Category: News

A wide array of noncitizens in Maine can now apply for a Commercial Learner’s Permit (CLP) or a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL).

A coalition including MeBIC, ACLU-Maine, Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project,  Maine Equal Justice, Portland Adult Education, and SIGCO advocated with Maine’s  Secretary of State and the Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) that their interpretation of federal CDL regulations was too narrow.  Maine had been restricting CLPs and CDLs to only U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

The Secretary of State’s office ultimately agreed.  Computer system updates made to accommodate the updated policy were completed by the BMV in September, 2019.  The change does not apply to hazardous material CDLs.

Maine has been facing a critical shortage of individuals with CDLs, affecting the ability of public transit systems, school districts, construction firms, trucking companies, and snow plow contractors, to name only a few, to get the drivers they need.   As a result of this change, now refugees, asylees, those with pending asylum applications, and anyone with an unexpired work permit, including individuals with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA),  among other noncitizens, can apply to get a CLP, or if they have the appropriate driving qualifications, a CDL.  They will also have to show that they reside in Maine.

With Maine’s unemployment rate below 3% as of August 2019, the ability of more of Maine’s immigrants to get CDLs and to choose a driving career will benefit employers and immigrants alike.

 

The turmoil in our immigration system stems from the vast mismatch between our outdated immigration laws and the nation’s current demographic, economic, and social landscapes.  Comprehensive immigration reform bills were on the table in 2006, 2007, and 2013 in Congress, but failed to pass.

Much of the media focus is on the administration’s actions directed at asylum seekers and those crossing the southern border.  However, less noticed is that through processing delays, soaring denial rates, increasingly restrictive procedures  and new regulations, the administration is taking the flawed immigration system and making it even worse.  The result is that just when birth rates are at record lows, when more workers are aging out of the labor force, and when job openings exceed unemployed individuals by more than 1.4  million (as of July 2019),  the administration is shutting the siphon on all forms of legal immigration (which includes asylum seekers).  The administration’s actions are exacerbating our growing demographic challenges, threatening our economy’s growth, and undermining our nation’s immigrant tradition and values.

Undoing the administration’s actions is critical, and passing laws such as  H.R. 6, The American Dream and Promise Act of 2019, which will prevent about 1.1 million DACA and Temporary Protected Status holders, most of whom are working, from being forced out of our country, and our economy, is one step towards improving our immigration laws.  But our laws need a complete, modernizing overhaul.

Several think tanks have weighed in recently on this.  The Migration Policy Institute has framed the terms of its analysis as it begins a deep dive into what direction future reforms should take.   MPI notes the high stakes if reforms are not made:

In the absence of a desperately needed overhaul, this critical policy arena will continue to be subject to wild swings from administration to administration that rely on broad uses of executive authority to accomplish goals that should be articulated by Congress.

The Cato Institute  has also recently laid out a framework that looks not only at reforms that would stem the crisis at the border but present a path to a  broad overhaul.

Both of these analyses help add context to the debate that needs to be had in Congress, once that body finally decides its time to improve our immigration system to match the country’s economic and demographic realities, and are worth a read.

 

Walmart and Chobani have co-founded the Corporate Roundtable for the New American Workforce, to encourage companies to devise and offer benefits that value their immigrant employees and will strengthen their immigrant workforce and immigrant integration, according to this item in Bloomberg Law.

Joined by corporations such as Ben & Jerry’s, Lyft, Marriott, Tyson Foods, and Uber, these companies are offering English classes, and also immigration legal aid to help with the citizenship application process.  Offering these benefits helps them both to attract and retain workers, in a tight labor market, and also recognizes the value of immigrants in the workforce.

The initiative has multiple goals, as the article notes:

(W)hile the Corporate Roundtable program’s main offerings are free legal aid to help with the naturalization process and English language classes, the initiative is also aimed at combating the view that helping immigrant workers reduces opportunities for the U.S.-born.

In Maine, LD 647, approved by the State Legislature in 2019 but needing to pass the finish line in 2020, would provide funds to help employers launch combined English and job skills classes at their worksites.  MeBIC and many of its coalition partners supported that legislation.  The Corporate Roundtable has drafted a  letter inviting businesses nationwide to commit to supporting similar efforts.  The letter states:

To: American Companies and Business Leaders

Since its foundation, the United States has been a home to immigrants, who come with dreams and in search of greater opportunities. These newcomers embody America’s identity and are important contributors of economic growth and social, civic, and cultural life.

As a collection of global companies and business leaders, we are grateful that 41 million immigrants from all over the world came to the United States to raise their families, seek an education, and contribute to our communities and companies. They represent one in six workers and help America remain economically strong in a globally competitive market.

Our labor force will only continue to grow and diversify.  The foreign born portion of the total U.S. working population increased from 13.1% in 2000 to 17.4% in 2018.[i] Due to the increase, we understand the necessity to support immigrant integration at work and in society. Through this support, we are helping newcomers more quickly contribute and better utilize their skills and talents, which benefits their families, employers, communities, and our economy.

We are pleased that these companies have supported immigrant integration through establishing company practices, offering worksite services, initiating pro-immigrant communications efforts and immigration policy advocacy. Specifically, some companies, like Walmart and NVIDIA, are helping their immigrant employees and family members with the naturalization process, while other companies, like Lyft and Chobani, have offered English classes to their workers.

We encourage all companies to support their diverse workforce by offering immigrant integration services at their workplaces, aiming to continue to create a welcoming environment for all newcomers and building communities where all can thrive.

Thank you.

Maine businesses can find other signatories and sign on to the letter here.  Businesses that want to help get LD 647 enacted in 2020 are encouraged to contact MeBIC.

 

The Administration has published a proposed rule to delay issuance of asylum seekers’ initial work permits.

By law, asylum seekers can’t apply for their first work permits sooner than 150 days after filing for asylum, but current longstanding regulations then require USCIS to make a decision on those applications within 30 days.  Because USCIS routinely failed to act that quickly, in 2018, a federal court ordered them to begin doing so.  The proposed rule would effectively nullify that court order and let USCIS to revert to longer processing times for issuing asylum seekers’ initial work permits.

The proposed rule defies economic reality.  In August 2019, the  national unemployment rate held steady at 3.7%.   In Maine, the unemployment rate in July 2019 was 3%, with 12 counties having rates below 3% (including Sagadahoc and Cumberland Counties at 1.7% and 1.9% respectively).  All of Maine’s counties had unemployment rates under 4%, compared to a year ago when five Maine counties had rates over 4%.  Nationally and in Maine, employers are clamoring for workers, and asylum seekers can help fill that need.

The proposed rule indicates that the Administration is well aware of this.   The proposed rule’s preamble states:

A portion of the impacts of this rule would also be borne by companies that would have hired the asylum applicants had they been in the labor market earlier but were unable to find available workers. These companies would incur a cost, as they would be losing the productivity and potential profits the asylum applicant would have provided had the asylum applicant been in the labor force earlier.

Moreover, the proposed rule acknowledges the economic cost to the asylum seekers themselves, in lost income, which in turn is income not spent in the the economy.    The  administration anticipates that work permit processing times will revert to the delays that preceded the 2018 court order, and estimates that

(t)he lost compensation to asylum applicants could range from $255.88 million to $774.76 million annually depending on the wages the asylum applicant would have earned.

The proposed rule recognizes that “USCIS could hire more officers” in order to more quickly process these work permit applications, but the Administration is choosing not to do so.  In addition, the preamble notes that the White House is contemplating eliminating in the future the ability for asylum seekers to get a work permit at all while their cases are pending, if they didn’t enter the U.S. through a border inspection post (such as the vast majority of asylum seekers who arrive via the southern border, including the asylum seekers who arrived in Portland this summer).

Asylum seekers are allowed under federal and international law to seek safety in the U.S. regardless of how they enter the country.  Making it more difficult for them to get work authorization while their cases are in process not only forces them to rely on charity and robs them of dignity, but deprives our economy of their ability to contribute as workers and consumers.   We should be helping asylum seekers get their work permits more quickly, rather than less, as proposed legislation, introduced by Maine’s Rep. Chellie Pingree, would do.

Public comment on this proposed rule will be accepted through November 8, 2019.  Please contact MeBIC if your business would like assistance submitting a comment in opposition to this change.

 

 

Two years ago today, on September 5, 2017, the administration announced that it was rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protected from removal and provided work permits to immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children before July 2012.  That decision placed over 700,000 immigrant young adults in legal limbo, unsure if they’ll be forced to leave the U.S, which for many is the only country they truly know.

Since then, multiple federal courts found the administration’s rationale for ending the program unlawful, and ordered the government to continue to renew DACA status.  No new applications have been accepted since September 5, 2017, however.

The Supreme Court will take up the administration’s appeal from those decisions in its upcoming term, with oral argument set for November 12, 2019.  In the meantime, DACA holders, who, despite their lack of permanent legal status, are students, employees, entrepreneurs, employers, community members, homeowners , consumers, volunteers and part of our society in every respect, do not know what their futures will hold.  Should they have to leave, our communities, and our economy will suffer.

The American Dream and Promise Act of 2019, which would provide a path to permanent residency for DACA holders and those who have had Temporary Protected Status for years and decades, has passed in the House of Representatives.  On this second anniversary of DACA’s rescission, it is high time for the Senate to bring it to a vote and approve it as well.

 

On September 4, 2019, the Department of Homeland Security published a proposed rule to add questions about individuals’ social media accounts and identifiers to a wide variety of immigration application forms, including for citizenship, refugee or asylee status,  and for permanent residency, as well as on the landing card for those arriving in the U.S. on temporary visas such as visitors and foreign students.

As we’ve written previously, this will lead to an increase in denials of these applications, and of entry to the U.S.    Denials could occur simply because a person omits a social media account that s/he set up but never or rarely used and later forgot about, or because someone who was friended posts content that shows up on a non-citizen’s feed that the government finds objectionable.

A  recent example of the latter was the denial of entry in August to an incoming Harvard University freshman from Lebanon, after U.S. border officials at the arrival airport reportedly disapproved of other people’s posts that showed up on the student’s social media feed, even though he himself had not written anything that they found questionable.   After media scrutiny and advocacy efforts, that decision was ultimately reversed and he was able to enter to begin his studies, but not every affected individual will attract the same level of attention to trigger a governmental about-face.

Governmental errors are also sure to occur, resulting in denials of visas, entry, or immigration status for those applying within the U.S., due to the government’s reported use of on-line translation platforms such as Google Translate when reviewing posts not written in English.  As this article highlights, even Google states that its platform is not a substitute for a human translator.

The Brennan Center for Justice has produced a report outlining the risks of increased social media scrutiny in the immigration context.

Comments on the proposed rule will be accepted through November 4, 2019.   MeBIC  has submitted a comment in opposition.

 

From separating children from their parents at the United States’ southern border, to making it increasingly difficult for those fleeing harm to seek asylum, to virtually halting refugee resettlement, to supporting legislative initiatives gutting immediate family immigration, to implementing new immigration regulations that would substantially reduce legal immigration by those not already well-educated and well-off, there is one architect leading the construction of the Trump Administration’s immigration policies:  Stephen Miller.

The New York Times  and the Washington Post both recently published in-depth profiles of Stephen Miller.  In case you missed them, you can find the Time‘s article here, and the Post‘s profile here.

The Washington Post reports that Maine is the bellwether of a growing national crisis:  as our population ages, the need for elder caregivers and healthcare providers increases, at the same time that our demographics are creating a shrinking workforce.

As the article notes:

The disconnect between Maine’s aging population and its need for young workers to care for that population is expected to be mirrored in states throughout the country over the coming decade, demographic experts say. And that’s especially true in states with populations with fewer immigrants, who are disproportionately represented in many occupations serving the elderly, statistics show.

In Maine, and the nation, unemployment continues to be low (at 3.7% nationwide and 3.2% in Maine).   Immigration is part of the solution.   Refugees and those seeking or granted asylum, and immediate family immigrants who work in every sector of the economy, from manual labor to highly skilled professions, are essential to preventing the acceleration of our country’s and Maine’s demographic decline.

This is not the time to cut legal immigration as the administration aims to do. The recently published final rule on “public charge”   will do just that, by drastically reducing immediate family immigration, and will exacerbate our elder care labor shortage, as this piece in Forbes  notes.

Rather, it’s the time to remake our federal immigration laws to eliminate backlogs and processing delays in order to facilitate immigration, and for Maine to embrace its ability to attract asylum seekers to settle in the state who will revitalize our communities and workforce.

A Gallup poll conducted in July 2019 showed majority support for allowing Central Americans  at the United States’ southern border into the U.S. to seek asylum.

Overall, 57% of respondents favored admitting the asylum seekers, up from 51% in December 2018.   Republican support for admitting the asylum seekers increased by 10 percentage points, while Independent support grew by 6 points.  Regardless of political affiliation, 75% of respondents felt that the situation on the border was a crisis or a major problem needing resolution.

You can see the poll results here.

Maine employers are starved for workers as low unemployment persists in the state.

Yet employers sometimes cut themselves off from immigrants in the workforce through errors made in job postings, during interviews, when communicating job offers, and, after hiring qualified candidates, during the I-9 employment verification process.

These mistakes may not only cost an employer a talented potential employee, but may also run afoul of federal nondiscrimination and employer sanctions laws.

MeBIC has created a two-page primer on hiring “do’s and don’ts”.   This resource may help Maine’s employers tap into the broadest possible applicant pool, and avoid legal errors.

UPDATE:  July 30, 2019:

Family Detention and Family Separations: The administration, in updates filed with the federal court that in June 2018 ordered the Department of Homeland Security  to cease family separations and to reunite separated parents and children, has admitted that it has continued the family separations, taking more than 900 children away from the adult family members with whom they crossed the border, as this article in the New York Times explains.

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On July 2, 2019, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued a new report on Dangerous Overcrowding and Prolonged Detention of Children and Adults in the Rio Grande Valley. This report follows on the heels of another report MeBIC from May 30, 2019, finding similar dangerous conditions in several other detention centers on the southern border.

In response to the concerns raised in the OIG’s July report, the Department of Homeland Security, at Appendix A of the report, cites to the overwhelming number of individuals crossing the border, noting that multiple months of more than 100,000 arrivals was “overwhelming the ability of the Federal Government to respond.”

Yet, the government has  decades of experience in dealing with similar numbers of individuals arriving over the southern border, without it devolving into a similar detention crisis.   Customs and Border Protection data shows that from 1983 through 2006, in all but 5 of those years, more than a million people were apprehended on the southern border annually. During 9 of those years, apprehensions averaged in excess of 100,000 per month.  (Border crossings fell dramatically in 2007 and subsequent years due to the recession, which yielded sharp drops in Mexican border crossers.)

As this analysis from the Cato Institute points out, the current detention crisis is one of the government’s own making.   Conditions on the southern border do not have to be this bad.    Query whether this is the result of incompetence, negligence, or malevolence.

Despite being in the news constantly, understanding what is happening on the southern border can be challenging.

The administration cites crisis levels of people crossing the border, yet in historic terms, until the 2007 recession, border officials had for decades handled about 100,000 people crossing the border monthly.  The difference is that most of them were Mexicans crossing alone – some fleeing persecution, but most simply seeking work to support their families.  Now, the majority are families from Central America fleeing dangerous conditions and seeking asylum and safe haven in the U.S., a right provided under both U.S. and international law.

Maine’s most recent asylum seekers from Africa who arrived in Portland in June also crossed over the southern border.   Some waited in Mexico for over 3 months before they were processed at the border post, as a result of “metering,” where only a few people are allowed to request asylum each day.   Due to dangerous conditions in Mexico, others gave up after waiting about two months to be able to enter through the border post, and crossed over the Rio Grande where they turned themselves in to border patrol officers and requested asylum, as both U.S. and international law allows.

The administration’s actions in response to the increased numbers of families seeking asylum are being challenged in the courts.  They include the “remain in Mexico” policy, ironically named the “Migrant Protection Protocols” despite the fact that Central Americans and others face many dangers while waiting in Mexico for the date when they can have their “credible fear” interview that will determine if they can apply for asylum in the U.S.

Another new policy proposed on July, but quickly blocked by one federal court soon after a separate federal court would have allowed it to be carried out while its legality is litigated, would have the administration rejecting asylum applications by persons who have passed through any country that was a signatory to the 1951 Geneva Convention or the 1967 Protocol  providing standards of protection for those fleeing persecution.   Mexico and all Central American countries that asylum seekers  pass through have signed or acceded to these international covenants, but that does not mean they are safe.

The most recent administration policy was announced on July 26th, when the U.S. and Guatemala signed an agreement to require those seeking asylum in the U.S. to be forced to apply in Guatemala.  As the article below points out, it is not clear that this would apply only to those who cross through Guatemala on their way to trying to enter the U.S. through the southern border.  The agreement will be challenged in U.S. courts, and the Guatemalan Supreme Court has already ruled that it would require legislative approval to take effect.

Also on July 26th,  the Supreme Court lifted an injunction blocking the administration’s diversion $2.5 billion of Department of Defense funds to build sections of southern border wall, while litigation over the legality of that diversion continues.

Here are a few recent resources that you may have missed that might deepen your understanding of how the administration is reshaping the U.S. response to those who seek protection from harm.

• Article in Just Security about the U.S.-Guatemala agreement.
• Post in Immigration Impact describing injunction of administration’s July 15th policy to deny asylum to most asylum seekers who pass through other countries en route to the U.S.
• Commentary by the Cato Institute pointing out flaws in the administration’s newest policy making individuals who passed through third countries on their way to the southern border ineligible for asylum.
• Graphic from the Wall Street Journal explaining how individuals are processed at the U.S. southern border.
• Description of how “metering” at the southern border plays out.
• Op-Ed by a career asylum officer describing how the administration’s new policies betray our legal and moral obligations to fairly hear the claims of those seeking protection in the U.S.
• Article in Texas Monthly that describes some of the challenges African migrants, like those who are now in Portland, encountered before and after reaching the southern border.
• Op-ed on Fox News about the detrimental impact of the Supreme Court’s decision to allow border wall construction to proceed on the southern border.

As we’ve noted previously, while the U.S. raises obstacles delaying or preventing  professional and specialized talent from getting visas to work in or immigrate to the U.S., Canada is smoothing the way and beginning to reap the  benefits.

Time recently published an in-depth look at this.  Some takeaways:

– “The United States allows about 140,000 immigrant skilled workers to become permanent residents annually; Canada, a country with one-tenth of the population, welcomed 160,000 skilled workers on the track to permanent residency in 2017 and hopes to get that number to nearly 200,000 by 2021.”

– One international recruiting company “has 70,000 skilled tech workers looking to relocate to Canada and Europe; it does not help these people go to the United States because the process is too difficult.”

– Economic research suggests that “every high-paying tech job created in an economy results in five more openings.”

– “While 95% of global start-up and venture capital activity took place in the United States in the mid-1990s, today it’s about half.”

One point in the article merits clarification.  It notes that the administration supports high-skilled immigration and to that end has backed the RAISE Act that would create a points-based system.  However, the RAISE Act would not increase from current law the total number of high skilled employment visas available, and has several poison pills that would discourage many high skilled individuals from immigrating to the U.S., such as those with families having to leave behind any children who are 18 or older.

Moreover, the administration’s actions speak louder than words: increased delays and denials of petitions for professional and high skilled workers, proposed elimination of employment authorization for spouses of these workers who are waiting in “green card” backlogs, and other measures all signal a more hostile attitude towards legal immigration of high skilled talent than the overtures that Canada is making.

Canada’s gain is the U.S.’s loss.

 

 

The administration announced on July 22, 2019 a dramatic expansion of a procedure called “Expedited Removal”.  This policy has previously applied to immigrants encountered within 100 air miles of the border (which encompasses the entire state of Maine) who could not prove that they had been in the U.S. for more than 14 days.

Under the new policy, expedited removal now applies nationwide to anyone encountered by immigration authorities who cannot prove that they have been here for more than two years.  The new policy took effect on the date of the notice’s publication on July 23, 2019.

Under expedited removal, immigration agents can summarily remove anyone they believe to lack legal status without due process and access to an immigration court hearing.   Only if a person affirmatively cites a fear of returning to her home country are authorities supposed to pause the removal process and arrange for the person to be interviewed by an asylum officer.

This new policy will inevitably lead to native born U.S. citizens, who need not carry any proof of their immigration status and who are not in immigration databases, being erroneously swept up in the expedited removal process.  It will also lead to increases in family separations, and to employers losing valuable employees and communities losing valued community members.

You can find a primer on expedited removal here.

Maine employers should advise their immigrant employees who have been in the U.S. for longer than two years to carry photocopies of multiple years of W-2s with them at all times, so that they can show their presence here for two years if they get stopped at a CBP checkpoint while driving in Maine, or have any other encounter with ICE.

The new policy’s legality is being challenged in the federal courts but is in effect as of this writing.

 

As the U.S. experiences persistent low unemployment and a shrinking workforce due to an aging population and declining birthrates, immigrants are critical to keeping a robust workforce and a growing economy.

But U.S. immigration laws are drastically out of date.  Numerical limits, by category of immigrant and by country, on who can obtain permanent residency annually have led to untenable wait lists keeping millions of immigrants outside of the U.S.   Growing government application processing backlogs that have worsened under the current administration are exacerbating the problem.

Two recent analyses highlight the extent and the impact of the quotas that  keep immediate families separated and potential workers out of the U.S..  Both reports use government data to reach their findings.  To be clear, these reports are looking at people whom U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (or its predecessor, the  Immigration and Naturalization Service) have already approved as eligible to immigrate, but who are stuck on wait lists caused by numerical limits established by Congress decades ago.

Boundless immigration has issued a report  specifically looking at immediate family immigration and makes ten key findings, quoted below:

1. The vast majority of family-sponsored immigrants are immediate relatives of U.S. citizens.
2. Plenty of “high-skilled immigrants” are also family-sponsored immigrants.
3. Family-based immigration is the primary pathway to the United States from nearly every country.
4. Although most family-sponsored immigrants nationwide came from Mexico, that’s not true for all states.
5. There are nearly 4 million people waiting in line for a family-sponsored green card.
6. The wait time for some family-sponsored immigrants could be more than 100 years.
7. Even for people at the head of the green card line, the government is adding significant extra wait time.
8. The spouses and children of some permanent residents have to wait years to live together in the United States.
9. President Trump’s plan would drastically reduce family-sponsored immigration.
10. America’s peer countries issue far more green cards, based on both family ties and economic needs.

The Cato Institute has released an analysis examining the waitlists in all immigrant categories, including both family and employment based.   With those additional categories, the report finds that there are more than 5 million people waiting to immigrate in backlogs that have built up over decades.  Some key findings:

• 28% of those who immigrated in 2018 had waited more than a decade, compared to 3% in 1991.
• Approximately 14% of those on the wait list in 2018 are likely to die before they reach the top.
• Certain countries are disproportionately affected, such as India for employment based immigration, and Mexico and the Philippines for family immigration.

The takeaway from both of these reports?  As the Cato Institute summed it up:

During (the decades since Congress passed the current limits), the U.S. economy has doubled, and its population has grown by one-third. Entire new industries have formed that need workers. Congress should reform the antiquated quotas, enact a limit on wait times, and keep these pathways viable for legal immigrants in the 21st century.