Author: Aaron Reichlin-Melnick

Trump’s State of the Union Speech Reflects a Fundamental Misunderstanding of Immigration

Speaking before Congress and the nation Tuesday evening, President Trump once again promised bipartisanship and instead delivered division. When it came to immigration, the president neither offered an olive branch nor acknowledged the devastating effects of his administration’s actions to date. Rather than offer solutions to the actual problems facing immigrants across the country, his […]

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Setting the Record Straight: Asylum Seekers Show Up for Court

Immigration restrictionists have often repeated a bold and erroneous claim: that there is a serious problem of asylum seekers who come to the U.S. border and disappear once released from detention. But both fact-checkers and independent studies show this is not true. In reality, the vast majority of asylum seekers diligently attend all of their […]

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Department of Homeland Security Blocks H-2B Visas for Filipinos, Dominicans, and Ethiopians

Citing high rates of visa overstays, on January 18 the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published a new rule mostly barring nationals from the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, and Ethiopia from receiving certain temporary worker visas. The U.S. territory of Guam is likely to be most impacted as it relies on large numbers of Filipino workers. […]

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Trump Administration’s Immigration Proposal Is Dead on Arrival

President Trump went in front of the public on Saturday and claimed he was going to propose a “compromise” to end the ongoing government shutdown. Instead of offering a bipartisan bill that would protect Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipients from deportation, the 1300-page bill unveiled Monday night was […]

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As Shutdown Moves Into Fourth Week, Most Immigration Courts Remain Shuttered

With the government shutdown dragging into its fourth week—marking the longest shutdown in U.S. history—most of the nation’s immigration courts remain closed. The Trump administration decries immigration court backlogs and has implemented short cuts that limit and threaten due process to address the backlogs. Yet he has contributed to a shutdown that has led to […]

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