Free Republic

Congressional technology aides are baffled that data-theft allegations against four former House IT workers — who were banned from the congressional network — have largely been ignored, and they fear the integrity of sensitive high-level information. Five Capitol Hill technology aides told The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group that members of Congress have displayed an inexplicable and intense loyalty towards the suspects who police say victimized them. The baffled aides wonder if the suspects are blackmailing representatives based on the contents of their emails and files, to which they had full access. “I don’t know what they have, but...

Whisenant worked for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami in its major crimes unit. He joined the office in January. Court records show that he had been handling several visa and passport fraud cases.

Bill would create 500,000 new visas, include path to citizenship, and be open to current aliens A bill introduced this month by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) would increase foreign guest workers by up to 500,000 a year and offer a back-door amnesty for illegal immigrants. The legislation, the State Sponsored Visa Pilot Program Act of 2017, has attracted support from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the libertarian-oriented Cato Institute. “We pretty strongly oppose it. It’s an indefinite renewable visa. In our eyes, that’s a permanent worker.” The bill would represent a massive increase in the number of non-immigrant visas...

WASHINGTON — An estimated 629,000 visitors to the United States — just over 1 percent of all travelers — remained in the county at the end of last year after overstaying their visas as students, workers or tourists, according to a report released on Monday by the Department of Homeland Security. Although the figure represents a tiny portion of the estimated 50 million visitors to the country, Homeland Security officials say the failure of some people to leave when their visas lapse presents a national security risk. Two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Satam al-Suqami and Nawaq Alhazmi, had overstayed...

Moscow is preparing a list of U.S. officials it will ban from Russia in retaliation for a White House policy to keep Russian human rights abusers out of the U.S. Russia's Foreign Ministry this week began preparing a list of officials connected to the U.S. apprehension of suspected arms dealer Viktor A. Bout and convicted drug dealer Konstantin Yaroshenko, according to reports in the Russian press. The State Department last month announced that it has a list of Russian officials connected to the 2009 slaying of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who would be denied visas to visit the United States...

BEIJING - When the sister of White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner promoted investment in her family's new skyscraper to investors in Beijing earlier this month, she was pitching a controversial American visa program that's proven irresistible to tens of thousands of Chinese. Over the last decade, more than 100,000 Chinese have poured at least $24 billion into "golden visa" programs across the world, an Associated Press analysis has found. These programs offer residence in exchange for investment in a country's businesses. Nowhere is Chinese demand greater than in the United States, which has taken in at least $7.7 billion...

Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp reported a higher-than-expected quarterly profit and said it would beef up hiring in the United States, a move that comes amid U.S. President Donald Trump's tough stance on the H-1B visa rules. Cognizant gets more than 75 percent of its revenue from North America and relies heavily on workers on H-1B visas to provide IT services to clients. H-1B visas are non-immigrant visas that allow U.S. companies to temporarily employ foreign workers. The majority of Teaneck, New Jersey-based Cognizant's roughly 260,000 employees are based in India.....

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.smh.com.au/world/in-beijing-ballroom-kushner-family-flogs-500000-investor-visa-to-wealthy-chinese-20170506-gvzn58.html

According to information released by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), South African demand for US EB-5 visas has more than doubled since 2014. The EB-5 investor visa allows visa holders to obtain a green card for themselves and their immediate family members by investing $500,000 into U.S. businesses provided they create a required number of jobs. “For the first time, our industry now has access to the actual number of investors who applied, as apposed to just the number of EB-5 visas approved,” said Rogelio Caceres, co-founder of LCR Capital, a private equity investment firm that assists...

We may be about to fund sorely-needed American infrastructure projects at no cost to taxpayers while simultaneously showcasing one approach to merit-based immigration. Next week, Congress is expected to advance a bill to extend the EB-5 program, which grants residency to investors committing $500,000 to $1 million to approved development projects that subsequently create full-time jobs. While the program has had a long history of job creation, of late it has demonstrated its capacity for bringing in new dollars to fund pivotal infrastructure developments as well. Recently, for instance, the EB-5 program has funded the expansion of Seagirt Marine Terminal...

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...