Immigration Laws: October, 2003 - Number #02

Print-Friendly Version The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) combined 22 federal agencies and 170,000 employees in an agency with a $36 billion a year
budget, the largest government reorganization in 50 years. President Bush initially opposed the creation of DHS, agreed to its creation under Congressional pressure, and the new agency was given four months to go into operation. Three major DHS agencies deal with immigrants.

BCIS. The Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS), directed by Eduardo Aguirre, handles applications for immigrant visas
(green cards) as well as naturalizations. Backlogs are rising. There is now a two-year wait to process new applications for immigrant visas, with 1.1 million in the backlog, and a one-year wait for naturalization, with 640,000 applications in the backlog.

BCIS released its FY02 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, and reported that 1,063,732 foreigners were admitted as legal immigrants,
about the same number as in FY01. In 2002, 63 percent of the immigrants were admitted under family unification preferences and 16 percent under employment preferences. Only 384,427 of the immigrant visas were issued by the US Department of State, meaning that two-thirds of US immigrants were already in the US and adjusted from another status, such as student or unauthorized (340,600 or a third of the total), to immigrant.

The five major countries of origin for immigrants were Mexico, 219,380; India, 71,105; China, 61,282; the Philippines, 51,308; and Vietnam, 33,627.

Nonimmigrant admissions fell from 33 million in FY01 to 28 million in FY02; the number of tourists and business visitors dropped from 29 million to 24 million. The number of foreign students admitted fell only slightly, from 699,000 to 646,000, and the number of temporary workers and trainees was almost unchanged, 688,000 in FY01 and 656,000 in FY02.

Some 28,421refugees were resettled in the US in FY03, up slightly from FY02 but far under the 70,000 target; the target is also 70,000 for FY04; 69,304 were admitted in FY01.

BCBP. The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (BCBP), which includes the 10,000-agent Border Patrol, spearheaded the investigation of the smuggling ring headed by Honduran Karla Patricia Chavez that left 19 migrants dead in a south Texas truck in May 2003. According to investigators, Chavez was smuggled into the US at age 15, and by 25 was operating a loosely organized network that moved migrants across the Rio Grande on inner tubes and then north via tractor trailer truck. Chavez's ex-boyfriend had been a smuggler, and one investigator said that "this might have been her first big job since her boyfriend's arrest, and it went terribly wrong."

BCBP normally returns unauthorized Mexicans apprehended in the US to Mexico "voluntarily," meaning that a re-apprehension of the same individual does not normally lead to prosecution. (Foreigners deported from the US and apprehended again in the US, on the other hand, face up to 20 years in prison, but are usually sentenced in plea deals to 18 to 30 months.) BCBP in September 2003 returned 2,300 Mexicans apprehended in the Arizona desert via south Texas at border points far from where they had been caught. The Mexican government protested this action of the US government; most of the returning Mexicans were landed without money or contacts.

Border Patrol agents in July 2003 arrested a family of unauthorized residents in downtown San Diego while they were en route to the Mexican consulate to obtain matricula consular cards, prompting criticism and a local policy memo that reminded agents that their number-one priority is stopping the entry of terrorists. The memo said that agents were to arrest unauthorized foreigners only along the border and at interior checkpoints, not in cities, at places of employment, in residential areas and while traveling between assignments. The agents' union protested, saying that the new policy amounted to "no interior enforcement." Migrant activists, on the other hand, said that areas around Mexican consulates should be "sacred ground." The local policy of leniency was soon overruled by Robert Bonner, BCBP commissioner.

The Wall Street Journal on October 10, 2003 reported that tougher border controls encourage unauthorized Mexicans in the US to stay longer, so that they do not have to pay smuggling fees of $1,500 to re-enter the US, a result flowing directly from confining enforcement largely to the border. There is little risk of enforcement inside the US, but low wages mean that many migrants live in housing that violates local codes, as in 250,000-resident Stockton. The article profiled a migrant from Oxtotitlan, Guerrero who brought his wife and three children to the US, had two more children in the US, and became the anchor for more people from his home town migrating to the US.

Despite relatively high earnings from both parents working, the couple earned only $18,000 a year in 2002, under the $24,260 poverty line for a family of six. In addition, the family gets welfare benefits on behalf of their two US-born children of about $1,000 a month. Medi-Cal covers emergency treatment, prenatal care and sometimes long-term care in nursing homes for unauthorized foreigners, and in FY02-03, California spent $1.1 billion for 760,000
unauthorized foreigners, up sharply from the year before.

BICE. The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (BICE) includes customs and immigration inspectors, who are to be cross-trained to work as air marshals so that they can be reassigned as needed. BICE operates the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, which keeps track of visitors to the United States. Males 16 and older who are citizens of mostly Muslim countries have been required to register with BICE since July 2003-- some 210,574 registered after two months. Of those who registered, 2,783 were detained and 13,434 were ordered to appear before an immigration judge to appeal deportation orders.

Beginning August 1, 2003, all US schools enrolling foreign students must participate in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System. Some 5,900 US schools were certified to enroll foreign students, and the information they report is to be available to BICE inspectors to check on arriving students.

Beginning October 1, 2003, foreigners arriving from the 27 countries that do not require visas to enter the US for up to 90 days were to have machine-readable passports, so that they can be checked against databases- the deadline was postponed to October 1, 2004 for all countries except Belgium. By 2005, under the US Visitor and Immigrant Status Indication Technology (US VISIT), all foreigners are to be checked into and out of the US.

Visas. The US ended two programs in August 2003 that allowed travelers transiting the US to other countries to be in US airports without visas. The Transit Without Visa and International to International (connection) programs were ended by DHS, which cited security concerns.

The nonrefundable visa application fee for those requiring visas to enter the US is $100. Most foreigners between 18 and 60 who require visas will have to be personally interviewed by one of the 843 American consular officials before they can obtain a visa. As a result, fewer foreigners are applying for and receiving visas. In FY01, there were 10.4 million visa applications and 7.5 million approvals; in FY02, there were 8.3 million visa applications and 5.7 million approvals.

DHS officials will be assigned to US consulates around the world to review the visa issuance process, heretofore the province of the State Department. Seven offices will be opened in Muslim countries, including Egypt, Indonesia, Morocco, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, and DHS officials stationed there will have the final authority to decide if applicants get visas.

The FY05 diversity visa lottery, which makes available 50,000 immigrant visas a year to nationals of countries that sent fewer than
50,000 immigrants to the US in the previous five years, will be available only to applicants on line, with applicants required to submit a digital photo. Each year, six to seven million foreigners apply, and 90,000 are selected in the first round.

September 17th is Citizenship Day, marking the date in 1787 that the US Constitution was signed. Between October 2002 and April 2003, some 247,700 foreigners were naturalized; between 1991 and 2000, some 5.6 million were naturalized, including one million in 1996; there were 2.3 million naturalizations in the 1980s.

Under a 1999 law, foreigners cannot be deported if they face torture at home. Representative John N. Hostettler (R-IN) reported that, of the 1,700 foreigners who were spared deportation under the law, 611 committed crimes in the US after being spared.

Under 1996 immigration laws, foreigners illegally in the US for more than six months are barred from legal re-entry for three years, and those illegally in the US more than a year are barred for 10 years. A recent study concluded that waivers of this "immigration bar" are common, so that only 12,000 foreigners were denied legal re-entry after illegal stays in the US. (http://www.cis.org/articles/2003/back1003.html)

The USA Patriot Act of 2001, the major federal anti-terrorism law, has been used to question and detain Muslim and Arab immigrants. Internal reviews of Department of Justice and DHS activities in 2001-02 show serious civil rights and civil liberties violations, including guards abusing some of those detained. DOJ defended its activities, asserting that it makes "no apologies for finding every legal way possible to protect the American public from further attacks."

Attorney General John Ashcroft traveled around the US in August 2003 to defend the Patriot Act, arguing that "these tools" are necessary to protect "American lives and American liberty." A new web site, www.lifeandliberty.gov, was unveiled to justify the Patriot Act. However, grass-roots opposition is growing, with more than 150 cities approving resolutions opposing certain provisions, librarians complaining that agents can obtain book-lending records, and privacy advocates concerned about linked databases.

Eduardo Porter, "More Illegals Stay," Wall Street Journal, October 10, 2003. Philip Shenon, "Report on USA Patriot Act Alleges Civil Rights Violations," New York Times, July 21, 2003. Fiscal Year 2002 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. http://www.bcis.gov/graphics/shared/aboutus/statistics/IMM02yrbk/IMM2002list.htm