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**Legislative Bulletin**Hello y'all,

The National Immigration Forum's Legislative Bulletin for Friday, March
8, 2024, is now posted.

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

All the best,

Ally

**LEGISLATIVE BULLETIN - Friday, March 8, 2024**

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

****

**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****

**Biden Delivers State of the Union Address, Draws Contrasts With Trump
on Immigration **On March 7, President Joe Biden used his State of the
Union address to call on Congress to pass the bipartisan border security
compromise developed by senators and his administration in recent
months, which in part would fund thousands of new immigration personnel
and create a new, controversial presidential expulsion authority.  

"Look, folks, we have a simple choice. We can fight about fixing the
border, or we can fix it. I'm ready to fix it. Send me the border bill
now," Biden said. 

Yet even as the commander-in-chief took a tough stance on border
crossings, he still differentiated between his position on immigration
and his predecessor Donald Trump's, with whom he'll likely face off
in a rematch during this year's general election. 

Biden said that - unlike Trump - he refused to demonize immigrants,
separate families, or ban people based on their faith. 

"I know who we are as Americans. We are the only nation in the world
with a heart and soul that draws from old and new," he said. "Home to
Native Americans whose ancestors have been here for thousands of years.
Home to people from every place on Earth. They came freely. Some came in
chains. Some came when famine struck, like my ancestral family in
Ireland. Some to flee persecution, to chase dreams that are impossible
anywhere but here in America.

"That's America, and we all come from somewhere, but we're all
Americans."

Yet Biden also raised eyebrows when he apparently improvised a response
to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), who yelled out the name of
Laken Riley, a young woman who was allegedly murdered by a noncitizen.
Biden called

Riley's killer "an illegal," a label that his administrationordered
to stop using
in July 2021.

Riley's death - a horrific tragedy - has trumped up criticism of
Biden's border policies and galvanized support for extreme legislative
proposals, includinga bill

named for the victim that passed the House Thursday

with some Democratic support. 

**February 2024 Refugee Numbers Put U.S. Refugee Program on Track to
Resettle Over 100,000 This Fiscal Year**The U.S. resettled 10,252
refugees in February 2024, an increase of 1,054 from the 9,198 refugees
resettled in January. This is the highest monthly arrival number since
fiscal year 2016, some eight years ago. The five-month total of refugee
arrivals for fiscal year 2024 is 41,243.

Overall, FY 2024 is shaping up to be strong for refugee resettlement. If
the U.S. refugee pipeline can push the monthly arrivals even higher, on
a monthly basis, we could be close to reaching the cap of 125,000
refugees for the fiscal year. The last time the U.S. resettled 125,000
refugees or more was back in FY 1992, around 32 years ago.

**Canada Reinstates Visa Requirements for Most Mexicans After Uptick in
Asylum Claims, Border Crossings into the U.S. **On February 29, Canada
announced

it was reimposing a visa requirement for most Mexicans after a growing
number of asylum seekers have flown directly to Canada to evade the
dangerous trek across the U.S.'s southern border.

Under the new rules, Mexicans with a current temporary U.S. visa or a
Canadian visa from the past decade need only receive an electronic
travel authorization.

Since Canada forwent visa requirements for Mexicans in 2016, Mexican
asylum claims there have multiplied exponentially to reach 24,000 last
year. Some migrants have also been flying to Canada and then crossing
south to reach the U.S. 

"We needed to give Mexico, because of our friendship, the chance to
rectify things," said Marc Miller, Canada's immigration minister."This
clearly was not done, so we had to take a decision."

For his part, Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador offered

a "small, fraternal, respectful reproach" to Canadian Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau but in turn  promised "prudence" from his government. 

**H-1B Registration Process Begins for Fiscal Year 2025 **On March 6,
the much anticipated yearly H-1B visa registration process began at noon
eastern time, with a first round scheduled to end at noon eastern on
Friday, March 22. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the
benefit-granting arm of the U.S. immigration system, hopes this year to
curtail the number of fraudulent and duplicate registrations they
process based on a new rule announced in January.

Most H-1B visas are subject to a strict numerical cap each fiscal year.
65,000 spots are filled by skilled professionals whose positions require
a bachelor's degree, while an additional 20,000 are granted to
professionals with a U.S. master's or higher. Skilled professionals
who work for institutions of higher education, nonprofit research, and
government research organizations are excluded from these caps. Still,
demand for the valuable visas - which last for three years, can
generally be renewed for another three, and allow applicants to apply
for permanent residency, unlike most nonimmigrant visa categories -
has vastly outpaced supply for years.

Recently, some employers had tried to game the H-1B lottery system by
submitting multiple registrations for the same prospective employee. By
doing so, employers effectively put their prospective employees' names
in the proverbial hat many times, hoping to raise their chances of being
selected to submit a petition and eventually be granted a visa.

Amid these bad-faith dealings, USCIS has changed

the registration process to be "beneficiary-centered," meaning each
potential employee can only count once for lottery purposes, regardless
of how many different organizations register to petition for them. USCIS
also plans to drastically increase the fee required to file a
registration from $10 to $215

following the initial registration period for fiscal year 2025. 

****Legal ****

**SCOTUS Temporarily Blocks Texas's S.B. 4 From Taking Effect**On
March 4, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily stalled

Texas's Senate Bill 4 from taking effect until at least March 13, once
again weighing in on the state's heated battle with the Biden
administration over who has the authority to control immigration
enforcement. 

Justice Samuel Alito issued an order

halting the Fifth Circuit's previous go-ahead for Texas officials to
soon begin enforcing S.B. 4, but he also gave the state an opportunity
to respond by March 11.

The aggressive new law creates state-level criminal penalties for
irregular border crossings and effectively enacts a state deportation
regime, through apparent violations to the federal Supremacy Clause that
critics - and at least one judge

-  have suggested are unconstitutional. 

Meanwhile, in an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes
"
that aired Sunday, former Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz criticized

both Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and the White House for their responses
at the border. 

"The National Guardsmen even, to some degree, the Border Patrol agents
have become pawns in this political game between the two sides," he
said. 

"The cartels, the criminal organizations, that's who's winning in all of
this," he added. "They're sitting back reaping all the benefits while
they watch the state of Texas and Washington D.C. go at it."

**Court Filing: CBP Risking Children's Safety in 'Open-Air Detention
Sites'**On February 29, children's rights lawyers filed a new legal
action

detailing egregious conditions where migrant kids are being forced to
wait in "open-air detention sites" along the U.S.-Mexico border in
California. 

One anecdote involved a young Colombian girl who was rushed to the
hospital after she began convulsing from the wind and cold pummeling one
of the outdoor camps. Another story - shared by an aid worker - told
of how a mother and her one-year-old daughter had plummeted from the
border wall but refused hospitalization out of concern it would affect
their immigration case.

Theresa Cheng, a doctor and civil rights lawyer who had witnessed the
camps' conditions, "said she saw a young woman suffering from a stroke,
a pregnant woman about to give birth, tiny newborns in need of more
formula and elderly people crossing the border using walkers," according
to CNN. 

"This population," she said, "is a lot more vulnerable than what people
expect it to be."

Yet even as federal officials have allegedly directed migrants and
asylum seekers - including children - to wait in these makeshift
outdoor encampments, they haven't provided sufficient food, water,
shelter, or services, attorneys say. 

Meanwhile,preliminary data

indicate irregular border crossings were up in February after dropping
significantly the month before, CBS News reports
.
Early figures for March suggest another uptick, with over 7,000 migrants
processed on some days. 

****State and Local****

**Man Who Wrongly Became Face of Times Square Police Attack Cleared of
Wrongdoing **On March 1, Jhoan Boada - a 22-year-old Venezuelan man
- was cleared

of any wrongdoing after prosecutors revealed he had been misidentified
as one of the people involved in a Times Square melee between police and
migrants that has stoked nationwide outrage. 

Boada has endured intense media scrutiny and vilification during the
highly publicized aftermath of the brawl. He is one of several
individuals who were falsely accused or have had their charges
downgraded after further investigation into the incident. 

"It was a political football, and people were attacked with a broad
brush," said Javier Damien, an attorney for Boada. "It's very sad."

New footage

has also thrown into question the series of events that led to the
fight, as it's unclear why police officers approached the group of
migrants in the first place - or why an officer cornered one of the
men against a wall even though he appeared to be walking away. 

"Why were the cops giving them a hard time, when they didn't seem to
be doing anything that calls for that?" said Robert Gangi, the director
of the Police Reform Organizing Project. "It does not justify the men
throwing them on the ground and kicking them. But it seriously calls
into question the behavior of these cops."

**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 is expected to be in
session from Monday, March 11 through Thursday, March 14, 2024. 

The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to be in session from
Monday, March 11 through Wednesday, March 13, 2024.

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

**Organizational Oversight: Examining TSA's Post-Modernization
Efforts **

**Date:** Tuesday, March 12, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. EST (House Homeland
Security)

**Location:**310 Cannon House Office Building, Washington, D.C.

**Witnesses:**TBA

**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.

**Congressional Research Service (CRS);****Can the President 'Close the
Border'? Relevant Laws and Considerations**

**; Updated February 29, 2024**This legal sidebar considers the
executive branch's extensive authority to regulate borders and
noncitizen entries, looking at prior executive action, existing relevant
laws, and potential legal points of contention.

**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: 

**Border Security and Asylum Reform in the Emergency National Security
Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024: Bill Explainer**  
This
explainer breaks down the major immigration and border policy changes in
the bipartisan compromise that was defeated in the Senate earlier this
week. 

**Still More Room to Grow: Immigrants Can Reverse the U.S. Population
Decline and its Economic Consequences**
In
2024, the United States continues
to
face significant demographic challenges
.
Propelled by falling birth rates, the U.S. population is rapidly aging
and population growth is steadily declining. In turn, the country is
experiencing economic and social pressures caused by labor shortages.
This article provides a follow-up to "Room to Grow
,"
a 2021 white paper where the National Immigration Forum proposed a
methodology that showed the country needed a 37%

increase in net immigration levels over those projected for fiscal year
2020 (approximately 370,000 additional immigrants a year) to prevent the
U.S. from falling into demographic deficit and socioeconomic decline.

**Six Actionable Recommendations to Improve Safety and Wellbeing for
Asylum-Seeking Families in the Context of the Biden Administration's
Fast-Tracked Deportations**
This
position paper details realistic policy changes that the Biden
administration could make to help ensure asylum seekers enrolled in the
Family Expedited Removal Management (FERM) program have access to a
process that is as fair, efficient, and humane as possible in the
context of fast-tracked proceedings.

* * *

*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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