters in Russian army ranks in the tens of thousands. Many come from disadvantaged countries in the Middle East, Africa and South and East Asia.
Some 2,000 Iraqis are thought to have enlisted, but press reports indicate thousands joining from Egypt, Algeria, Yemen and Jordan. Fighters from Nepal, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Cuba and Syria, who in the past came in significant numbers, are no longer allowed to join, according to the Russian defense ministry.
Foreigners have also served on the opposing side, with Ukrainian officials stating in the past that roughly 20,000 fighters from 50 countries joined Ukraine’s International Legion, including around 3,000 Iraqis.
In the Russian military, many of the enlisted foreigners came to Russia first as students, but their visas lapsed and they do not want to return home. A significant number also travel to Moscow on tourist visas after they are approved by the military. Once in Russia, they visit offices of companies like Alexandrovna’s and sign a contract with the Russian ministry of defense; others are met by a broker and a Russian officer at the airport.
Offers vary, but recruits can receive a signing bonus of 1.5 million rubles (around $17,000), and depending on where they fight, get a monthly salary ranging between $2,500 to $3,500 — a life-changing amount in countries like Egypt, where the average salary barely exceeds $300.
Training lasts four to six weeks and includes language instruction so foreigners can follow basic commands in Russian. They receive citizenship soon after they join, and are given a two-week paid vacation six months into their one-year deployment. If they are killed or wounded, their families can claim the money and citizenship.
Among the recruitment ads, which appear in Arabic and other languages, Alexandrovna’s channel keeps up a steady rhythm of posts extolling the Russian army’s victories in Ukraine.
Alexandrovna herself appears in several photos taken with recruits when they first land in Russia; others depict foreign soldiers after they receive their citizenship, smiling to the camera and proudly showing off their passports. Her clients appear to be mostly from the Arab world and parts of Africa.
“Each of my soldiers is a source of pride,” she writes in one post, saying that they add to the “victory against the neo-Nazis from Ukraine.”
“Every soldier must proudly and steadfastly defend the new homeland of Russia, because Russia becomes a new homeland for each of them!” she writes.
Despite the risks, there’s no lack of interest: A look on Alexandrovna’s Telegram channel, titled “Friend of Russia” and featuring a picture of Putin, shows more than 22,000 subscribers. Another channel, run by an Iraqi man who calls himself Bahjat, has almost 30,000.
Members of a thousands-strong Telegram community group run by an Iraqi with the nickname Abbass the Supporter — who served in the Russian military for three years but now works as a broker and answers questions about deployments on his TikTok channel — participate in chats asking how quickly they can get their visa and travel.
When contacted by The Times, Alexandrovna denied giving false information to would-be recruits but did not answer detailed questions about Hammad. Nevertheless, it’s unclear how Hammad concluded he would serve in rear positions: Most ads on Alexandrovna’s channel explicitly say foreigners must fight in Ukraine, with no mention of being able to join as a driver or cook, and in any case, those decisions are made by the defense ministry.
The E-visa form inquires about military experience. Bahjat, who spoke on condition of only giving his first name, said those coming to the Russian army from abroad should expect to go into combat, and that breaking the contract risks imprisonment.
“What, you think a country is going to give you money and citizenship so you come and cook?” he said in a WhatsApp chat.
“I’ll give it to you straight. Everyone coming here is going to the frontline and to the war. Anyone saying otherwise is speaking nonsense.”
The Jordanian ministry did not answer questions about Hammad, but legal experts say governments have little recourse to repatriate their citizens if they signed a contract, unless they can prove they did so under duress.
Lamees Hammad has been pleading with Jordan’s King Abdullah and government officials to communicate with the Russian foreign ministry and to bring her husband home. But in the meantime, she said, she hoped the Jordanian government would at least block Telegram channels like Alexandrovna’s to prevent others from following in Hammad’s steps.
“People should know if they do this,” she said, “they’re going to their death.”
U.S. congressional lawmakers have failed to agree on a spending package for the new fiscal year, which triggered a federal government shutdown on Wednesday.Many Americans are wondering how the shutdown will impact travel, and, specifically, how it will affect passport applications and driver’s license services. Here’s what we know.Are passports still being processed?Yes. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency responsible for overseeing the naturalization process, is primarily funded by application fees, meaning a lapse in funding at the federal government has minimal impacts on most passport and visa processing.What if I have a passport appointment with the United States Postal Service?The U.S. Postal Service is unaffected by a government shutdown. It’s an independent entity funded through the sale of its products and services, not by tax dollars. You can still make appointments for new passport applications, passport renewals and photo services on the USPS website.Can I still get a driver’s license or REAL ID?You can still get a driver’s license or REAL ID during a government shutdown.That’s because motor vehicle departments are primarily funded and operated through state budgets.This means you can also make an appointment or visit one of your state’s driver’s license centers to receive a REAL ID with proper paperwork. The shutdown will not stop Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees from enforcing the REAL ID Act in U.S. airports and other federal facilities.TSA officers are typically deemed essential and must remain on the job, though they are not paid. What about visas?Agency spokesperson Matthew Tragesser said in a statement, however, that the shutdown does temporarily shutter the agency’s E-Verify program, a free online system that employers can use to confirm their new employees are authorized to work in the U.S.The Associated Press and CNN contributed to this report.
U.S. congressional lawmakers have failed to agree on a spending package for the new fiscal year, which triggered a federal government shutdown on Wednesday.
Many Americans are wondering how the shutdown will impact travel, and, specifically, how it will affect passport applications and driver’s license services.
Here’s what we know.
Are passports still being processed?
Yes. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency responsible for overseeing the naturalization process, is primarily funded by application fees, meaning a lapse in funding at the federal government has minimal impacts on most passport and visa processing.
What if I have a passport appointment with the United States Postal Service?
The U.S. Postal Service is unaffected by a government shutdown. It’s an independent entity funded through the sale of its products and services, not by tax dollars. You can still make appointments for new passport applications, passport renewals and photo services on the USPS website.
Can I still get a driver’s license or REAL ID?
You can still get a driver’s license or REAL ID during a government shutdown.
That’s because motor vehicle departments are primarily funded and operated through state budgets.
This means you can also make an appointment or visit one of your state’s driver’s license centers to receive a REAL ID with proper paperwork.
The shutdown will not stop Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees from enforcing the REAL ID Act in U.S. airports and other federal facilities.
TSA officers are typically deemed essential and must remain on the job, though they are not paid.
What about visas?
Agency spokesperson Matthew Tragesser said in a statement, however, that the shutdown does temporarily shutter the agency’s E-Verify program, a free online system that employers can use to confirm their new employees are authorized to work in the U.S.
The Associated Press and CNN contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump’s administration is asking the Supreme Court to uphold his birthright citizenship order declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.Previous reporting: A legal win for birthright citizenship after Supreme Court setbackThe appeal, shared with The Associated Press on Saturday, sets in motion a process at the high court that could lead to a definitive ruling from the justices by early summer on whether the citizenship restrictions are constitutional.Lower-court judges have so far blocked them from taking effect anywhere. The Republican administration is not asking the court to let the restrictions take effect before it rules.The Justice Department’s petition has been shared with lawyers for parties challenging the order, but is not yet docketed at the Supreme Court.Any decision on whether to take up the case is probably months away, and arguments probably would not take place until the late winter or early spring.“The lower court’s decisions invalidated a policy of prime importance to the president and his administration in a manner that undermines our border security,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote. “Those decisions confer, without lawful justification, the privilege of American citizenship on hundreds of thousands of unqualified people.”Cody Wofsy, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represents children who would be affected by Trump’s restrictions, said the administration’s plan is plainly unconstitutional.“This executive order is illegal, full stop, and no amount of maneuvering from the administration is going to change that. We will continue to ensure that no baby’s citizenship is ever stripped away by this cruel and senseless order,” Wofsy said in an email.Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his second term in the White House that would upend more than 125 years of understanding that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment confers citizenship on everyone born on American soil, with narrow exceptions for the children of foreign diplomats and those born to a foreign occupying force.In a series of decisions, lower courts have struck down the executive order as unconstitutional, or likely so, even after a Supreme Court ruling in late June that limited judges’ use of nationwide injunctions.While the Supreme Court curbed the use of nationwide injunctions, it did not rule out other court orders that could have nationwide effects, including in class-action lawsuits and those brought by states. The justices did not decide at that time whether the underlying citizenship order is constitutional.But every lower court that has looked at the issue has concluded that Trump’s order violates or likely violates the 14th Amendment, which was intended to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship.The administration is appealing two cases.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco ruled in July that a group of states that sued over the order needed a nationwide injunction to prevent the problems that would be caused by birthright citizenship being in effect in some states and not others.Also in July, a federal judge in New Hampshire blocked the citizenship order in a class-action lawsuit including all children who would be affected.Birthright citizenship automatically makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers who are in the country illegally, under long-standing rules. The right was enshrined soon after the Civil War in the first sentence of the 14th Amendment.The administration has asserted that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore not entitled to citizenship.
WASHINGTON —
President Donald Trump’s administration is asking the Supreme Court to uphold his birthright citizenship order declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.
Previous reporting: A legal win for birthright citizenship after Supreme Court setback
The appeal, shared with The Associated Press on Saturday, sets in motion a process at the high court that could lead to a definitive ruling from the justices by early summer on whether the citizenship restrictions are constitutional.
Lower-court judges have so far blocked them from taking effect anywhere. The Republican administration is not asking the court to let the restrictions take effect before it rules.
The Justice Department’s petition has been shared with lawyers for parties challenging the order, but is not yet docketed at the Supreme Court.
Any decision on whether to take up the case is probably months away, and arguments probably would not take place until the late winter or early spring.
“The lower court’s decisions invalidated a policy of prime importance to the president and his administration in a manner that undermines our border security,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote. “Those decisions confer, without lawful justification, the privilege of American citizenship on hundreds of thousands of unqualified people.”
Cody Wofsy, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represents children who would be affected by Trump’s restrictions, said the administration’s plan is plainly unconstitutional.
“This executive order is illegal, full stop, and no amount of maneuvering from the administration is going to change that. We will continue to ensure that no baby’s citizenship is ever stripped away by this cruel and senseless order,” Wofsy said in an email.
Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his second term in the White House that would upend more than 125 years of understanding that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment confers citizenship on everyone born on American soil, with narrow exceptions for the children of foreign diplomats and those born to a foreign occupying force.
In a series of decisions, lower courts have struck down the executive order as unconstitutional, or likely so, even after a Supreme Court ruling in late June that limited judges’ use of nationwide injunctions.
While the Supreme Court curbed the use of nationwide injunctions, it did not rule out other court orders that could have nationwide effects, including in class-action lawsuits and those brought by states. The justices did not decide at that time whether the underlying citizenship order is constitutional.
But every lower court that has looked at the issue has concluded that Trump’s order violates or likely violates the 14th Amendment, which was intended to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship.
The administration is appealing two cases.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco ruled in July that a group of states that sued over the order needed a nationwide injunction to prevent the problems that would be caused by birthright citizenship being in effect in some states and not others.
Also in July, a federal judge in New Hampshire blocked the citizenship order in a class-action lawsuit including all children who would be affected.
Birthright citizenship automatically makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers who are in the country illegally, under long-standing rules. The right was enshrined soon after the Civil War in the first sentence of the 14th Amendment.
The administration has asserted that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore not entitled to citizenship.
President Donald Trump is overhauling a visa program intended for high-skilled workers by hiking the application fee to $100,000 annually from $215. It’s the latest step from the Trump administration aimed at limiting legal immigration. The move could shake up hiring strategies in major industries like technology, finance, health care and higher education. The H-1B visa program aims to bring in foreign workers for high-skilled, hard-to-fill jobs. Historically, these visas have been awarded through a lottery system. Opponents argue that businesses are abusing the program to pay overseas workers lower wages. At a press conference on Friday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the steeper application fee will incentivize companies to hire Americans instead. He predicted program usage will ultimately fall below the current 85,000 annual cap as a result. “Train Americans. Stop bringing in people to take our jobs,” Lutnick said. This year, top recipients of H-1B visas included Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and Google.In the past, debates over the future of the program have divided members of Trump’s coalition. Some have called for lower caps or eliminating H-1B visas entirely. Big Tech allies, like billionaire Elon Musk (a former H-1B recipient), contend the program plays a critical role in keeping American businesses competitive by attracting top talent from around the world.”The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” Musk posted in December during a social media spat on this topic. “Think of this like a pro sports team: if you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win.” Also on Friday, Trump rolled out a new visa pathway that he’s calling the “Trump Gold Card.” It allows vetted individuals to pay $1 million in exchange for an expedited process and a pathway to lawful permanent resident status, according to the program’s website. Corporations sponsoring individuals would have to pay $2 million. “It’s going to raise billions of dollars, billions and billions of dollars, which is going to reduce taxes, pay off debt, and other good things,” Trump said. Critics argue that Trump can’t take these steps without approval from Congress. The plan is expected to face legal challenges.
WASHINGTON —
President Donald Trump is overhauling a visa program intended for high-skilled workers by hiking the application fee to $100,000 annually from $215.
It’s the latest step from the Trump administration aimed at limiting legal immigration. The move could shake up hiring strategies in major industries like technology, finance, health care and higher education.
The H-1B visa program aims to bring in foreign workers for high-skilled, hard-to-fill jobs. Historically, these visas have been awarded through a lottery system.
Opponents argue that businesses are abusing the program to pay overseas workers lower wages. At a press conference on Friday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the steeper application fee will incentivize companies to hire Americans instead. He predicted program usage will ultimately fall below the current 85,000 annual cap as a result.
“Train Americans. Stop bringing in people to take our jobs,” Lutnick said.
This year, top recipients of H-1B visas included Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and Google.
In the past, debates over the future of the program have divided members of Trump’s coalition. Some have called for lower caps or eliminating H-1B visas entirely. Big Tech allies, like billionaire Elon Musk (a former H-1B recipient), contend the program plays a critical role in keeping American businesses competitive by attracting top talent from around the world.
“The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” Musk posted in December during a social media spat on this topic. “Think of this like a pro sports team: if you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win.”
Also on Friday, Trump rolled out a new visa pathway that he’s calling the “Trump Gold Card.” It allows vetted individuals to pay $1 million in exchange for an expedited process and a pathway to lawful permanent resident status, according to the program’s website. Corporations sponsoring individuals would have to pay $2 million.
“It’s going to raise billions of dollars, billions and billions of dollars, which is going to reduce taxes, pay off debt, and other good things,” Trump said.
Critics argue that Trump can’t take these steps without approval from Congress. The plan is expected to face legal challenges.
