Reporter, CNBC
PHOTO: CNBC
From Dan Kowalski @ LexisNexis Immigration Community:
Expert: Business Visa Categories Outmoded
Hannah Miao, CNBC, June 10, 2021
“We have not revamped our legal immigration categories, including business immigration, since 1990. Some of those categories are out of alignment with our needs in the United States today,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law professor at Cornell Law School, who was not involved with the NAE study. “The pandemic has exacerbated those inconsistencies because people who are desperately needed to restart various businesses have been unable to enter the United States,” Yale-Loehr said.”
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We should be expanding legal immigration opportunities in all three categories that currently feed our “green card system:”
- Family visas;
- Work visas; and
- Refugee and asylum admissions.
We have seen during the pandemic that “essential workers” we depend upon and whose presence enriches our society and helps us build for a better future come in all types of statuses, including so-called “undocumented.” Those coming in the family, refugee, and asylum categories contribute valuable job skills, experiences, and enrichment to our society just as much, and in some cases, even more than those whose visas are based on work skills. We need to draw on and expand all three categories.
My Georgetown Law Immigration and Refugee Policy students did their own research and pointed these things out in our class just this week. They “get it!” But, our current Government immigration policy makers, not so much!
Again, to state the obvious, the Biden Administration is “missing the boat” by not restarting our asylum system at the border, running it in an appropriately generous and fair manner with experts, and expanding and getting our refugee programs functioning again. Many of those with skills we need and can use are literally “dying to get in” while we ignore both their humanity and our collective best interests.
Progressive legislative reforms to our legal immigration system are long, long overdue. But, we already have the legal authority to run far more robust and fairer legal refugee and asylum systems that would benefit America and the world, a well as saving lives and ending the ongoing squandering of Government resources on failed, illegal, cruel, and counterproductive “enforcement schemes.”
Progressive experts with the needed skill sets to fix the migration problems are out here. Obviously, Professor Yale-Loehr is just one of many. Yet, for the most part, the Biden Administration ignores their expertise and turns a deaf ear to their solutions. Doesn’t make sense to me!
Unfortunately, we appear to appear to lack the will, imagination, courage, and most of all progressive expertise in the Executive Branch to use currently available tools and legal authorities to fix migration problems.
My students continually give me hope that the next generations will provide enlightened leadership and build a more just society and a better world for the future. But, in the meantime, my generation continues to squander opportunities for improvement. There will be a cost, of that I’m sure!
🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!
PWS
06-11-21