Free Republic

Billionaire businessman Marc Cuban insists that the H-1B visa racket is a feature of the vaunted American free market. This is nonsense on stilts. It can't go unchallenged.Another billionaire, our president, has ordered that the H-1B program be reformed. This, too, is disappointing. You'll see why.First, let's correct Mr. Cuban: America has not a free economy, but a mixed-economy. State and markets are intertwined. Trade, including trade in labor, is not free; it's regulated to the hilt. If anything, the labyrinth of work visas is an example of a fascistic government-business cartel in operation.The H-1B permit, in particular, is part...

Science and technology students at the nation’s historically black colleges could get a boost from President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at altering a visa program that brings highly skilled workers to the United States. Leaders and advocates for historically black colleges and universities have been monitoring the immigration and jobs debate, telling the Trump administration and congressional lawmakers that so-called science, technology, engineering and math graduates from HBCU schools are readily available to fill high-tech jobs that are currently going to foreign workers. Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., who hosted a gathering of black college presidents in Washington, said Trump’s...

President Donald Trump will sign an executive order in Wisconsin on Tuesday directing a government-wide review aimed at putting new teeth back into decades-old “Buy American” and “Hire American” directives. The 220-day review process, which could lead to additional executive orders and possibly legislation, will focus on preventing foreign workers with H-1B visas from, as one senior administration official put it, “undercutting American labor at less cost,” which the official labeled as “an abuse” of the current system. “This is a clear statement from the president of the United States to shore up some of these abuses,” the official continued....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump is planning to sign an executive order that seeks to make changes to a visa program that brings in high-skilled workers. Trump is heading Tuesday to Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he plans to sign an order dubbed "Buy American, Hire American," said administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity despite the president's frequent criticism of the use of anonymous sources. The officials said the order, which Trump will sign at the headquarters of tool manufacturer Snap-on Inc., would direct the departments of Homeland Security, Justice, Labor and State to propose new rules to...

Washington can be a tough place to read. Even so, there’s a policy debate at hand that I find puzzling. We have a new president who has boldly promised to create 25 million jobs over the next decade and a conservative Congress deeply concerned with reducing the tax burden on the American people and addressing the national debt. And yet there is a federal program on the books right now that answers all calls but faces possible expiration on the eve of the Trump administration’s 100-day mark. How could that be? The EB-5 program puts Americans to work. According to...

Federal authorities raided a Los Angeles-area business on Wednesday that the FBI suspects of orchestrating a $50 million visa fraud scheme. Filings in federal court allege that the California Investment Immigration Fund sought money from more than 100 Chinese investors, and in the process helped many of them to obtain U.S. green cards through a visa program called EB-5. But, says FBI Special Agent Gary Chen in those filings, those projects were never built.

If you were bright -- and gifted in science and engineering -- the H-1B visa was your ticket to the United States. But maybe not for long. The lottery for such “high-skilled" worker visas opened Monday, with the 85,000 slots expected to fill in a matter of days. Nearly three-quarters of the visas are expected to go to Indian workers, as they have in recent years. But the Trump administration injected new uncertainty into the H-1B visa process Monday -- warning employers against discriminating against U.S.-born workers and announcing site visits to companies that employ a high ratio of workers...

"...What it means: This aligns with the administration's focus on reserving the temporary visas for very high-skilled (and higher-paid) professionals while encouraging low- and mid-level jobs to go to American workers instead. The new guidance affects applications for the lottery for 2018 fiscal year that opened Monday..."

The Justice and Homeland Security departments issued startling warnings Monday to companies applying for the country’s most prominent foreign guest-worker program, telling executives to look for Americans to fill those jobs first and promising more investigations and prosecutions of businesses that abuse the system. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is part of the Homeland Security Department, also released rules on Friday that could curtail the number of computer programmers who get H-1B visas, designated for specialty occupations that American companies have a tough time filling.

The Trump administration issued a stern warning to U.S. companies as they began applying for coveted skilled-worker visas Monday, cautioning that it would investigate and prosecute employers that overlook qualified American workers for the jobs. The message came on the opening day of applications for American employers seeking visas known as H-1B, which are used mostly by technology companies to bring in programmers and other specialized workers from other countries. “U.S. workers should not be placed in a disfavored status, and the department is wholeheartedly committed to investigating and vigorously prosecuting these claims,” Tom Wheeler, acting head of the Justice...

With the new US President’s anti-globalisation and anti-immigrants stance, those wishing to toil their way in to a US citizenship might find it hard in the near future. But money might buy you a rightful place under the US sun. This can be achieved with the help of the EB-5 program, that can get you permanent residency and eventually citizenship, provided you have a deep pocket. Many countries, including the UK, Australia and exotic locales such as Malta and Cyprus provide a channel to high networth individuals to obtain multiple citizenship if they invest specific sums or meet some criteria,...

NPR reports: "They come from places like Vietnam, China, Mexico and Guatemala, lured by promises of better-paying jobs and legal immigration. Instead, they're smuggled into the U.S., forced to work around the clock as bussers, wait staff and cooks, and housed in cramped living quarters. For this, they must pay exorbitant fees that become an insurmountable debt, even as their pay is often withheld, stolen or unfairly docked."

The Trump administration is making it tougher for millions of visitors to enter the United States by demanding new security checks before giving visas to tourists, business travelers and relatives of American residents. Diplomatic cables sent last week from Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson to all American embassies instructed consular officials to broadly increase scrutiny. It was the first evidence of the “extreme vetting” Mr. Trump promised during the presidential campaign.

Approximately 30 countries are refusing to accept the deportations of illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes in the U.S., according to Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar. While these countries are refusing to accept the deportations of these criminals, the U.S. government is still issuing visas and student visas to citizens of those countries, according to the Texan congressman. There is already a law on the books which allows the U.S. to hold visas from a country that is not taking back its criminals, but according to Cuellar, the U.S. is not enforcing it. “We’re not enforcing it, which is amazing....

A U.S. visa program designed to temporarily admit religious workers from other countries may be letting jihadists into the country, security experts and religious leaders warn. The R visa program is for non-immigrant clerics and religious workers and allows successful applicants to stay in the U.S. for up to five years. They are then allowed to apply for a permanent residency under their R-1 status. But some critics say the visa raises red flags and has long been abused by leaders with extreme views.

Thirty-one Democratic and Republican Senators are asking the Department of Homeland Security to maximize the use of blue-collar outsourcing visas so U.S. companies can import more foreign workers instead of recruiting, training and paying unskilled U.S. workers. Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), John Cornyn (R-TX), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Chris Coons (D-DE), John Barrasso (R-WY), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Susan Collins (R-ME), Tom Carper (D-DE), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Patty Murray (D-WA), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Angus King (I-ME), Tim Scott (R-SC), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Richard Burr (R-NC), Lisa Murkowski...

President Donald Trump called for a huge overhaul of the nation’s immigration rules to reduce the huge inflow of low-skill, welfare-dependent immigrants, but perhaps also to increase the inflow of productivity-boosting white-collar immigrants. In his Feb. 28 speech to the joint session of Congress, he declared: Nations around the world, like Canada, Australia and many others –- have a merit-based immigration system. It is a basic principle that those seeking to enter a country ought to be able to support themselves financially. Yet, in America, we do not enforce this rule, straining the very public resources that our poorest citizens...

Wealthy Arabs are rushing to sign up for a U.S. program offering investors green cards for cash as they try to beat a crackdown on immigration by President Trump. Three companies in Dubai offering legal advice on immigration say they have witnessed a spike in demand for U.S. investment visas since Trump's travel ban -- now blocked by the courts -- on citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries. "We've received a greater number of inquiries and client enrollment since the commencement of the Trump presidency," said Preeya Malik, managing director at Step America, a firm that provides consultancy services on U.S....

“This is now standard practice in the technology industry.” US tech companies, and other companies with large IT departments, are having conniptions about President Trump’s immigration policies, particularly the leaked draft of an executive order that includes references to reforming the H-1B visa program for foreign tech workers. In light of the 85,000 foreign tech workers allowed to be brought into the US annually under the H-1B visa program – a limit tech companies have been clamoring to raise – here’s a stunning forecast by the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Employment of computer and information technology occupations is projected to...

For decades, H1B visas have been one of the cornerstones of the traditional IT outsourcing business model. In many ways, the possibility of legally sending workers to the US has allowed Indian firms to offer an enticing service: the client gets to work face to face with less expensive engineers that are authorized to temporarily work in the US, yet can also leverage a much larger team of offshore talent that is orchestrated by the on-site, visa-holding resources. The proposition is hard to beat: not only is it inexpensive, but the model can help solve time-zone issues thanks to a...