Free Republic

PITTSBURGH — A controversial government program allows wealthy foreigners to buy their way into this country. Some critics said it amounts to citizenship for sale. Action News Investigates has learned the program has Pittsburgh connections. Immigrants who want to live in the U.S. are forced to wait as long as a decade to get a green card. But a government program called EB-5 allows wealthy immigrants to jump to the front of the line if they can pay $500,000. The program has been hit with allegations of fraud and abuse, and now some in Congress say it needs to go....

Judges in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California are opening a new immigration route for foreigners, which would bypass the federal agencies’ sole authority to approve or decline foreigners’ immigration or entry into the U.S. The new route is created by the Feb. 9 decision which blocks the White House’s very popular reform of immigration rules. If upheld by the Supreme Court later this year, the new declaration would allow overseas foreigners — including those hostile to the United States — to hire lawyers to persuade judges to grant them visas, residency permits and eventually citizenship. That courtroom...

Shalabh Kumar, founder of the Republican Hindu Coalition, has been a strong defender of US President Donald Trump’s policies. He spoke to Rohit E. David about the controversy on the travel ban to US for citizens from seven countries, Indian fears over H-1B visas and whether Pakistan should be part of the travel ban list: There has been legal pushback on the travel ban by the Trump administration. Why do you defend this policy? It is a great move to protect the lives of US citizens. Radical Islamic terrorists have declared a war on the civilised world. There are many...

Customs and Border Protection told major US airlines Friday night that it is reinstating visas following a federal judge’s decision to temporarily halt President Donald Trump’s travel ban. CBP is “back to business as usual” prior to the situation that was in place before last week’s executive order, an airline executive told CNN. Airlines are expected as soon as Friday night to start removing travel alerts from their websites and getting messages out to customers to alert them about the change.

At least 100,000 visas have been revoked in a single week in response to President Trump's executive immigration order, a lawyer for the Justice Department revealed in court Friday. The number came to light in a Virginia courtroom as a federal judge granted the state's motion to join a lawsuit challenging the immigration ban that caused chaos at airports over the weekend. "The number 100,000 really sucked the air out of my lungs," said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg of the Legal Aid Justice Center, who represents two brothers from Yemen who were detained after arriving at Dulles Airport on Saturday and filed...

<p>More than 100,000 visas have been revoked since President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration and travel was signed on January 27, a government lawyer said Friday in a court hearing in Virginia.</p> <p>The number came in response to a question from the US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema about how many people have been affected by this order.</p>

A federal judge in Los Angeles has ordered the U.S. government to allow people holding immigrant visas from seven majority-Muslim nations into the United States despite President Trump’s executive order banning them. In a temporary restraining order issued late Tuesday, Judge Andre Birotte Jr. ordered the government not to cancel any validly obtained immigrant visas or bar anyone from the seven nations holding them from entering the U.S. But it was unclear whether the order will have any effect. The State Department ordered all visas from the seven countries revoked on Friday, and the government has maintained that orders similar...

Still smarting over President Donald Trump’s controversial immigration ban, Silicon Valley now is bracing for his next likely target — H-1B visas that supply local tech companies with thousands of skilled foreign workers.

In recent weeks, there has been a lot of talk about “vetting” people coming in from the Middle East. In fact, however, it’s a much broader issue than that: it’s a need to vet people who come into the USA from anywhere. While any risk can theoretically originate anywhere, statistically, each region has different primary risks. From some countries, it’s a human trafficking and prostitution risk; from others, it’s a drug trade and organized crime risk. But of course the one most in the news is the terrorism risk, which originates primarily in muslim-majority countries (like the middle east) and...

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CAIRO — Across the Muslim world, the refrain was resounding: President Trump’s freeze on refugee arrivals and visa requests from seven predominantly Muslim countries will have major diplomatic repercussions, worsen perceptions of Americans and offer a propaganda boost to the terrorist groups Mr. Trump says he is targeting. Mr. Trump’s stance has been evident since the early days of his campaign, when he advocated a “complete and total shutdown” of all Muslims entering the United States. President Trump has since softened his language, casting his order on Friday as a way to keep terrorists, not Muslims, out of the United...

President Trump's order could mean that thousands of citizens from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia and Libya may not be allowed to board flights bound for the US. Google has told the BBC it is concerned about the order and any measures which could block great talent from the US.

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised not only to 'build a wall' to seal the southern U.S. border, but to make Mexico pay for it, at a cost of some $10 billion to $38 billion. Mexico on Thursday reiterated it's refusal to foot the bill. Yet, a market-based immigration policy allowing Central Americans who passed a background check to purchase work visas at market rates (instead of paying thousands to human smugglers) could generate revenues for the federal government in excess of $40 billion, or more than enough to pay for that wall. You can read the details in...

<p>President Donald Trump was expected to sign several executive orders restricting immigration on Wednesday, at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, according to several congressional aides and immigration experts briefed on the matter.</p> <p>Trump's orders were expected to involve restricting access to the United States for refugees and some visa holders from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, said the aides and experts, who asked not to be identified.</p>

With just days to go until Donald Trump is inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States of America, we want to hear from Irish readers living there about how they feel now about him entering the White House. On the day of the election result, we were inundated with reaction, with the majority expressing shock and dismay. Have your opinions or expectations changed in the months since? What did you think of Mr Trump’s press conference this week? What is the mood like where you live? How do you think his presidency could affect the Irish community in...

But will the new policy have a shelf life of more than a week? I guess we’re now just down to total d*** moves on the part of the Earth Scorcher in Chief. Ever since Fidel Castro turned Cuba into a Soviet outpost in the 1950s, the United States has had a policy of welcoming Cuban refugees, assuming they could make it to our shores, even if they don’t have a visa. (Since, after all, how could they have a visa?) And since the mid-1990s, this has been formalized the wet-foot-dry-foot policy, and it establishes that if land on U.S....

How concerned should India be about an unpredictable Donald Trump presidency, now just about a week away from inauguration? Trump’s presser yesterday (11 January) did not inspire much confidence, focused as it was on attacking the media, bringing jobs back to America, diatribes against the pharma industry, and defending himself against intelligence leaks which suggested that Russia had compromising information on him. (Read the full transcript of what Trump said here) But that’s the man. He has a tendency to talk from the gut, and that is what got him elected. But once he is President, he won’t be able...

Understanding the scarcity of H-1B visas, early in 2016, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), in partnership with the City University of New York (CUNY), launched the International Innovators Initiative (IN2NYC) to build a pathway to help international entrepreneurs grow companies and create jobs in the United States, specifically in New York City. The program is now bearing fruit as its first two entrepreneurs are setting up their businesses within the CUNY incubator. Gabor Tankovics, a native of Hungary, will base his company, Dartboard, at LaGuardia Community College and Namisha Bahl from India will begin mentoring students at...

A bill backing key changes in the H1-B programme that allows skilled workers from countries like India to fill high-tech jobs in the US has been re-introduced in the US Congress by two lawmakers who claim that it will help crack down on the work visa abuse. The ‘Protect and Grow American Jobs Act’ makes important changes to the eligibility requirements for H1-B Visa exemptions was re-introduced on Wednesday by Republican Darrell Issa and Scott Peters—both from California. The bill among other things increase the minimum salary of H-1B visa to $100,000 per annum and eliminate the masters degree exemption....

Back from vacation for the holidays and New Years, I've been watching some videos by Pastor Mark Dice from California, he has been doing fake petitions in universities and in Oceanside Beach which is located north of San Diego. These petitions include banning guns and having registered gun owners put in prisons or concentration camps. Also there are petitions making post birth abortions legal, making incest legal, making Karl Marx a candidate for the Democratic party or mandatory euthanasia for the elderly. The majority of of the signers are young naive liberals and marxists of course and your typical California...