Free Republic

And this is how it’s done, folks. It’s now being reported that the Trump administration isn’t fooling around when it comes to nations not wanting to take in their own citizens who decide disrespect our nation by coming here illegally. The Department of Homeland Security has now announced that the administration has hit some government officials from Burma and Laos with visa sanctions as punishment for both countries’ refusal to take back their own citizens that the U.S. was caught in our nation illegally and is in the process of trying to deport. The U.S. embassy in Rangoon, Burma, has...

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/jun/01/visa-card-network-crashes-and-sparks-payment-chaos Visa network crashes and sparks card payment chaos Millions left unable to pay in shops, petrol stations and railway stations across UK and Europe Payment chaos after Visa network crashes – live updates Patrick Collinson Fri 1 Jun 2018 12.40 EDT

U.S. to shorten length of visas for some Chinese citizens: White House NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Reuters) - The U.S. government plans to shorten the length of visas issued to some Chinese citizens as part of a strategy to prevent intellectual property theft by U.S. rivals, a White House official said on Tuesday. The U.S. State Department will implement measures from June 11 to “enhance security for some Chinese visa applicants,” the official said. The change would come as President Donald Trump’s administration attempts to crack down on what it says is theft of U.S. intellectual property by China. “Going forward, a...

A group of outsourcing companies that use the H-1B visa to fill U.S. jobs with foreign workers have filed a lawsuit claiming recent U.S. government restrictions on the visa program are illegal. The legal action attacks a February policy change by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration that imposed tighter requirements on outsourcers seeking H-1B visas, which are intended for jobs requiring specialized skills and a bachelor’s degree or higher. In the suit, two companies and a consortium that has been lobbying Congress over H-1B restrictions claimed Citizenship and Immigration lacked the authority to make the rule changes, and that the alleged...

The Trump administration is ending a program that allows citizens of Liberia living in the U.S. to avoid deportation. But it's allowing a one-year "wind-down" period to ease their return. Liberians have been eligible for Deferred Enforcement Departure since 1999. The program, which began under President Bill Clinton, and was extended during the Bush and Obama administrations, allows people from the country to live and work legally in the U.S. It's similar to another program called "Temporary Protected Status," which the Trump administration also has worked to scale back. In a memorandum issued Tuesday, President Donald Trump said Liberia is...

The GOP’s business-first leadership has expanded the H-2B visa-worker program, so reducing marketplace pressure on companies to offer higher wages to Americans just months before the November election. The pre-election giveaway is buried on page 1760 of the 2232-page 2018 omnibus bill, where language allows the Department of Homeland Security to greatly expand the size of the H-2B visa-worker program up to roughly 100,000 imported workers: SEC. 205. Notwithstanding the [66,000] numerical limitation set forth in section 214(g)(1)(B) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1184(g)(1)(B)), the Secretary of Homeland Security, after consultation with the Secretary of Labor, and...

Visa rejected calls to cut ties with semi-automatic rifle manufacturers by announcing it is not their job to “[set] restrictions on the sale of lawful goods and services.” Their announcement comes after an anti-Second Amendment campaign resulted in over dozen companies cutting ties with the NRA. It also follows a New York Times’ suggestion that Visa and Mastercard could circumvent Congress and restrict “assault weapon” sales by refusing business with “assault weapon” manufacturers and/or dealers. According to CBS San Francisco, Visa received a petition with 150,000 signatures, asking the credit card company to refuse to process purchases of “assault weapons.”

A new 13-minute mini-documentary produced by NBC makes a strong case in favor of issuing illegal aliens ID cards with little to no regard for U.S. law or the safety of legal citizens, proving once again that gone are the days of unbiased reporting. The slick production features several “undocumented immigrants” living in New York City who have benefited from IDNYC, a program created in 2014 to give a city identification card for undocumented immigrants, homeless, or any new Yorker without a proper ID. One said living without an ID meant they couldn’t “pursue happiness.” The other, a self-described “gay...

On Monday, an ISIS-inspired Islamic terrorist tried to blow up a subway terminal in Times Square with a homemade pipe bomb that malfunctioned. He told police he targeted that particular walkway because there were Christmas images present. Six weeks earlier, on another national holiday, Halloween, a jihadist was on the loose, ramming a rented truck into pedestrians, killing eight. Both foreigners entered the U.S. under President Obama and the Democrat’s visa lottery program. Yesterday’s failed attack was perpetrated by Akayed Ullah, a Bangladeshian, who came into the country in 2011 thanks to a relative who had “won” the diversity visa...

European Islamist scion Tariq Ramadan was banned from the U.S. by the Bush administration in February 2004 for his financial support of a charity that funded terrorist groups. In January 2010, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton overturned that ban. Clinton personally approved a visa for the controversial grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Now, Tariq Ramadan is facing multiple accusations of rape and sexual assault of minors. Hillary Clinton's visa for Tariq Ramadan was seen as part of the new Obama administration policy of embracing more hardcore Islamists. The New York Times reported in 2010: Six years after...

More than half a million foreign nationals have entered the United States since 2005 with the visa lottery program which allowed a recent New York terror suspect to come to the U.S. Roughly 509,700 foreign nationals have entered the U.S. between 2005 to 2015 using the program, not counting their spouses, children and chain-migration relatives, a Breitbart News analysis reveals. The U.S. has even brought in 25,976 co-nationals of suspected jihadi Sayfullo Saipov, despite their country of Uzbekistan being listed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency as a terrorist hotspot. The Diversity Visa Lottery gives out 50,000 visas...

The visa lottery has triggered a hidden wave of chain migration, and has delivered almost 5 million foreign nationals to the United States since 1994, says a new analysis. New research by the Center for Immigration Studies reveals the enormous chain-migration impact of the visa lottery program, where 50,000 visas every year are given to foreign nationals from a multitude of countries. The countries include those with terrorist problems, including Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Yemen, and Uzbekistan. Foreign nationals from eligible countries can win the visa lottery if they...

The following is the statistical breakdown by foreign-state chargeability of those registered for the Diversity Visa-2015 program: AFRICA ALGERIA 3,076 ETHIOPIA 4,988 NIGER 334 ANGOLA 173 GABON 81 RWANDA 690 BENIN 1,758 GAMBIA, THE 110 SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE 0 BOTSWANA 12 GHANA 3,381 SENEGAL 620 BURKINA FASO 390 GUINEA 2,314 SEYCHELLES 9 BURUNDI 188 GUINEA-BISSAU 7 SIERRA LEONE 2,182 CABO VERDE 20 KENYA 3,534 SOMALIA 275 CAMEROON 5,000 LESOTHO 3 SOUTH AFRICA 924 CENTRAL AFRICAN REP. 33 LIBERIA 5,000 SOUTH SUDAN 21 CHAD 99 LIBYA 263 SUDAN 3,484 COMOROS 6 MADAGASCAR 62 SWAZILAND 5 CONGO 243 MALAWI 27 TANZANIA...

A federal judge repeatedly expressed concerns Monday that the State Department’s interpretation of President Donald Trump’s travel ban could cost winners of the so-called diversity visa lottery their best chance at migrating to the U.S. During an almost 90-minute hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan mulled issuing an order that could limit the Trump directive’s impact on diversity visa winners from the six countries named in the Trump executive order. “They’re faced with a deadline that most visa applicants are not faced with. … I think the potential effect of that is they’ll be out of...

Each year, the U.S. Government makes 50,000 permanent residence visas available through the Diversity Immigrant Visa (DV) Program. Visas are apportioned among six geographic regions based on immigration rates to the United States over the last five years, with a greater number of visas going to regions with lower rates of immigration to the United States. Visa applicants are selected through a computer-generated, random lottery. The selection of a person’s name in the lottery gives that person the opportunity to take the next steps in the visa application process. Please see the additional information on the Diversity Visa Program. Before...

As I write this, a few facts are starting to trickle out about Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, the man who committed the terrorist attack in Manhattan using a rented Home Depot truck on October 31, killing eight and injuring nearly a dozen more innocent people. (See, for instance, here and here.) First, we are told that he is Uzbek, having arrived in the United States from Uzbekistan "legally" in 2010. Second, some outlets have suggested that he may be married with two children, but I haven't seen any multiple verifications of that. Third, he appears to have been a Uber driver...

In the contentious debate over immigration policy, three groups have dominated public and political attention: the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants seeking to become legal, the skilled foreign workers bound for high-tech jobs and relatives waiting to be reunited with their families. Then there are those who won the green card lottery. Under a Senate compromise, the program would be eliminated and its visa slots would be subsumed into a broad system that stresses skills, education and other criteria for legal immigration. A few defenders, including members of the Congressional Black Caucus, have urged that the lottery be preserved. But...

On Tuesday, more than 14 million people around the world, including anxious applicants in the Washington area, will begin checking computers and smartphones in one of the strangest rituals of the U.S. immigration system. When the clock strikes noon in the nation’s capital, they will be able to visit a State Department website, enter their names, years of birth and 16-digit identification numbers. Then they will press “submit” to learn whether they have won one of the world’s most coveted contests: the U.S. green-card lottery. Each year, the Diversity Visa Lottery, as it is officially known, provides up to 50,000...

WASHINGTON — Groups have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the State Department’s refusal to process visa applications for winners of the U.S. Diversity Visa Program lottery who hail from the six countries covered by President Trump’s Muslim ban. The lawsuit was brought by Jenner & Block LLP, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of the District of Columbia, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and the National Immigration Law Center. It was filed on behalf of lottery winners from Iran and Yemen, and charges the federal government with running afoul of federal law and regulations by refusing to issue visas to...

Halloween Massacre straight out of Isis playbook.