Wikimedia Commons
A U.S. District Court judge issued an opinion last week upholding a program important to many in higher education that allows international students to stay and work in the U.S. after they graduate in a field related to their area of study.
Nearly a quarter million people participate in the optional practical training program, or OPT, which allows international students to work in the U.S. for up to three years after graduating while staying on their student visas. The regular OPT program provides for one year of postgraduation work authorization, while the STEM OPT extension enables graduates who earned degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields to stay for an additional two years.
Molly Butler / Media Matters
As President Joe Biden recently unveiled his plan to reform U.S. immigration policy, some legacy national and local media outlets have been quoting well-known anti-immigrant extremist groups to provide commentary on the plan.
Days before he was sworn in as president, Biden disclosed that he was going to propose ambitious plans for an “overhaul of immigration laws” on his first day in office, including creating “an eight-year pathway to citizenship for immigrants without legal status.” Qualifying immigrants would receive a temporary status for five years and then a green card once they meet certain requirements, becoming eligible to apply for citizenship three years later.
14 Jan 2021
Four former homeland security chiefs have endorsed President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for homeland security because he helped deliver work permits to roughly 800,000 illegal migrants.
“We each know [nominee Alejandro] Mayorkas as a man of character, integrity, experience and compassion … he helped create and administer the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals [DACA] program,” said the January 12
Washington Postop-ed by former DHS secretaries Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff, Janet Napolitano, and Jeh Johnson.
The DACA program provided work permits to roughly 800,000 illegal migrants during the post-2008 economic recession, even as many millions of Americans had lost jobs, wages, and homes.
“The president-elect could not have found a more qualified person to be the next homeland security secretary,” said the four former secretaries, all of whom worked for Presidents George W. Bush or President Barack Obama despite evidence of multiple scandals in Mayo
The progressives’
Hunger Games also cripple the economies of migrant-sending countries because they are extracting workers, consumers, investments, political pressures, and expectations of growth. “The departure of people of working age reduces the labor force and weakens the growth of the home country, and this effect is likely to be strongest for countries facing a brain drain,” said a 2017 report by the International Monetary Fund.
Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, said:
The [progressives’] goal is increasing the number of people moving here. If that means that it has to be done in a way that is inconvenient and sometimes even cruel for the migrants, that’s okay because the objective is increased immigration at essentially any cost even the cost to the migrants themselves.
Texas DACA Lawsuit Threatens Many Work Permit Giveaways
24 Dec 2020
A Texas judge may strike down President Barack Obama’s 2012 DACA amnesty for roughly 700,000 illegal migrants and undermine other giveaway programs that allow U.S. employers to keep foreign workers in jobs needed by Americans.
In a December 22 hearing, the pro-migration supporters of Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) amnesty asked District Judge Andrew Hanen to preserve the award of work permits, regardless of the economic impact on non-college Americans.
Hanen called the hearing after Texas, and other states filed a lawsuit to have the DACA amnesty declared illegal.