Immigration Research

City Journal

Dave Seminara

May 30, 2023

Visa abuse, which begins as legal entry, doesn’t get nearly as much attention as illegal border crossings

By now, you’ve likely heard plenty about the crisis on our southern border. In Fiscal Year 2022, border patrol officers had nearly 2.4 million encounters with migrants from around the world. They’re on pace to break those record numbers in 2023, and that tally doesn’t include so-called got-aways or those evading detection entirely.

“No foreign “tourists” should be permitted to stay forever.”

But all this is only half of our illegal immigration problem. There’s another surge, this one unfolding at embassies and consulates—and it begins with visas placed in foreign passports.

As I’ve been detailing since 2008, roughly half of all illegal immigrants come to the U.S. legally on various non-immigrant visas (NIV)—typically tourist visas (B1/B2)—and overstay them. But the breadth and scope of NIV abuse is likely much worse than that. We still don’t have a firm grasp on NIV overstay rates because many ports of entry don’t stamp travelers out of the country when they leave. We do know, however, that last year consular officers approved 80 percent of tourist visa applicants worldwide. That includes, for example, 70 percent of applicants from China, 85 percent from Brazil, 46 percent from Iran, 74 percent from Russia, and an astonishing 94 percent from India.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers authorize most foreign tourists who arrive with B1/B2 visas for a six-month stay, and some can legally extend their stays for up to 18 months. They can’t work legally, but many work anyway. (Ironically, CBP officers typically give travelers from rich visa-waiver countries only 90 days, while those from less well-off countries that require visas get twice as much time.)

Foreigners can arrive here on tourist visas and then legally adjust their visa status if they marry an American. It’s also legal for foreign “tourists” to come here and interview for jobs. If they find one, their employer can file an adjustment-of-visa-status request for them. The bottom line is that the U.S. is likely the only Western country where one can arrive as a tourist and never go home—all legally.

Many companies, particularly those that can’t capture as many H-1B visas as they want, send employees here with B1/B2 visas, claiming that they’re here for training when in fact they work here. The government doesn’t have the manpower to investigate what foreign employees on B1/B2 visas actually do when they set foot in offices.

During the pandemic, NIV visa numbers plunged as embassies and consulates halted visa processing for spells, but now a new surge of applicants is overwhelming posts in many parts of the world. In March, NIV issuances exceeded 1 million in a single month for the first time since the State Department began releasing monthly NIV data in 2017. The more than 1.1 million NIVs issued in March represent a 41 percent increase over March 2019 figures. Prior months also saw robust increases compared with 2019.

Some of this could be attributed to pent-up demand, but the numbers at some posts are extraordinary. As a former consular officer, I can confirm that the busiest season at most posts is summer, so the early surge in 2023 could be just the tip of the iceberg. Below are the numbers for select posts in March 2023 compared with March 2019. These are only for tourist visas, save for Mexico, where I include border-crossing cards and H-2A agricultural visas to illustrate the emptiness of the Left’s “but who will pick the crops?” argument in favor of open borders.

China, Ukraine, and Russia are the only significant outlier posts where issuances aren’tsoaring. Applicant numbers from Russia and Ukraine may still be robust, but officers are possibly refusing more tourist-visa applicants due to the war.

Consular officers are required by law to deny any tourist visa applicant who cannot convince them that he’ll return to his home country. In practice, however, many of my former colleagues have more of a diplomatic mindset than a law enforcement one and give applicants the benefit of the doubt. At some posts, chiefs of mission, some of them political appointees, could be pressuring managers to be lenient in order to reduce migrant flows at the border.

GOP candidates will no doubt make President Biden’s deliberate failure to enforce our immigration laws a central theme of the 2024 campaign. Republicans will broadly agree that we must secure the border. Comparatively little will be said about NIV abuse, guest workers, and legal immigration. Below are some policy ideas for presidential hopefuls.

Though I have tremendous respect for my former colleagues in the Foreign Service, the truth is that few diplomats want to do visa work, and it is often viewed as a way of “paying your dues” as a junior level officer. We should therefore shift the visa function away from the State Department to a new consular corps, nested within the Department of Homeland Security, consisting of officers with law-enforcement experience.

We can also crack down on tourist visa abuse. No foreign “tourists” should be permitted to stay forever. If someone comes here as a “tourist” and then decides they want to stay, let him return to his home country and apply for a different category of visa there. And we should cut back the authorized stay for tourists arriving on B1/B2 visas to 90 days, extendable by a maximum of 90 additional days. We should also investigate and punish companies that abuse the B1/B2 training loophole, track visitor entry and exits more effectively, and bar visa abusers who spend more time in the U.S. as “tourists” than they do in their home countries.

Any company that has laid off American workers in the past 12 months shouldn’t have the right to petition for any category of guest workers for the next 12 months.

Guest-worker visas like the H-2B require U.S. employers to advertise jobs here first. But these are “compliance”-oriented ads, expressly designed to deter applicants. The government should ensure that companies are actively recruiting for jobs here, not just running unappealing classified ads in seven-point font to comply with the law.

Student-visa abuse is most rampant at open-enrollment community colleges. Community colleges should be required to submit annual reports on their foreign students’ matriculation rates. No F-1 student visas should be issued for students going to community colleges being used as visa mills.

We should restrict legal, chain migration to the wives, fiancés, and children of American citizens. When someone moves here from abroad, he shouldn’t be able to bring his siblings and parents along. Removing preferences from Legal Permanent Residents will give them time to assimilate first and encourage them to become U.S. citizens.

Lastly, we should make participation in E-Verify mandatory nationwide for employers with at least 25 employees, as Florida has recently done.   Read the entire report here.

What is parole?

USCIS uses its discretion to authorize parole. Parole allows an individual, who may be inadmissible or otherwise ineligible for admission into the United States, to be paroled into the United States for a temporary period. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) allows the secretary of homeland security to use their discretion to parole any noncitizen applying for admission into the United States temporarily for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit. (See INA section 212(d)(5).)

An individual who is paroled into the United States has not been formally admitted into the United States for purposes of immigration law.

Parole is not intended to be used solely to avoid normal visa processing procedures and timelines, to bypass inadmissibility waiver processing, or to replace established refugee processing channels.

• Related: SB 264 & HB 640

Length of Parole

If authorized, we will specify the duration of parole for a temporary period of time to accomplish the purpose of the parole. For example, if parole is requested to attend a civil court proceeding between private parties, we may authorize parole for the period of time necessary to attend the proceedings. We typically grant parole for no more than 1 year, although we may grant parole for a longer duration depending on the reason for the parole.

Parole ends on the date the parole period expires or when a parolee departs the United States or acquires an immigration status, whichever occurs first. In some cases, we may place conditions on parole, such as reporting requirements. We may revoke parole at any time and without notice if we determine that parole is no longer warranted or a parolee fails to comply with any conditions of parole.

Work Permits

We may, at our discretion, grant a parolee temporary employment authorization, if it is not inconsistent with the purpose and duration of their parole. You may request employment authorization after being paroled into the United States by filing Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization.

The above pasted in from the USCIS site here. See “terminology.”

 “The party you are trying to reach is not accepting calls at this time.”

My cell phone number may be is  blocked from calling the Erick Erickson radio show 

UPDATE: Feb. 9, 2023: Still blocked as per attempt to call in today.

UPDATE: Feb. 23, 2023: Still blocked and I can’t stop laughing.

UPDATE: March 28, 2023: Yep, still blocked.

UPDATE: May 9, 2023. Still blocked from participating win Erick’s show.

UPDATE: June 13, 2023. Yep, still blocked

UPDATE: September 26, 2023 – still blocked from joining the Erick Erickson Show.

UPDATE: August 5, 2024 – still blocked.

• Bonus: Erick Erickson to GOP: ‘Do school choice as an entitlement!’ – transcript & audio

The below is related to the Erick Erickson radio show from WSB-radio in Atlanta, *Jan 24, 2023. Podcast here – S12 Episode 16, Hour 2.  Transcript on the bottom. Audio below. Below that, audio of the results of me trying to go on the air to ask Erickson about illegal aliens and state-funded private school tuition. I had a statewide column posted that day.

The below is most of an Erickson segment on “entitlements” and school choice. It’s Erickson’s advice to Republicans – focused further down on Republican state legislators in Georgia. I listen to the show only sporadically but have heard this same idea presented three or four times since last January (our legislature starts up in January) when I called in to suggest Erickson qualify that Georgia taxpayers should not be paying for private school tuition for illegal alien students or families. At the time he was selling the ridiculous HB 999 in the Georgia state House.

Using my iPhone, as I did last year, I tried to call in for this January segment too – I got a recording saying that “the party you are trying to reach is not accepting calls at this time.” I tried it several times. Same recording. You can hear it in the below 10 second audio recording. Here is a photo of my iPhone screen after several tries.

Then I tried my land line. It went right through to Erickson’s call screener who asked me what I wanted to say and then my name, then told me to hang on for Erick. That was a little before 2:00 PM.

• Related: Not accepting calls at this time – Recipient is blocking the caller
• Update: 12:25, Jan 25: With a guest host on Erickson’s show today I used my iPhone to call Erickson’s call in number again. I got the same recording as yesterday. Then I tried using two land lines and my wife’s cellphone. Our calls rang through on all of them except my iPhone. My apologies to the call screener – yep, that was me.

I put the call on speaker and listened as Erickson took four or five calls, including two on school choice. He didn’t put me on the air. The show was over at 3:00 pm. I tried to get on again about three months ago using my iPhone, but stayed on hold for about forty-five minutes before the show was over without being “picked.”

I may have been blocked by Erick Erickson on his show call-in number    877-973-7425.

I can get to the call screener with a land line on a number I have never used to call in, but not on the iPhone number I usually use. I am wondering if Erick Erickson, Republican, conservative, national radio show host has blocked me. Could be…he is also a shameless Brian Kemp protector. I am not. I don’t think either one of them like my determination to expose Kemp, who is also shielded by the Georgia media – including the liberal AJC newspaper. There is no doubt that I am blocked at the AJC.

I follow Erickson on Twitter. I’m not blocked there yet:

• Erickson file here.
• (Part of) AJC file here.

__

Transcript by Rev.com. My cost $20.00 and about 4 hours.

Erick Erickson radio host:

“…Actually did show up in the election and vote. The- the people who voted early, the people who voted on election day, they’re surveyed; we have lists of those people. Media agencies go out and find those people. And what we’re finding is that, uh, the cultural conservative values of the GOP, and particularly as the Democratic Party becomes Whiter and Whiter, the culturally conservative values of the GOP are resonating more and more with Black voters.

But, to Michelle’s point, it doesn’t seem like it’s significant because when you’re… when you go from 90% voting Democrat to 85% voting Democrat, you still got 85% voting Democrat. But to put this in further perspective, Brian Kemp got almost half of the Hispanic vote. In 2018, he only got 38% of it. That was a pretty significant shift. He also did better with Black… among Black men in 2022, than 2018.

Put it to you this way, if Republicans continue to improve with the Hispanic vote, Brian Kemp is term-limited, but if the next Republican governor in Georgia does the same in the Hispanic community and the same in the… in the White vote, he’s still gonna win. Republicans in Georgia are shifting the state and I firmly believe, those of you listening in Atlanta, in the state legislature right now, if you would pursue school choice, that issue resonates in the Black and the Hispanic community. You give an entitlement, these voters aren’t gonna walk back that entitlement. This is something you need to pursue.

Time for me to get on my soapbox. Let’s take a Republican and Democratic theory at face value. When you give an entitlement, that entitlement will not go away. Democrats have given Medicare and Medicaid, and Social Security, and healthcare, and you name it, and Republicans had never got rid of them. So, Republicans, here is an entitlement to give voters, give families, give citizens, and that is: The opportunity to pick the school of their choice for their children.

You give school choice to the kids; That’s an entitlement. And it is the one entitlement the Democrats hate. So, you will see Democrats campaign on getting rid of it and fighting it. We see this with Katie Hobbs in Arizona; The Republicans gave school choice to parents, Katie Hobbs has come in, she beat Kari Lake, she’s now the governor, and she wants to defund it. There’s already a voter backlash in the Hispanic community against Katie Hobbs for taking away their new entitlement.

You do this in a place like Georgia where Republicans are beginning to make ground with Hispanic voters and Black voters, you’re gonna lock Republicans in for the next several decades because no Democrat running in 2026 is going to campaign on school choice; They’re gonna campaign on getting rid of it. They’re gonna claim, “It killed the public schools.” And you know what? All those parents, whose kids are suddenly getting a good education, they’re gonna vote Republican. This is how Ron DeSantis won in Florida; Andrew Gillum, his opponent, campaigned on finally getting rid of Jeb Bush’s school choice reforms. And Ron DeSantis won enough Black women and Hispanic women, that he barely won the governorship, but he did. And look what happened four years later? He improved school choice, he bolstered it, he strengthened it, he funded those schools.

You all focused on the culture war stuff. The people in Florida, they’re focusing on who we navigated COVID, how we navigated the economy and what he did for school choice. And they all voted for him. That Republicans nationwide are not rushing to school choice is… just shows you how stupid so many people in the party are. Democrats have, for years, given everything to voters and dared Republicans to take it all back. And when Republicans campaign on taking it all back, they lose. That’s why Donald Trump is out right now telling Republicans, “Don’t campaign on cutting Social Security. Don’t campaign on cutting and reforming Medicare and Medicaid. Don’t you dare do it, you’ll lose.” And Republicans are listening to him.

So, give parents hope for their kid’s future. Give parents the opportunity to get their kids out of failing public schools; Where the schools are now more interested in- in turning your kids woke, than helping your kids not be broke. They want your kids to be indoctrinated, not educated. They want your kids to be down with left-wing groupthink. They don’t want your kids to be on entrepreneurial. They don’t want your kids to learn individual responsibility. They don’t want your kids to learn the basics skills to get a job as an entrepreneur and compete against the big business, no, they want your child enslaved to big business. Teaching them Common Core maths, so they can’t get out on their own. Binding them to the administrative governmental state.

You give parents school choice and watch the GOP become the dominant party, and watch the kids thrive. This is the civil right issue of the day, and I cannot believe Republicans aren’t with the program. I can’t believe Republicans nationwide aren’t pushing this. In my state of Georgia, there’s a headline in the newspaper today, that there’s a renewed push to expand Georgia’s private school tuition subsidies. They want a hundred million dollar increase to Georgia’s Student Scholarship Program. So far, they only secured 20 million dollars. The chief architect of the scale back legislation, John Carson of Marietta, is proposing to expand the cap on the Tax Credit Program from a 120 million to 200 million dollars.

The American Federation of Teachers and The, uh, National Education Association are opposed, but the American Federation for Children supports it. Y’all, I- I can’t emphasize this enough: You’ve got to give school choice. You’ve got to allow parents to get their kids out of these public schools. Do you know where I am in Georgia? On Valentine’s Day last year, an elementary school gym teacher decided, on Valentine’s Day, to bring his first grade students into the gym and show them a video on same-sex love. I’m not making that up.

Parents, many of them didn’t know about it until I talked about it on this program. They found out from their first graders, that’s what happened at that elementary school. And the superintendent of the county education system sent me a very indignant letter.

Erick Erickson radio host:

Upset that I exposed what happened. There are a lot of private schools in that county. There are a lot of private schools that would love to take in Black and Hispanic students who are in those failing public schools, but it’s the Republicans who are blocking them. The Democrats don’t have the votes to stop it. The Republicans could embrace full school choice, and these private schools would bring these kids in, allow them in. Don’t- don’t punish the private schools that are Christian and run according to Christian guidelines, you don’t have to do that. Let ’em in and grow. Let ’em in and grow. Support them. You gotta do that.

This is the civil rights issue of our time. Republicans are failing on this. Don’t heap poor kids in failing public schools, when you have the opportunity to give them access to a private school where they can get a great education and become tomorrow’s entrepreneur. You support your job force, your workforce, your future by giving these kids school choice. Whenever you are nationwide, if you’ve got a Republican legislature and a Republican governor, and that’s the majority of the nation, you should be doing this. So, support tomorrow, today.

Now, you should go to edenpuredeals.com and get an EdenPURE Thunderstorm. You can get three of them for less than $200. You’re saving $200, and you get free shipping at edenpuredeals.com. You’ll be greeted with a discount code box. You can put in Erick…

Dec 10, 2020

Boltsmag.org

Growing up in Gwinnett County, Georgia, in the northeastern Atlanta suburbs, Jonathan Zuñiga remembers the fear his parents felt driving to the grocery store.

In 2009, the Gwinnett County sheriff’s office, under Sheriff Butch Conway, started turning over hundreds of Latinx immigrants in its custody to ICE—including many who only landed in jail after police arrested them for minor traffic violations. Zuñiga says his parents, who are undocumented immigrants from Mexico, had to leave their construction jobs for lower-paying factory jobs that required less driving. But running errands continued to pose a threat.

“Driving even small amounts of time was unsafe,” Zuñiga said.

The county sheriff’s office was making these transfers because it had joined ICE’s 287(g) program, which allows local officers to directly enforce federal immigration policies, including screening immigration status and detaining residents until ICE takes custody. Gwinnett County operates one of the largest 287(g) programs in the country: this year, it ranks fourth in the nation for the number of ICE detainer requests, in which local jails hold people in custody longer in order to hand them over to federal agents. Detainers in Gwinnett peaked in 2012 and then steadily declined throughout Barack Obama’s second term as president. But they soared again after Donald Trump took office in early 2017 with new enforcement priorities, including having ICE arrest noncitizens more frequently for minor crimes. A Mother Jones investigation found that between 2017 and July 2019, the primary charge for nearly half of the people held for ICE at the Gwinnett County Jail was for driving without a license or another minor traffic violation.

But in November, voters in Gwinnett and nearby suburban Cobb County chose Democratic sheriffs for the first time in decades, electing candidates who made campaign promises to end the 287(g) programs. A Democratic candidate who opposed 287(g) also won in Charleston County, South Carolina; altogether these wins mirror a string of progressive sheriff victoriesin 2018 that were driven by immigration issues.

Cobb County’s longtime sheriff, Neil Warren, lost to challenger Craig Owens. In Gwinnett County, Sheriff-elect Keybo Taylor won with 57 percent of the vote against Republican candidate Lou Solis, the second-in-command to Conway, who didn’t seek re-election. In 2016, by contrast, Conway ran unopposed and won 97 percent of the vote.

That upset, and the emphasis on 287(g) as a central campaign issue in both counties, resulted in large part from the work of local immigrants’ rights organizers who have grown their operations under the Trump presidency and activated communities of color. Their organizing also contributed to Georgia electing a Democrat presidential candidate for the first time since 1992.

Leading up to the November elections, Zuñiga joined Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR) Action Network as a canvasser focused on the sheriff races in Gwinnett and Cobb counties. Working as part of the “Take Action, Get Power” coalition with Southerners on New Ground (SONG) Power, and Mijente, Zuñiga and other canvassers were able to reach more than 125,000 residences—primarily Latinx and Black voters—by door-knocking (with COVID-19 precautions), according to GLAHR. Their work paralleled groups like the Asian American Advocacy Fund, whose outreach helped to nearly double voter turnout among Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.

Zuñiga found that many residents were aware of 287(g) but not of how to change it. “They didn’t know the formal name of that policy, but they knew what could happen if [you didn’t have] a license,” he said. “A lot of people thought it was something coming down from the federal level. They weren’t aware that changing a sheriff could actually change that policy.”

Founded nearly 15 years ago, GLAHR is the largest Latinx grassroots organization in the state. Under the Trump administration, GLAHR, SONG, and other long-established Georgia-based nonprofits have joined a nationwide trend of changing liberal activism by creating 501(c)(4) arms—organizations that are also exempt from federal income tax but can lobby and do political work—in order to be more aggressive political players, rather than solely focused on litigation, educational work, or providing services.

• Related reading: Led by GLAHR, May Day marchers say Georgia immigration laws unfair

Kevin Joachin, an organizer with GLAHR Action Network, says the organization’s priority has become “building the political consciousness of our community”—helping inform Latinx residents about specific policies and their ability to change them at a scale that has little precedence in Georgia, particularly for a down-ballot race. That organizing began early in the election cycle; GLAHR lead organizer Carlos Medina says that activating Latinx voters for the sheriff primaries helped push Democratic candidates in both counties leftward, leading to promises to end the 287(g) program.

Related reading: Communist banner unfurled at anti-borders GLAHR Gold Dome  

Zuñiga says he found that many Latinx and Black voters in the suburbs—particularly in the more rural areas of Cobb and Gwinnett counties—never before had an interaction with a canvasser, despite the influx of political spending and organizing that’s accompanied Georgia’s demographic change in recent years. “We try to get that small, little conversation with people because we feel like that actually matters,” Zuñiga said.

Although Hillary Clinton won Gwinnett County in the 2016 presidential election, and Joe Biden won the county and state this year, more than a third of Latinxes in Georgia voted for Trump, according to exit polls. Canvassers with Take Action Get Power found that some Latinx voters in Gwinnett supported Solis for sheriff partially because of his Latinx identity. Joachin says GLAHR Action Network’s in-person approach was pivotal: Canvassers would see pro-Solis signs in some stores and talk to the owners or employees about Gwinnett’s high rates of deportations. The next time canvassers drove by, Joachin said, the signs were gone. Compared to hyperpolarized debates about presidential candidates, Zuñiga says he was able to have “more in-touch conversations [about the sheriff’s race] because it was something that was affecting their communities, and they could see that firsthand.”

SONG volunteer coordinator Tayleece Paul says door-knocking yielded contact or conversations with 32 percent of residences, versus just 2 percent with phone banking. Paul grew up in Gwinnett County and remembers a friend’s father who was deported through the 287(g) program. Many of the coalition’s canvassers met people who had similar experiences with the program, she says. “Each person had their own unique story.”

Joachin says that engaging the entire Latinx community—including those who cannot vote, like undocumented immigrants—is central to GLAHR Action Network’s strategy of empowerment. “We’re not always concerned if the person who we’re looking for is at home, because maybe their family member who is undocumented will benefit from the conversation by being included,” he said. “We’re not telling them to vote—that’s voter fraud—but what we’re doing is creating a culture of voting.”   More here.