More on White House Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney’s comments that we’re “desperate” for more immigrants: Douglas Holtz-Eakin, President of American Action Forum and former Director of the Congressional Budget Office, writes that without immigration, our population gets old and shrinks in size.


“Of course, it matters how you do the immigration,” Holtz-Eakin writes. "There is no justification for advocating illegal immigration, but the president’s unearthly ability to foster unreasonableness has tempted some into doing just that. ... it would be possible to reform the core visa-granting system to focus more on economic growth (see the proposal by Jacqueline Varas and me).”
“The stretch run of the presidential race will likely feature lots of demagoguery regarding immigrants. If the past is any guide it will be loud, angry, and absolutely incorrect.”
From Cornell University Law School, welcome to the Friday edition of Noorani’s Notes. Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].

GREENCARD CRACKDOWN – The Trump administration is not just cracking down on asylum seekers and undocumented workers — they’re also making life hard for high-skilled immigrants, the Economist reports. Back in 2016, applying for a green card took six and a half months; now it takes about a year. “All employment-based green-card applicants must now have a face-to-face interview, which swallows up officials’ time. More and more applicants for work visas are being asked to provide supporting documents to show what their job will involve or prove their qualifications. Before Mr. Trump took office, at most a fifth of workers were asked for extra evidence. In the final quarter of last year, three-fifths were.”

BORDER CRACKDOWN (1/3) – The Trump administration is phasing out its year-old Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as “Remain and Mexico,” and the administration is “instead prioritizing newer, more restrictive programs that make qualifying for asylum in the United States extremely difficult,” Arelis R. Hernández and Kevin Sieff report for The Washington Post. “Instead of allowing Central American migrants access to U.S. courts and having them wait in Mexican border towns, the government instead is quickly sending them to Guatemala to pursue asylum claims there.” Based on what I was hearing in El Paso last week, the new programs being put in place make MPP seem warm and fuzzy in comparison.

BORDER CRACKDOWN (2/3) – In its February 2020 report, the Robert Strauss Center at the University of Texas at Austin found that 15,000 people are waiting along the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum in the U.S. — and in a big shift, as the center’s Mexico Security Initiative director Stephanie Leutert notes, 75% of those waiting are now Mexican families. In addition to MPP and asylum agreements with Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, programs such as the Humanitarian Asylum Review Process (HARP) and the Prompt Asylum Claim Review (PACR) “expedite the asylum determination process.”

BORDER CRACKDOWN (3/3) – In their zeal to keep asylum seekers from entering the United States, U.S. Customs and Border Protection is forcing migrants with HIV/AIDS to remain in Mexico — where access to medication is more difficult — under the MPP program. The Washington Post’s Kevin Sieff tells the story of Fernanda, who “fled Honduras after her HIV status was made public, and she was accused falsely of trying to infect members of the community. Local criminal groups showed up at her house, threatening to kill her.” She now waits on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez with her young daughter, hoping she does not fall ill.


JUSTICE CRACKDOWN – The Department of Justice is considering an almost tenfold increase in the fee for appealing an immigration court ruling, Vanessa Swales writes in The New York Times. The proposed rule, scheduled to be published in the Federal Register today, means the cost of appealing a judge’s decision would rise from $110 to $975. “Under the same proposal, the administration wants to require asylum seekers to pay a $50 fee to have their cases heard in court; historically, the asylum process has been available to people fleeing persecution regardless of their ability to pay.”


MICHIGAN COMPACT – Since we couldn’t make the entire Friday Note bad news: Michigan business and industry leaders met at the Lansing Chamber of Commerce Thursday and launched the Michigan Compact on Immigration, WILX 10 reports. “The initiative is a set of principles that outline the need for immigration policies at both state and federal levels that ‘recognize the critical role immigrants play in helping drive Michigan's economy forward.’”

Thanks for reading,

Ali