Legislative Bulletin

 

 

Hello y'all,

The National Immigration Forum's Legislative Bulletin for Friday,
December 15, 2023, is now posted.

You can find the online version of the bulletin
here: [link removed]

All the best,

Ally 

**LEGISLATIVE BULLETIN - Friday, December 15, 2023**Welcome to the
National Immigration Forum's weekly bulletin! Every Friday, our policy
team rounds up key developments around immigration policy in Washington
and across the country. The bulletin includes items on the legislative,
executive, and judicial branches, as well as some coverage at the state
and local levels. 

Here's a breakdown of the bulletin's sections:

DEVELOPMENTS IN IMMIGRATION THIS WEEK

BILLS INTRODUCED AND CONSIDERED

LEGISLATIVE FLOOR CALENDAR

UPCOMING HEARINGS AND MARKUPS

GOVERNMENT REPORTS

SPOTLIGHT ON NATIONAL IMMIGRATION FORUM RESOURCES

A note: Barring major news, the Bulletin is taking a holiday break for
the next few weeks. We will return in January.

**DEVELOPMENTS IN IMMIGRATION THIS WEEK**Immigration policy is a dynamic
field subject to constant change. Here, we summarize some of the most
important recent developments in immigration policy on the federal,
legal, state, and local levels. 

Content warning: This section sometimes includes events and information
that can prove disturbing. 

****Federal****

**Holiday Recess for Senators Cut Short to Provide More Time for
Border-Ukraine Deal **Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York)
is keeping

his chamber's lawmakers in Washington next week to "get the job done"
on a supplemental national security spending bill that Republicans have
said must include border policy concessions in exchange for Ukraine aid.

The continued push to reach an agreement comes as the Biden
administration has taken on an increasingly active role in the Senate
negotiations, with White House chief of staff Jeff Zients and
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas

now involved in Hill outreach. 

The White House has reportedly put significant border and immigration
policy changes on the table, including the creation of a new legal
authority to quickly expel would-be asylum seekers much like under the
Title 42 public health order as well as the mandatory detention of
certain migrants. 

In response, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials have warned
that such aggressive, enforcement-only procedures "would break the
border" and "be completely counterproductive." 

Depending on the scope of mandatory detention, for example, a former DHS
official told NBC News
,
"ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] would have to detain
families instead of detaining a single adult male accused of rape."

Likewise, members of Congress - especially Latino lawmakers
who
have been categorically shut out from the negotiations - are sounding
the alarm about how harmful some of the policy proposals could be. Sen.
Alex Padilla (D-California) has said that border changes harkening back
to Trump-era practices would "make the problem worse. 

"Mass detention. Gutting asylum system. Title 42 on steroids," he said
.
"It's unconscionable. That's not the way to fix the immigration system.
We know it won't work."

Nevertheless, some legislators are heralding progress on the
negotiations, with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona) - one of the
primary negotiators - saying, "I can see the deal."

 "We have a lot to go to get there," she said
.
"But I can see it."

**USCIS Hits H-1B Visa Cap for FY 2024**On December 13, U.S. Citizenship
and Immigration Services (USCIS) revealed

that employers had filed enough petitions to reach the agency's H-1B
visa cap, including a ceiling of 65,000 regular visas and an additional
20,000 visas for people who meet an advanced degree exemption. 

The announcement follows a tumultuous year

for the H-1B visa lottery, with over 780,000 employer registrations. Yet
many of those were for workers who benefited from multiple
registrations, underscoring how the demand for and limited supply of
these employment-based temporary visas have in turn encouraged efforts
to rig the system. 

USCIS will still take cap-exempt petitions, including those for current
H-1B professionals who have already been counted against the ceiling.

****Legal****

**District Judge Green-Lights Settlement Barring 'Zero
Tolerance'-Style Family Separations for Eight Years**

** **On December 8, United States District Judge Dana M. Sabraw
approved a settlement reached between the Justice Department and migrant
families, which forbids family separations

like the ones under the Trump-era "Zero Tolerance" policy for at least
eight years and provides support for affected parents and children. 

Sabraw condemned

the previous administration's practice of separating families to
prosecute parents for crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without
authorization, deeming it "one of the most shameful chapters in the
history of our country."

Now, the settlement gives once-separated families a second chance at
applying for legal immigration pathways to the U.S., including asylum,
and it provides them with access to housing assistance, medical care,
counseling, and other services to help them cope with the cruelty and
harm of separation. 

In the meantime, Sabraw set the expectation that attorneys should
continue identifying separated families. "This settlement does
everything it can to keep that focus," he said. "It shouldn't stop
until every child is found."

"This settlement brings much needed help to these brutalized children
but there remains significant work to ensure that every family is now
reunited and to monitor that no future administration tries to
circumvent the agreement and reenact the same horrific policy," echoed
the ACLU's Lee Gelernt, who represented the migrant families.

Under the settlement, kids can still be taken from their parents or
legal guardians under narrow, exceptional circumstances, such as when
the adult threatens the child's safety, or when a medical emergency
occurs. 

Despite widespread, bipartisan condemnation of family separation as a
deterrence mechanism at the U.S.-Mexico border, the former president,
Donald Trump, has seemingly flirted

with a return to the policy if he wins re-election next year. 

"When you hear that you're going to be separated from your family, you
don't come," Trump said - citing no evidence to back his assertion
- in an interview

published last month. "When you think you're going to come into the
United States with your family, you come."

Yet even in the months immediately after the realities of the "Zero
Tolerance" policy shook the American public, migrant apprehensions at
the U.S.'s southern border surged to the highest annual level in over a
decade at the time, according to the Pew Research Center
.
The majority of those encounters were with families. 

****State and Local****

**Illinois Scraps Massive Chicago Shelter Complex After Heavy Metals,
Toxic Chemicals Discovered**Officials in Illinois are moving away

from plans to erect mass tent shelters for newcomers after mercury,
arsenic, cyanide, PCBs, and other harmful contaminants were found at one
of the proposed sites - and after the number of migrants camping at
local police stations and the airport declined significantly
. 

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) stopped construction and development on
one of the camps in Brighton Park after the city provided a report that
detailed serious heavy metal and toxic chemical hazards onsite (Chicago
Mayor Brandon Johnson's administration (D) insisted migrants

could have safely lived there with some clean-up). 

Then, earlier this week, a mayoral spokesman said Chicago was pressing
pause on plans to develop a different tent shelter location in Morgan
Park, citing successful efforts to provide housing for migrants
elsewhere. 

"We haven't retired the idea, but as of right now we're in much
better shape than a few months ago," the spokesperson said. "We're
doing this without the need for base camps."

Meanwhile, churches and faith-based organizations are leading the charge
to create new shelter space in the Chicago area and connect migrants
with work.

"We have a lot of good folks in the city of Chicago that are looking to
be helpful," said

John Zayas, Grace and Peace Church's pastor. "And so we're excited
about the opportunity."

**Arizona Port of Entry Closed Amid Increase in Nearby Border
Crossings **On December 4, U.S. Customs and Border Protection's (CBP)
Office of Field Operations indefinitely shuttered

an international crossing in the remote community of Lukeville, Arizona,
to surge all personnel to help Border Patrol respond to migrants who are
entering the U.S. without authorization.  

The temporary suspension of operations at the legal port of entry has
had devastating consequences for locals. Eric Alegria
,
who owns a restaurant in Ajo, Arizona, hasn't been able to see his
6-year-old son in Mexico because of the closure. Lucia Gutierrez

had to choose between attending her job in Ajo and looking after her
sick elderly father in Mexico (and though she has so far staved off
unemployment through remote work, that's a short-term solution at
best). At eight months pregnant, Stephanie Fierro

may not even get to see her husband - a Mexican citizen - before her
due date, as she's stuck in Why, Arizona, for her paycheck.

Others are unable to make it across the border for school, health care,
or other basics. And meanwhile, businesses have seen a dramatic decline
in traffic, given that the area has lost its main draw as a route for
tourists to cross the U.S.'s southern border and reach the Mexican
resorts in Puerto Peñasco.

Conditions for migrants are also dire, as they cross into remote,
dirt-covered areas of Arizona. Hungry and cold, some of them are waiting
hours or days for Border Patrol to finally take them into custody.

In a statement
,
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) and Sens. Mark Kelly (D) and Kyrsten Sinema
(I) called the Lukeville port of entry closure "an unacceptable outcome
that further destabilizes our border, risks the safety of our
communities, and damages our economy by disrupting trade and tourism."

Likewise, at the San Ysidro port of entry just outside of San Diego,
officials have closed
down
a legal pedestrian crossing - PedWest - for the foreseeable future
and redirected resources for migrant apprehensions. The indefinite
suspension comes even as residents on both sides of the border would
usually be crossing for holiday shopping and family visits, and local
officials have urged the federal government to reconsider. 

**BILLS INTRODUCED AND CONSIDERED**It can be challenging to keep up with
the constant barrage of proposed legislation in Congress. So, every
week, we round up new bills. This list includes federal legislative
proposals that have recently been introduced and that are relevant to
immigration policy. 

Please follow this link

to find new relevant bills, as well as proposed legislation from past
weeks.

**LEGISLATIVE FLOOR CALENDAR**The U.S. Senate will unexpectedly be in
session next week.  

The U.S. House of Representatives is not expected to be in session from
Monday, December 18, through Friday, December 22, 2023.

**UPCOMING HEARINGS AND MARKUPS**Here, we round up congressional
hearings and markups happening in the field or in Washington. 

There are no relevant hearings or markups announced for the week of
Monday, December 18.

**GOVERNMENT REPORTS**Reports by bodies such as the U.S. Government
Accountability Office, the Congressional Research Service, and the
Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General provide
invaluable information on immigration policy and practice. Here, we give
brief summaries of new immigration-related reports, with links to the
resources themselves in case you want to learn more. 

No relevant reports have been published this week. 

**SPOTLIGHT ON NATIONAL IMMIGRATION FORUM RESOURCES**The Forum is
constantly publishing new policy-focused resources that engage with some
of the most topical issues around immigration today. Here are a few that
are particularly relevant this week: 

**Environmental Migration: Finding Solutions for the 21st Century**
This
new paper explores environmental migration as a potential method of
adaptation. First, it analyzes environmental migration as a phenomenon,
focused on some of the nuances that make weather- and climate-related
forces complicated yet influential factors in the decision to move.
Then, it considers existing international mechanisms and U.S. laws that
could potentially relate to environmental migration. It briefly
discusses how immigrant and diasporic communities are especially
vulnerable to environmental harms, even after they have already
migrated. Finally, it concludes with policy recommendations on how the
U.S. (and other countries) could effectively respond to environmental
migration in the 21st century.  

**Parole in Place: A Possibility for Administrative Protection**
This
paper explores parole in place as a potential tool to provide
undocumented people with access to temporary protections in the United
States. 

**Bill Analysis: The Secure the Border Act of 2023**
H.R.
2 would severely restrict the right to seek asylum in the U.S., curtail
other existing lawful pathways, place unnecessary pressure on border
communities, intensify labor shortages faced by small businesses and
essential industries, establish new criminal penalties, and make other
significant changes to U.S. immigration law.

* * *

*This Bulletin is not intended to be comprehensive. Please contact
Alexandra Villarreal, Senior Policy and Advocacy Associate at the
National Immigration Forum, with comments and suggestions of additional
items to be included. Alexandra can be reached at
[email protected]. Thank you.

 

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