Posted by Angelo A. Paparelli on September 25, 2005

Immigration Blue Laws: Never on Sunday, Monday or Any Other Day for the Next Several Years.

In today’s 24/7, Twenty-First Century world, with on-demand services often only mouse clicks away, our nation’s employment-based immigration laws are reverting to Puritan times. How so? Remember the infamous Blue Laws of the colonial era, when government officials decreed that the economy must shut down every Sunday, the Sabbath, for a day of rest. Fast forward now to 2005, and let’s look at America’s modern-day immigration blue laws, which take the “business-must-rest” concept to an absurdly blue (melancholic) low point.

As the State Department has announced , the waiting time for virtually all categories of employment-based immigrant visas (the coveted “Green Card”) will “retrogress” (move back in time) on October 1. In practical effect, this means that individuals who have already patiently waited for years in the legal-immigration queue – especially those born in China, India, the Philippines and Mexico – must wait much, much longer still.

These patient foreign citizens (whose employers have already proven to the satisfaction of the U.S. Department of Labor that there are no American workers available to fill needed jobs) may be required to wait up to 15 years more before attaining U.S. green cards. The potential for a decade-plus Green Card blackout also means that the workers’ spouses and children must also wait just as long before they are eligible to receive employment permission and work-authorized social security numbers. As a result, the family must rely on a single income, and the career aspirations of family members must be put on (blue?) ice. Meantime, as well, the foreign workers and their family members better be prepared for multiple trips to the Department of Motor Vehicles, since driver’s licenses are usually limited in time to the period of nonimmigrant status (which often is only available in annual increments).

Not to single out foreign workers and their families, the immigration blue laws are just as unfriendly to American businesses. The greencard blackout requires U.S. employers of sponsored foreign workers to repeatedly extend their employees’ work visa status, and suffer interruptions of business projects and absenteeism on the job (since the workers must travel recurrently to a U.S. consular post overseas to obtain renewals of their visa stamps).

There are even more blue notes and perpetual blue days in the offing. The supply of H-1B visas for professional workers dropped from 195,000 this last fiscal year to a meager 58,000 visas in FY 2005 and will remain at this paltry level in future years. Not surprisingly, the entire national supply of H-1B visas for computer professionals, architects, scientists, researchers, consultants, fashion models and other workers in “specialty occupations” who hold a bachelor’s degree or a foreign graduate degree ran out on August 10 – two months before the start of the new fiscal year. As a result, the immigration blue days will continue for these H-1B workers and their U.S. employers for at least the next 14 months.

What should be done? We should all sing the blues to Congress and the White House, and even hop a ride on Jet Blue, and let them know that our country’s weakening position in the global economy cannot afford these costly immigration blue laws.

As the editorialists at the Miami Herald, have trumpeted, the situation is urgent. We must make sure that our government officials act in our nation’s economic self interest, and instead of blue laws, give the green light to enlightened, employment-based immigration reform.

--------
Posted by Angelo A. Paparelli on September 12, 2005

The U.S. Must Repudiate Life-Threatening Psycho-Babble and Instead Enact Reality-Based Immigration Laws

In its latest newsletter , the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) – a unit of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security – suggests that migrants crossing the border illegally from Mexico into the scorching Arizona deserts are driven to do so by “emotions” and “machismo”:

“Intellectually, those considering jumping the U.S.-Mexican border realize how hot it is in the southwest during mid-summer. But somehow their emotions, their machismo, win out and they make a run for it, only to be faced with the desperate realization of just how hot the desert summer is: Deathly hot.

“When much of the U.S. was under heat advisories this summer for temperatures in the high 90s, the southwestern deserts were baking under temperatures consistently reaching 120 degrees. No shade, no pools, no air conditioning, just 120 life-sapping degrees. “

 

 

 

Poster [Translation: Crossing the desert isn’t as dangerous as they say. It’s worse! Before crossing over to the other side, remember: The mausoleums are filled with the brave and the macho. STOP CROSSING THE BORDER]

 

As a driver of illegal immigration, Machismo – an overwrought form of male chest-thumping, often manifested as excessive aggressiveness and physicality, and topped off with chauvinistic domination of women – seems an unlikely culprit. Even ignoring the sad reality that many border-crossers are women and children, this blogger would challenge the CBP assertion that studliness plays the primary role in pushing hordes of desperate people into the summer inferno of America’s southwestern deserts.

Machismo – no; but emotions – probably. Fear, desperation, depression – yes, these emotions likely play a big part in desert-traversing illegal migration. Fear of starvation, desperation that one’s children will live the same miserable, impoverished existence as their parents, depression (both emotional and economic) – these are the emotional drivers that compel people to take such life-threatening risks.

With deaths near the border at an all-time high, it’s time to find a better way to manage the centuries-old reality of border crossings at our southern border. Douglas S. Massey, a Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton, suggests a more humane and enlightened approach to this reality on the ground. Massey suggests that the U.S. will not stem undocumented migration by walling off the country or extending the welcome mat to all comers; instead he maintains that our borders must be reasonably regulated on a binational basis. It makes no sense, Massey notes, in pushing U.S. green card holders to naturalize as soon as possible because predictably that will only increase the already several-years-long waiting time to reach the head of the queue in the immigrant visa quota. He also notes that it makes no sense for Canada and Mexico, the two nations that share the North American continent with us, to receive the same annual allotment of immigrant visa numbers as such less strategically important countries as Botswana, Nepal, and Paraguay.

Just as DHS failed to protect our water border at New Orleans, the agency has been unable to prevent or minimize the tragic loss of lives in our desert southwest. Our country can do better than offering flip labels. We need less psycho-babble and more economically enlightened and humane immigration laws. Then, the emotions we’d all likely see manifesting would be hope and optimism rather than fear, desperation and depression.

Posted by Angelo A. Paparelli on September 06, 2005

RFID and the Immigration Surveillance Society: New DHS U.S. Visit Pilot Program to Use RFID Tagging to Track I-94 Admission Documents for all Nonimmigrants

Planning to work, engage in business or research, tour or study in the United States? Thinking about entering the country from one of the land borders in Arizona, New York or Washington State? Well if you are, then you will be enrolled in a new Homeland Security Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) pilot program at the land ports of Nogales East (Deconcini) and Nogales West (Mariposa) in Arizona; Alexandria Bay (Thousand Islands) in New York; and Pacific Highway and Peace Arch in Washington State.

Since August 4, 2005, the Form I-94 you receive upon entry at one of these ports – the “Admission/Departure Record” that confirms your nonimmigrant visa category and period of admission – will be embedded with an RFID chip that can be read from a distance of 30 feet. An RFID reader will reveal a number tied to your file at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and your entry and departure from the U.S. (assuming you also leave from one of these ports) will be tracked electronically.

But how else might your movements be tracked?

The DHS has gone to great lengths in its Federal Register notice to describe its privacy protections and try to reassure us that there will be tight controls on access to, and use of, the RFID-enabled records. The agency has even published a Privacy Impact Statement, and offered soothing words in a recent press release:

“There are layers of defense to ensure privacy: no personal information will be included on the RFID tag; and the serial number on the tag cannot be changed. Additionally, personal information is only processed within DHS databases and RFID technology tags are tamper proof and difficult to counterfeit, with security features to prevent the misuse of information.”

But to this blogger, as reported in the linked article (“Electronic Tags to Track Immigrants”), the electronic surveillance of nonimmigrants’ entries and departures may be just the nose of the camel under liberty’s tent and may portend even greater encroachments on civil rights and privacy.

Well, if you share these concerns, let your voice be heard. The DHS is soliciting written comments, which must be submitted on or before October 3, 2005

Here is how the government explains the procedure:

“You may submit comments identified by DHS-2005-0011 to the Docket Management Facility at the EPA. To avoid duplication, please use only one of the following methods:

“Web site: http://www.epa.gov/edocket. Follow the instructions for submitting comments at that Web site.

“Mail: Written comments may be submitted to Craig Howie, US-VISIT, Border and Transportation Security; Department of Homeland Security; 1616 North Fort Myer Drive, 18th Floor, Arlington, VA 22209.”

--------