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WASHINGTON - On Dec. 18, immigration reform stalwart Richard J. Durbin's announcement on the Senate floor about a rare bipartisan breakthrough flew largely under the radar, overshadowed in the chaotic flurry of impeachment.

Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, and Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah had dueled two months earlier over unanimous consent requests on the Senate floor, and had since been deadlocked.

Each had pushed for his own solution to an important but often overlooked symptom of the broken U.S. immigration system: the employment-based green card backlog. Because of it, hundreds of thousands of people - overwhelmingly from India - wait in limbo, sometimes for decades.

A version of Lee's legislation - the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act - had quietly passed the House earlier in the year with bipartisan support.

When Lee tried to bring the legislation to the Senate floor for an immediate vote, Sens. Charles E. Grassley and Rand Paul objected.

Then, in October, Durbin objected.

Durbin had introduced his own legislation that he felt tackled the problem more holistically. But when he later sought unanimous consent for his measure, it was Lee's turn to block it.

Paul also had a legislative fix on the table.

Then came the December compromise between Lee and Durbin, who had become the two opposing poles of the backlog issue.

"We've come up with a proposal that moves us in the right direction," Durbin said of his agreement with Lee. "These families affected by this backlog are really going through hardship and concerns that no family should face. The sooner we resolve them, the better."

Outside Congress, in online forums, debate over how to fix the problem grew tense and, at times, heated. Immigrant advocacy groups, lawyers and policy experts specifically zeroed in on the logjam of employment-based green cards - and often found themselves in the unusual position of opposing each other.

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, the compromise from Lee and Durbin remains in a holding pattern while the two lawmakers determine whether they have succeeded at clearing the path of further objections.

Every year, the United States distributes about 1 million green cards based on various categories - to immediate relatives of citizens, refugees and asylum-seekers, and to foreign workers on temporary visas. Since 1965, there's been a limit to how many spots can be given to applicants from any one country.

Family reunification has always been the main priority of the U.S. immigration system, so the bulk of green cards go to people sponsored by family members already in the country. A small share of total green cards - around 140,000 - are reserved for the employment category, per a 1990 immigration law. No one country can be allotted more than 7% of the total work visas, which feed into the employment-based green card pipeline (although visas left over in one category can roll over to another). Despite changes in the economy and labor market, this upper limit of 7% has remained the same since 1990.

The problem is that the number of green card petitions approved tends to far exceed that 7% limit. So petitioners from a country over that threshold are put on a wait list. Upwards of 500,000 people who applied for key employment-based categories of green cards in 2018 are in the current backlog, according to an estimate by the libertarian Cato Institute.

But that backlog isn't distributed equally.

Work visas like the H1-B are intended for temporary workers in science and technology fields. But these visas have become a key steppingstone to citizenship for immigrants with the resources to study at American colleges or who've been recruited by U.S. employers in science and technology-related fields.

Indians have increasingly come to the United States since the 1960s, but they arrived at an accelerated pace following the tech boom that started in the mid-1990s. They now make up the bulk of green card applicants in the employment-based category, followed by Chinese. Because they quickly come up against the 7% annual limit, most Indians will probably wait 10 or more years to obtain their green cards, according to Cato. The ones who applied in 2018-19, however, may face a line up to 50 years long.

Many of these individuals develop deep ties to America while waiting. They bring over spouses and buy homes and cars. They enroll children in school. And yet, true stability is precariously at arm's length.

Their American lives run on three-year extensions of their work visas, because even if their green card petitions are approved, it may be decades before the actual green cards are granted. The wait has immense costs - lawyers' and application fees, but also lost wages, promotions and other opportunities, in addition to the vulnerability to wage exploitation. More intangibly, it comes with grave uncertainty about the future.

If a visa holder in the green card backlog dies during the wait, the person's spouse and family lose their place in line - and can find themselves without legal status. That's what happened to Sunayana Dumala, the wife of Srinivas Kuchibhotla, a young engineer killed in a 2017 hate crime. In a recent Kansas City Star op-ed advocating for Lee's legislation, Dumala explained what it felt like to be stuck.

"We cannot travel back to our home countries for funerals, let alone weddings or to support our parents' medical needs, because we fear being stuck abroad and uprooting our lives," she wrote. "Children born overseas who accompanied their parents to the U.S. are 'aging out' of green card applications and may need to leave the country. Self-deportation is the only alternative to living this life of constant fear. But is that really a choice?"

While many on both sides of the aisle agree about the severity of this group's predicament, they diverge on the solutions.

Lee's original bill sought to phase out country quotas for employment-based greencards, creating a first-come, first-served system. It also proposed raising country quotas for family-based green card categories from 7 to 15 percent. But, because many Republicans generally oppose increased immigration, the bill would not increase the total green cards given annually.

"At first glance, you say, 'Oh this is awesome - it gets rid of per-country limits,' " immigration lawyer Charles Kuck recently recalled on his podcast. "But because of the way it gets rid of per country limits, it has a serious effect on people already going through the immigration process, and it comes at a particularly inopportune time."

Any proposal to bring more immigrants to the country is a nonstarter for hard-line immigration restrictionists. But disagreement about the impact of Lee's bill has split even immigration proponents into two camps. Advocates of the bill believe it rectifies a past wrong, giving Indians their rightful place in line, while critics emphasize that it does so by shifting the burden of the backlog onto other countries and visa categories, instead of eliminating it.

Ira Kurzban, a prominent immigration lawyer and professor at University of Miami, pointed out that the country caps were instituted in 1965 to have a more equitable immigration system. The immigration law passed that year also removed bars on immigrants from Africa, the Middle East and Asia. While the caps had an unintended effect in creating the backlog, they actually opened up immigration to Indians in the first place, Kurzban argued.

In an analysis he circulated, Kurzban demonstrated that while India disproportionately bears the burden of the backlog, its nationals actually get more than their 7% share every year because of an oft overlooked loophole: While each country is allotted 7 percent, unused shares from low-demand countries like Iceland can be given out to high-demand countries, including India.

Kurzban further estimated that Lee's original bill would actually increase the total backlog for employment-based residency to 1.1 million by 2029 - and increase wait times to 17 years, for everyone.

"Do the math," he wrote in an August blog post.

He and other critics also worry that in a first-come, first-served system, since backlogged Indians would get all the green cards over the next few years, they would edge out applicants from other countries. When Paul objected last summer, he asked for a carve-out for health care workers - nurses from, for example, the Philippines - who would be one of the groups facing long waits due to Lee's original bill. Other critics brought up the potential disadvantage his bill could further cause for Middle Eastern scientists affected by the travel ban and longtime immigrants from, say, Latin America at risk of losing temporary protections that let them stay and work in the United States.

"The answer is not to fight over the few visas given each year; the answer is to have a larger number of visas to the benefit of the U.S. economy," Kurzban wrote in his blog post. "Simply, we need more visas."

Other experts aren't so sure about the forecasts of deleterious effects and believe that Lee's bill is the best chance in the current political reality to address the problem. David Bier, Cato's immigration policy analyst, estimates about 50% of the applicants in 2018 were Indian but received only 13% of the total green cards issued. He calculated that Lee's legislation, if implemented, would resolve the backlog in eight years - during which time only Indians would get green cards for around four years.

"Opponents of the legislation claim that this is unfair, yet new Indian applicants who applied in 2018-19 will not receive any greencards under the bill for almost eight years, and if the law isn't passed, then they would face a half a century wait (ultimately, nearly half would give up before then)," he wrote in a blog post.

Aman Kapoor is the co-founder of Immigration Voice, a group of Indians lobbying for a solution to the green card backlog. He has lived in the United States for 17 years. He and his family received approval for their residency application in 2007, but they still don't have green cards.

Even before Durbin formally put a hold on Lee's legislation in mid-October, Kapoor and his group launched a media blitzkrieg accusing the Illinois senator of discriminating against Indians by not allowing Lee's bill to be taken up. They argued any amendments he intended to tack on would amount to a "poison pill" that would alienate Republicans and ultimately kill the bill.

"Senator Durbin's argument against the bill is no different from the arguments presented by those against removing segregation and discrimination," the group wrote in an email statement at the time.

Durbin's bill would lift country caps and, among other changes, add enough additional green cards to almost entirely cover the backlog in the employment-based and family-based categories. After analyzing the measure, Cato's Bier concluded it "probably contains the best legal immigration reforms overall since the comprehensive immigration reform bill that passed the Senate in June 2013."

But Durbin's bill reinforced a backlash from Indians on the green card waiting list and their lobbyists. To them, the legislation was not politically viable because it would raise the level of immigration overall - a prospect that many Republicans in the Senate will not even entertain.

The rhetoric got so bad that immigration attorney Leon Fresco, a former senior Senate staffer who considers himself the architect of the Lee legislation, stepped away from his role as adviser to Immigration Voice.

"I can't be part of it because I need to maintain professionalism. I would never advise anyone to be as personal as they're being right now," he says. "However, I get why people are frustrated."

But Durbin's bill did have its supporters, and they, too, spoke up.

Lakshmi Sridaran, interim executive director of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), a progressive advocacy group, wrote an op-ed in an Indian American publication asking South Asians to oppose Lee's bill and support Durbin's. In her view, Lee's version was akin to giving immigrant groups scraps to fight over - a bigger piece of the pie, instead of a bigger pie. She also said Lee's bill, and the rhetoric around it, set up hierarchies among the immigrant community of who is more or less deserving of citizenship.

"It's not just the backlog issue but that this is one part of a very broken immigration system," she says. "I don't think the groups advocating for this bill are interested in an inclusive organizing strategy, but a political strategy to win."

She and other opponents of Lee's bill fear if what they believe to be an imperfect bill passes, pressure to pursue longer-term, systemic changes in the immigration system would fizzle out. In Congress, where the track record for passing immigration legislation is quite poor, there may not be a chance to return and fix things.

A handful of immigrant groups, including the advocacy network, United We Dream, support SAALT's position.

In December's compromise with Lee, Durbin tacked on amendments to the bill that would do three main things: help applicants and their families in the United States switch jobs and travel without losing status; carve out a quota for applicants from abroad; and put a check on big Indian IT firms that have been found to abuse the H1-B applications process.

"So, this bill offers some concessions to both sides of the issue - to the groups advocating for the rights of people stuck in green card backlogs, and those advocating for the rights of new immigrants to come to the U.S. from abroad," Julia Gelatt, policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, explained via email.

But many remain dissatisfied. SAALT's Sridaran lamented the compromise legislation fails to raise the total number of green cards. And Immigration Voice asked its supporters to call Durbin's office, to warn that if the compromise bill does not pass, "Durbin, and Durbin alone, will be solely responsible for ethnic cleansing of Indian American immigrants from the US."

Lee's office said the lawmaker was working to build consensus, but there will likely not be any movement on this bill at least until impeachment proceedings have concluded.

"Whether or not this bill will go anywhere: It's usually safest to predict that Congress doesn't have the will to tackle something as contentious as immigration reform. That seems particularly true as the Senate grapples with impeachment and considers a response to the emerging conflict with Iran," Gelatt said.

"Of course, surprises can happen."

(c)2020 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Green card gridlock: When will Congress agree on a solution? - PostBulletin.com

The five Republicans running for the chance to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin all call for stronger efforts to thwart illegal immigration -- but they disagree about whether a wall across the Mexican border is the best solution.

During a joint endorsement interview Friday at the Daily Herald offices in Arlington Heights, three of the GOP hopefuls enthusiastically supported President Donald Trump's plan to build that border wall, sections of which have been erected. Two said they prefer other options, such as airborne drones.

The candidates in the March 17 primary are: retired information technology professional Casey Chlebek of Glenview; former Lake County Sheriff Mark Curran of Libertyville; former police officer Peggy Hubbard of Belleville; Dr. Robert Marshall, a physician from Burr Ridge; and Dr. Tom Tarter, a urological oncologist from Springfield.

The winner will face Durbin, a four-tern incumbent from Springfield, in November.

Tarter said walls have reduced illegal immigration where they've been built along the border. He wants the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to get enough funding to complete 450 miles of wall.

"Walls work," he said. "This is why Democrats don't want them -- at least the open-border Democrats."

Tarter said the government should implement technology that will help detect the attempted importation of illegal drugs and track migrants.

Additionally, Tarter said immigration applications should use a merit-based system that awards points for work history, education, speaking English, community service and "evidence of assimilation."

Marshall said he's "100% in favor" of completing the border wall. He called for tighter immigration policies and said he opposes comprehensive immigration reform, calling it "a code word for amnesty."

Marshall said immigrants should have to meet three criteria to live in the U.S.: they should be able to support themselves; they should be able to speak English "to a minimal degree" or be willing to learn; and they "should love us and not want to blow us up."

Hubbard said she supports Trump's efforts to secure U.S. borders. Like Tarter, she said walls work -- but she also advocated using technology and putting "more boots on the ground" at the border.

Hubbard lauded the president for sending military troops to the border in 2018 as a caravan of migrants from Central America approached the U.S.

Hubbard supported shifting to a merit-based immigration system, too.

Curran was an outspoken advocate of immigration reform during the last eight years of his 12-year tenure as sheriff, which concluded in 2018.

In 2011, Curran said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement should "quit wasting time breaking up families, because it makes America a lesser country." The following year, he backed a proposal that would allow people living here illegally to get driver's licenses so they could get to work.

On Friday, Curran said a wall across the southern border makes a statement about American sovereignty -- "but it's going to be very expensive."

Curran said drones and other high-tech security equipment could more effectively stop border incursions.

"We've seen all the videos of people going underneath the walls, and creating these tunnels," he said.

Curran also voiced concerns about radical Islamists getting into the U.S. "The wall alone is not going to keep America safe," he said.

Chlebek wants a different approach to protecting U.S. borders, too. Walls can be breached, he said, and the project is too costly.

Technology should make a border wall "irrelevant," Chlebek said.

"People are ready for it and expect it," he said.

If high-tech programs aren't implemented, however, Chlebek said he'd support completing the wall.

See the rest here:
Republican senate candidates disagree about whether a border wall is the solution to illegal immigration - Chicago Daily Herald

ROCHESTER, Minn. (KTTC) - Sunday marks the second day of the 15 day long Chinese New Year celebration.

Tiffany Alexandria, a Taiwanese food blogger, taught community members about the tea ceremony that's practiced during the holiday.

"The tea that we're tasting today are all from Taiwan. And we are tasting tea ranges from live fermentation to slightly more fermented and all the way up to black tea," Alexandria said.

Alexandria said tea plays a daily role in Chinese culture.

"So tea is more like an everyday lifestyle. There is a tea ceremony but we just drink tea everyday. And during Chinese New Year, it's often visiting family every single day and as soon as you get to each family relatives house you sit down and drink tea with them," she said.

Alexandria's family is currently in Tawain, she said her uncle played a huge role in her love for tea.

"My uncle's a tea maker. He's a master tea maker in Taiwan actually. So, when I was little growing up I would actually visit him on the tea mountain and watch him make tea," she said.

Although Alexandra can't be with her family this Chinese New Year, those who attended the tea party felt grateful she shared a big part of her life with them."

"I've learned a lot about the tea leaf. I've learned the different types of tea and the process of making it and the process of enjoying it," Julie Herrera- Lemar, said.

Alexandria said on Thursday she will be teaching people how to make dumplings.

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Blogger hosts tea ceremony on Day 2 of Chinese New Year - KTTC

Jan 22, 2020 11:49 AM By: St. Albert Gazette

If youre a fan of Canadian rock, the Saints and Sinners Tour 2020 is for you.

Four iconic bands Big Wreck, Headstones, Moist and The Tea Party have formed a coast-to-coast tour that promises to be a once-in-a-lifetime extravaganza.

During their 17-stop tour, the four bands will perform atthe Edmonton Convention Centre on July 4.

Fronted by founding member Ian Thornley, Big Wreck boasts a variety of hit singles and released its 6th album, but for the sun, in 2019.

Headstones has spread the rock and roll gospel since 1987. Ferocious as ever, it remains one of Canadas most vital rock and roll outlaws.

Multi-platinum selling Moist has enjoyed a stream of hits from the 1990s that rivals their grunge era peers south of the border; and The Tea Party, with their larger-than-life presence, celebrates their 30th year together.

Weve been on festivals and tours together over the years, but this unique shared bill with all four acts in a different order every night is going to be a killer. We cant wait to get this rolling," said David Usher of Moist.

Public tickets for the Saints and Sinners Tour go on sale Friday, Jan. 24 at 10 a.m. at ticketmaster.ca.

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Saints and Sinners Tour comes to Edmonton - St. Albert Today

Is it a death grip or a limp handshake? President Donald Trumps grasp on the Republican Party grassroots will get its first big test of 2020 next month in Iowa.

Iowa Republicans attending the Feb. 3 caucuses will have the opportunity to cast their preference for the partys presidential nomination. Thats different from other recent election cycles, when parties with incumbent presidents have not held true contests or reported accurate results.

Iowa political parties have peculiar history with uncontested presidential caucuses

For true small-government conservatives, there are many reasons to oppose Trumps reelection bid.

Competitive GOP caucuses in 2020 would be good for America

Actually, we need more candidates running for president in Iowa

Former U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh and former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld are campaigning against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. Trump is favored, to say the least. Polls show nearly 90 percent of Republicans approve of Trumps job performance, while around 80 percent support his renomination.

For true small-government conservatives, though, there are many reasons to oppose Trumps reelection bid: He has let the national debt balloon uninhibited, failed to replace Obamacare, largely reneged on his promise to wind down our unwinnable wars and regularly bucked the limits of his executive power (not least of which was withholding Congressionally approved aid from Ukraine, the subject of the ongoing impeachment trial).

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The two Republican challengers are simultaneously contemptuous of Trumps enablers in Washington, D.C., and sympathetic to the voters who put them in power. They are convinced there is hunger in the Republican base for an alternative to Trump, never mind the polls.

Walsh one-term Tea Party congressman from Illinois and a former talk radio host spent much of last week watching Trumps impeachment trial in the Senate and firing off spicy takes on Twitter, including calling out Republican senators by name. He has little hope the current crop of GOP legislators can be redeemed.

I think theyre too far gone. You gotta be on the record right now about Trump and Trumpism. These people like (U.S. Sen. Marco) Rubio and some who are trying to stay quiet, you cant do that. You either support him or you dont, Walsh told me last week.

GOP politicians redemption tour comes to Iowa

On the issues, Walsh takes libertarian and fiscally conservative stances. He seems less concerned nowadays with many of the divisive culture war issues he discussed in his talk radio career.

Walsh has made increasingly frequent trips to Iowa in the past couple of months, and plans to be here every day until the caucuses.

I want people to wake up after the caucuses and be surprised and say, Wow, there is a primary going on on the Republican side. Ive gotta do well, and Im staking a lot on Iowa, Walsh said.

Weld a former two-term Republican governor from left-leaning Massachusetts holds out hope that some Republican legislators will snap out of blindly supporting the president, but time is running out.

Ive been predicting for some time that its not going to go well for Republicans in the legislative elections in 2020. Well have a Democratic Senate if they just roll over and play dead, so Im hopeful they wont, Weld told me.

Are Republicans willing to disagree? Caucus challenger wants to find out

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Weld also has a broad libertarian streak, balanced with an old-school pro-business conservatism. He even ran with the Libertarian Party for vice president in 2016. At the partys nominating convention that year, he promised members he was a Libertarian for life, and wouldnt go back to any other party.

But in a guest column published last week by the conservative blog the Bulwark, Weld gives an impassioned defense of Republican values, and doesnt mention his Libertarian Party stint.

Ive been a libertarian since I was in law school and took up Friedrich Hayek and The Constitution of Liberty, Weld told me.

The reason I decided to run as a Republican this time is that someone needed to stand up and plant a flag against Trumps misdeeds, and I didnt see anyone else doing it.

Trump challenger is part of great American party-switching tradition

Its hard to say what a bad night for Trump in Iowa would look like. Assuming the president wins a clear majority of Iowa Republicans support, how many points would his challengers have to siphon off to make a statement?

Theres only one modern election that offers a comparison. In 2012, Iowa Democrats reported the full delegate counts from the caucuses, which they did not do in 1996: 98.4 percent for President Barack Obama, 1.5 percent uncommitted.

It looked like a total blowout for Obama, but his figures may have been inflated by party loyalists maneuvering. The caucus agenda included time for a livestream webcast from Obama, but preference groups to pick a candidate were only held if 15 percent of attendees agreed to it.

Under those rules, only Democrats with a little bit of confidence and knowledge of the process were able to have their preferences counted, as independent journalist and Democratic activist Laura Belin reported at the time.

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The Iowa Democratic Partys caucus rules and procedures put many obstacles before Democrats who arent satisfied with the presidents performance, Belin wrote on her Bleeding Heartland website.

Disgruntled Republicans will face somewhat different challenges this February. There is no viability threshold, so all the votes will be counted. But the party infrastructure is all-in for Trump the Republican National Committee voted last year to commit undivided support to the Trump campaign and caucus chairs might resist efforts to speak in support of other candidates.

The hope is that a lackluster tally for Trump in Iowa would generate momentum and national attention for the opposition candidates. Both Weld and Walsh told me they are committed to staying in the race past Iowa and New Hampshire, when several Democrats will likely be dropping out.

Perhaps some unforeseen crisis will change minds and trigger massive turnout to late GOP primaries. Trumps removal from office or a battle at the party convention are extremely unlikely, but maybe not impossible.

Assuming Trump is on the general election ballot, both Walsh and Weld reserve the right to endorse an opposing candidate or even launch a third-party campaign of their own. The ultimate goal, theyre both adamant, is to end Trumps presidency.

Im dedicating my life to stopping Trump. If it doesnt work out through a Republican challenge in the Republican primary, I dont know what Ill do next. ... I would do anything if I thought it would help stop him, Walsh said.

Comments: (319) 339-3156; adam.sullivan@thegazette.com

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Unstoppable? Iowa GOP caucuses will measure depth of Trump's support - The Gazette