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**Legislative Bulletin**Hello y'all,

The National Immigration Forum's Legislative Bulletin for Friday, April
5, 2024, is now posted.

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

All the best,

Ally

**LEGISLATIVE BULLETIN - Friday, April 5, 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****

**USCIS Extends Work Authorizations to Avoid Lapses During
Processing **On April 4, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
(USCIS) announced

it would automatically extend
the work
permit validity period for certain noncitizens, to avoid lapses in
coverage that could unnecessarily harm employers and workers while the
agency processes renewal requests. 

Eligible applicants must have a still-pending renewal application for
employment authorization, filed on or after October 27. Work permits
will be extended for up to 540 days, providing much-needed stability

for almost 800,000 workers and tens of thousands of employers. 

"I have been so worried about losing my job I had managed to
successfully secure in order to survive and make ends meet. I am so
grateful that the government extended work permits so we can continue to
survive and not have the stress and pressure of losing our jobs as that
is very worrisome," one asylum seeker told The Hill
. 

**New USCIS Fee Rule Takes Effect After Judge Denies Restraining
Order **On April 1, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services'
(USCIS) new fee rule

went into force as the mostly fee-funded agency tries

to cover its operational costs while tackling large backlogs of already
pending cases. 

The new fee framework - adjusted for the first time since 2016 - in
some instances imposes dramatically higher filing costs, especially on
employers looking to hire noncitizen workers. It also includes a new
Asylum Program fee

for employers, which the agency has justified by saying that "when we
have a more fully funded corps of asylum officers, our non-asylum
officers can concentrate more exclusively on adjudicating cases from
employers and other filers, bringing down processing times for
everyone."

Some of the filing fees for lower income noncitizens
-
including the work authorization fee - also saw an increase, even as
the agency expanded exemptions for particularly vulnerable
populations. 

A legal challenge

to the rule argued it was unlawful because of arbitrary fee impositions
and a lack of adequate opportunity for notice and comment. But a U.S.
district judge overseeing that case declined

to put the new rule on pause before it went into effect at the beginning
of this month. 

**USCIS Completes H-1B Selection Process and Opens Petition Process**On
April 1, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)announced

that it had randomly selected enough registrations to fill the 85,000
H-1B visa cap for Fiscal Year 2025. Now, petitioners with registrations
for selected beneficiaries will have 90 days - from April 1 - to
file their H-1B petitions and pay the new$780 filing fee
.

While USCIS has not published the number of applications it received
this year, demand for these valuable visas has vastly outpaced supply
for years. For instance, the number of H-1B applications for the
previous fiscal year reached arecord high

of 780,884 registrations for 2024, an increase of 61% over the 483,927
registrations for FY 2023.

TheH-1B visa

allows U.S. employers to hire noncitizen workers for "specialty
occupations" requiring a bachelor's degree in various fields. Specialty
occupations include IT professionals, engineers, university professors,
healthcare professionals, psychologists, scientists, accountants,
lawyers, architects, journalists, and publicists, among other
professions. In addition, fashion models are also eligible to apply for
H-1B visas.

MostH-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. 

****Legal****

**Migrants Can Proceed With Lawsuit Against Private Company That Flew
Them to Martha's Vineyard**In September 2022, two flights

originating near San Antonio, Texas - chartered by Florida Gov. Ron
DeSantis's (R) administration and filled with confused, mostly
Venezuelan migrants - arrived in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. 

Now, over 18 months later, a federal district court judge in
Massachusetts has issued a 77-page decision in a class action lawsuit
filed by those migrants against DeSantis, several top administration
aides, and Vertol, the company that Florida paid to charter the flights.

 The ruling allows the lawsuit to continue against Vertol but dismisses
claims against the Florida officials. The judge found there were
"insufficient facts
"
to tie specific administration aides to alleged wrongdoing within the
court's jurisdiction in Massachusetts. Notably, however, the claims
were dismissed "without prejudice
,"
meaning the Martha's Vineyard migrants are not foreclosed from
bringing the DeSantis administration back into the lawsuit at a future
date.

The decision condemned the flights' organizers for "rounding up highly
vulnerable individuals on false pretenses and publicly injecting them
into a divisive national debate."

Lawyers for Civil Rights, the nonprofit legal group representing the
migrants, celebrated the ruling as "a major victory" that "sends a
crucial message: private companies can-and will-be held accountable
for helping rogue state actors violate the rights of vulnerable
immigrants through illegal and fraudulent schemes." 

**Children Must Be Expeditiously Moved from Poor Conditions at 'Open
Air Detention Sites'**On April 3, a federal district judge in
California ruled that border officials must "expeditiously" move migrant
children to safety instead of allowing them to languish in what
advocates are calling "open air detention sites," where they are
subjected to the elements and squalid conditions while they await
processing by immigration authorities. 

At the makeshift camps near San Diego and Jacumba Hot Springs, kids

have been exposed to the worst of nature, from extreme desert heat
during the day to windy weather and rain that can cause hypothermia at
night. 

All the while, children have had limited access to basics such as food
and toilets. The federal government had said it did not owe the migrant
kids services because they were not yet in its custody. But U.S.
District Judge Dolly M. Gee took issue with that argument. 

"The ability to exercise discretion over, and make decisions affecting,
a child's health and welfare is indicative of maintaining legal
custody of the child, regardless of whether that decision is to provide
or withhold care," the order
said.
"Juveniles, unlike adults, are always in some form of custody."

**Texas's S.B. 4 Remains on Pause After 5th Circuit Hearing **During
an hour-long hearing on April 3, Texas Solicitor General Aaron Nielson
defended

his state's sweeping immigration law, Senate Bill 4, even as he
conceded that perhaps it "went too far" - a question he said

a three-judge panel on the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
would need to decide for itself. 

If allowed to take effect, S.B. 4 would create new criminal penalties
for irregular border crossings and allow state judges to effectively
deport migrants and asylum seekers. Yet the law remained on pause
following Wednesday's arguments, as advocates and the federal
government urged the appeals court to side with Supreme Court precedent
and the long-standing notion that immigration is a federal
responsibility under the U.S. Constitution. 

Nielson, in turn, said that S.B. 4 represented an attempt to go "up to
the line" of what past Supreme Court decisions would seemingly justify,
though he struggled

to explain how the new law's approximation of federal deportations would
work in practice and how that differed from current procedures. 

Amid such discrepancies between what S.B. 4 seemingly describes on paper
and how Nielson explained it, Daniel Tenny, the federal government's
attorney, accused

the state of trying "to rewrite Texas S.B. 4 from the podium with regard
to the removal provision."

Even with S.B. 4 now tied up in court, in Travis County, local officials
are preparing

for its potential enforcement by planning to provide counsel at first
appearance, so that immigrants will have access to attorneys during
their bail hearings.

Meanwhile, as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) continues to deploy National
Guard members and state troopers to the border - another facet of his
years-long migration crackdown -  a man

identified as a National Guard soldier reportedly with official gear
from Abbott's Operation Lone Star in his vehicle has been arrested and
charged with human smuggling, felony evading arrest, and unlawful
weapons possession. He was transporting a migrant, who fled by foot and
was later captured. 

**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, April 8 through Friday, April 12, 2024. 

The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to be in session from
Tuesday, April 9 through Friday, April 12, 2024.

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

**Budget Hearing - Fiscal Year 2025 Request for the Department of
Homeland Security**

**Date:**Wednesday, April 10, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. EDT (House
Appropriations)

**Location:**2359 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C.

**Witnesses: **

**The Honorable Alejandro Mayorkas,**Secretary, Department of Homeland
Security

**A Review of the President's Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Request for the
Department of Homeland Security**

**Date:**Wednesday, April 10, 2024 at 2:30 p.m. EDT (Senate
Appropriations)

**Location:**Dirksen Senate office Building 192, Washington, D.C.

**Witnesses: **

**The Honorable Alejandro Mayorkas,** Secretary, U.S. Department of
Homeland Security

**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);****Department of Homeland
Security Appropriations: FY2024 State of Play**

**; Updated March 29, 2024**This report has now been updated to reflect
the enactment of annual appropriations for the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) on March 23, 2024. 

**Congressional Research Service (CRS);****Medical Care Standards in
Immigrant Detention Facilities**

**; Published April 2, 2024**This report covers the standards applied to
medical care in different types of U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities and details the kinds of
oversight that take place to ensure compliance. It also includes a list
of reports that underscore issues at some of the detention centers.

**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: 

**Explainer: Immigrant and Nonimmigrant Work Visas**
This
explainer provides a list and brief explanation of various visas
available for U.S.-based employers to hire noncitizens in the country.

**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.  

**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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