David J. Bier Profile picture
May 21, 2021 10 tweets 4 min read Read on X
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 Then tells them all that their labor certifications are "out of date" if the start date was more than 45 days ago, forcing them to redo the whole process.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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More from @David_J_Bier

Sep 3
I have obtained new data showing that ICE has diverted at least **25,000 officers** into its mass deportation efforts, including at least 14,498 federal law enforcement officers. This is the lower-bound b/c many Border Patrol agents are independently engaged in interior arrests Image
These numbers represent staggering shares of federal law enforcement agents, being shifted from criminal law enforcement to minor civil immigration offenses cato.org/blog/ice-has-d…Image
At this point in time, only one in five of the officers engaged in mass deportation efforts are actually ICE removal operations officers. They've diverted four times as many agents as they have as an agency Image
Read 5 tweets
Aug 20
Trump's immigration policy will increase deficits by nearly $1 trillion, says Penn Budget lab budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2025/7/…Image
Taxes will need to go up to pay for the lost revenue, $180 per household, just to make up for the deportations. budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2025/6/…Image
Peterson Institute says we're talking about 7% cut to GDP piie.com/blogs/realtime…Image
Read 7 tweets
Jul 27
Bill said I should read the affidavit. And WOW it shows that everything ICE has said publicly (and Fox and Bill have dutifully regurgitated as fact) about this surgical center case was a LIE. This was not a "targeted" operation, but a racial profiling incident gone bad!
DHS initially claimed that the officers were engaged in a "targeted" enforcement operation--that is, this was not a random racial profiling incident, but the affidavit repudiates this directly, saying the agents were on a roving patrol Image
Image
DHS initially claimed it had targeted them "as they exited their vehicle." The affidavit has them already outside the vehicle while their friend pees on the surgical center. This contradictory piss is legally irrelevant and looks like an ad hoc effort to discredit the workers Image
Image
Read 14 tweets
Jul 18
It appears that an order went out on January 28 of this year that resulted in the proliferation of ICE masking. Image
The irony is that the way this order is portrayed that it is about disclosing their identity, but perhaps this is not how it was interpreted on the ground or there was resistance on the ground to it. cnn.com/2025/01/27/pol…Image
I've actually found an agent partially masking from Jan. 27 but most agents are not. Image
Read 47 tweets
Jul 9
Every American should read this ACLU lawsuit about what is happening in California. It is the stuff of dystopian nightmares. This is not immigration enforcement. It is positively stuffed with videos and articles documenting racial profiling on a scale unseen since Jim Crow. Image
Fixing the link: Citizens being assaulted, arrested, and sent to jails. Military-style sweeps of Hispanic neighborhoods. This is what Congress just gave President Trump $150 billion to do to Americans in every state. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
Completely irrelevant. This lawsuit is not alleging that it is illegal to deport Hispanic illegal immigrants. It is alleging that ICE and Border Patrol are harassing, detaining, and arresting Hispanics without any reason to believe they are here illegally
Read 5 tweets
Jun 20
I have obtained new nonpublic data from ICE that shows that 2/3 of the people it had booked into detention facilities this fiscal year had no criminal convictions at all. Less than 7% have violent convictions. Most convictions were for immigration, traffic, and vice offenses. Image
Every time you hear DHS say that anyone who objects to ICE's mass deportation campaign is pro-violent felons, understand that those violent convicts are less than 7% of its work for this year. It's misleading the public about what ICE actually does. cato.org/blog/65-people…Image
The number of noncriminals booked into ICE detention has more than doubled in recent weeks after Stephen Miller ordered them to deprioritize criminals and focus on arresting as many people as possible. Image
Read 6 tweets

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