Unbelievable! USCIS delayed the #H2B rule for 55 days past employer's start dates. Then tells them all that their labor certifications are "out of date" if the start date was more than 45 days ago, forcing them to redo the whole process. Wonder why we've got illegal immigration?
I'm certain that #H2B employers will do this, but it is absolutely ridiculous and unfair to employers that are trying to follow the law. They met all the requirements. They did everything right, and now USCIS says they have to redo it b/c the agency messed up. Unbelievable.
USCIS says every employer under this rule will have to prove "irreparable harm" if they don't get visas and that the visas will help preserve US workers jobs. Yet it is arbitrarily capping the number of visas at 1/3 the number Congress allowed. It doesn't even try to justify it
It's literally baked into the rule that companies who don't get visas will face irreparable harm and that US workers will suffer, and USCIS even says so. Yet it's still moving forward with this 22K cap when Congress gave them 64K
I love this. USCIS says we're acting to prevent "serious economic harm to the H-2B community" but then never acknowledges that the 22K will cause that as well. Also, never acknowledges that it wouldn't need to bypass comments if it proposed the rule in Dec or Jan or Feb or Mar!
Here's the reason. Economically obtuse labor union advocacy. Unemployment is *always* higher in these occupations because the jobs are inherently temporary, so more stints of unemployment are guaranteed. That's why US workers are less likely to apply!
I explain this issue in my #H2B paper. More stints of unemployment, but of much shorter duration. cato.org/publications/p…
Why is this issue so important? Because H-2 visas are the main or only way for poor foreign workers without families already here to come to the United States legally. Saying you don't want H-2B workers is basically just saying you don't want poor workers coming.
Here's a bizarre thing. USCIS will reallocate the visas set aside for Central America to other countries if they aren't used by July 8 to "help ensure that supplemental H-2B visas do not go unused." Your whole rule is about ensuring that most supplemental visas *do* go unused!
So USCIS is undermining the efficacy of the Central American set-aside in an effort to make sure that visas don't go unused. Why not just make the other visas available? What on Earth is going on here?
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Today @CatoInstitute published our report providing the first look at the fiscal effects of the wave of legal & illegal immigration over the last 3 decades. It shows immigrants created surpluses every year, by a combined $14.5 trillion, even as deficits grew
Our report covers all spending, federal, state, and local, updating the work of the National Academies' 2017 report. You can read my summary: cato.org/blog/cato-stud…
Or the full study: cato.org/white-paper/im…
How can new people cut the deficit? First, a significant portion of spending is "pure public goods," military & interest payments on old debt, that don't increase b/c of immigrants. This means the average new person is paying more in taxes than they receive in benefits...
Another judge describes how ICE intentionally brake checks ICE observers trying to cause accidents. If the observers can't stop in time, it can then label them "domestic terrorists" who "weaponized their vehicles," which is of course justification for killing them.
Here's an agent admitting on camera to this behavior:
In 2025, @AlexNowrasteh and @CatoInstitute published an enormous amount of original immigration research. My analysis of border crossings under Biden is the most comprehensive explanation for why Biden's lack of enforcement didn't cause the crisis: alexnowrasteh.com/p/biden-didnt-…
In my 1st Trump 2.0 post, I predicted that Trump would cut legal entries more than illegal entries, which has already been proven indisputably correct. cato.org/blog/trump-wil…
@AlexNowrasteh published the only paper analyzing the monetary amount of welfare received by immigration status, finding that immigrants received in 2022 21 percent less welfare per capita than the US-born population cato.org/briefing-paper…
ICE agents illegally break into a woman's bathroom in a NY nutrition bar manufacturing plant. "Pull up your pants," says a male agent. The agents only had a warrant to review employer documents. They didn't have a warrant to search for, detain, or arrest anyone there.
Agents illegally detained dozens of US citizens and demanded that they prove their citizenship. We need to defend our private property rights against trespassing government agents.
Utterly lawless: "Agents lined up Latino workers and released people they said were U.S. citizens. They questioned and detained 57 people, including people who said only that they wanted a lawyer." syracuse.com/news/2025/11/w…
On Dec. 4, DOJ labeled people who impede or "dox" ICE agents "domestic terrorists." I document how DHS believes following, recording, and protesting agents is "impeding," and has a policy of threatening & arresting ICE observers. That's unconstitutional. A thread of threats...🧵
The Constitution guarantees your right to follow, record, protest, and notify others about the agents and what you see. These are core First Amendment rights, and DHS has clearly ordered its agents to threaten and violate those rights. cato.org/blog/dhs-polic…
DHS agents have: 1) a policy of threatening to arrest ICE observers; 2) a policy of permitting the brandishing of weapons against ICE observers; 3) a policy of arresting ICE observers for honking; and 4) a policy of crashing into drivers who follow them.