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US Immigration Rules
Federal agents have now arrested more than 250 people during a North Carolina immigration crackdown centred around Charlotte, the state's largest city, the US Department of Homeland Security said Wednesday. The operation that began over the weekend is the latest phase of Republican President Donald Trump's aggressive mass deportation efforts that have sent the military and immigration agents into Democratic-run cities from Chicago to Los Angeles. Immigration officials have blanketed the country since January, pushing detention counts to all-time highs above 60,000. Big cities and small towns across the country are targeted daily amid higher-profile pushes in places such as Portland, Oregon, where more than 560 immigration arrests were made in October. Smaller bursts of enforcement have popped up elsewhere. The push to carry out arrests in North Carolina expanded to areas around the state capital of Raleigh on Tuesday, spreading fear in at least one immigrant-heavy suburb. Late ...
The Transportation Department's new restrictions that would severely limit which immigrants can get commercial driver's licences to drive a semitrailer truck or bus have been put on hold by a federal appeals court. The court in the District of Columbia ruled Thursday that the rules Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced in September a month after a truck driver not authorised to be in the US made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people can't be enforced right now. The court said the federal government didn't follow proper procedure in drafting the rule and failed to articulate a satisfactory explanation for how the rule would promote safety. The court said the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's own data shows that immigrants who hold these licences account for roughly 5% of all commercial driver's licences but only about 0.2% of all fatal crashes, the court said. Duffy has been pressing this issue in California because the driver i
In China, wait times for US visa interviews are so long that some students have given up. Universities in Hong Kong are fielding transfer inquiries from foreign students in the US, and international applications for British undergraduate programs have surged. President Donald Trump's administration has been pressuring US colleges to reduce their dependence on international enrolment while adding new layers of scrutiny for foreign students as part of its crackdown on immigration. The US government has sought to deport foreign students for participating in pro-Palestinian activism. In the spring, it abruptly revoked the legal status of thousands of international students, including some whose only brush with law enforcement was a traffic ticket. After reversing course, the government paused new appointments for student visas while rolling out a process for screening applicants' social media accounts. The US remains the first choice for many international students, but institutions ...
A California union leader has been charged with conspiring to impede an officer during a demonstration over President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, authorities said on Monday. David Huerta, 58, is currently being held in federal custody in downtown Los Angeles and expected to appear in court later on Monday for a bond hearing, federal prosecutors said. Huerta is president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) California, which represents thousands of janitors, security officers and other workers in the state. The SEIU was holding a rally in downtown Los Angeles on Monday to show support for Huerta and stand up for his right to observe and document law enforcement activity. Demonstrations were also planned in at least a dozen cities from Boston to Denver. The union has been a strong Democratic supporter, and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and California's two Democratic senators wrote a letter to federal officials demanding answers regarding Huerta's ...
US President's domestic policy adviser Neera Tanden has slammed those political groups who are trying to restrict legal migration from Asian countries and other parts of the globe and said their policy of deportation would many a time impact the near and dear ones of people who have legally migrated to the US. I will just say there's a lot of conversation about immigration. Both people, our administration, the others have been focused on securing our border. But there is a big difference between national leaders on the issue of legal immigration. Our community has grown in part because this country has seen expansions of legal immigration as crucially important, Tanden told PTI. But that is a big difference... There are people who want to restrict legal immigration, specifically legal immigration from Asia and other parts of the globe. That is an issue that's really at stake. I don't think there's been enough discussion of that, those sets of issues, Tanden said in an apparent dig at
In a huge relief for H-1B visa holders, a White House-backed bipartisan deal has been unveiled under which automatic work authorisation would be granted to about 100,000 H-4 visa holders, who are spouses and children of a certain category of H-1B visa holders. The National Security Agreement that was announced on Sunday after long negotiations between the Republican and the Democratic leadership in the US Senate also provides a solution to about 250,000 aged-out children of H-1B visa holders. The move comes as good news for hundreds and thousands of Indian technology professionals who are waiting in a painstakingly long wait for a Green Card, in the absence of which their spouses cannot work and their aged-out children face the threat of deportation. A Green Card, known officially as a Permanent Resident Card, is a document issued to immigrants to the US as evidence that the bearer has been granted the privilege of residing permanently. The per-country caps are numerical limits on t
Hairdresser Grisel Garcs survived a harrowing, four-month journey from her native Venezuela through tropical jungles, migrant detention centres in southern Mexico and then jolting railcar rides north toward the U.S. border. Now on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande across from El Paso, Texas, she's anxiously awaiting a pending U.S. Supreme Court decision on asylum restrictions expected to affect her and thousands of other migrants at crossings along some 3,100 kilometers of border from Texas to California. And she's doing so while living outside as winter temperatures plunge over much of the U.S. and across the border. She told of fleeing economic hardship only to find more hardship, such as now having to shiver through temperatures colder than any she's ever experienced. Riding the train was bad. Here the situation is even worse. You just turn yourself over to God's mercy, said Garcs, who left a school-aged daughter behind, hoping to reach the U.S. with her husband. Their savings