Migration News 

Harris teases immigration agenda: Green cards for DACA and TPS recipients, shorter waits for citizenship
Matthew Choi and Alice Miranda Ollstein, Politico
The incoming administration will focus on decreasing wait times to obtain citizenship, granting automatic green cards to protected undocumented immigrants and adding immigration judges to decrease backlogs on court hearings, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris said on Tuesday. Speaking with Univision's Ilia Calderón, Harris teased a sweeping immigration reform bill that her and President-elect Joe Biden's administration plans to introduce. Harris said their bill would grant green cards immediately to immigrants protected by the Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policies. She added that the administration would also try to decrease the amount of time required to acquire U.S. citizenship to eight years from 13 years by making the naturalization process more efficient.

Trump administration moves ahead with H-1B pay rule over Silicon Valley’s objections
Chase DiFeliciantonio and Carolyn Said, San Francisco Chronicle 
The Trump administration forged ahead with a rule to increase the minimum pay for foreign workers on high-skill H-1B visas Tuesday in a move that could sideline many of them from the U.S. labor market. The Department of Labor announced the final rule after federal lawsuits in San Francisco and elsewhere stopped a previous version from taking immediate effect late last year.

Trump administration makes last-ditch push for census numbers, whistleblowers say
Tara Bahrampour, Washington Post
Political appointees at the U.S. Census Bureau are making a last-ditch push to deliver to President Trump tallies of undocumented immigrants so he can try to exclude them from congressional representation, according to a letter sent Tuesday by the Commerce Department’s Office of Inspector General. The letter, from Inspector General Peggy E. Gustafson to Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham, said career employees at the bureau had told her they were under “significant pressure” from two Trump appointees to produce a report by Friday related to the president’s effort to remove undocumented immigrants from state population counts, even though staff there say the data isn’t ready.

Trump visits his border wall on the heels of deadly Capitol Hill riot
Priscilla Alvarez, CNN 
President Donald Trump bookended his administration's focus on immigration with a trip to his signature border wall on the US-Mexico border, a visit on the heels of a deadly riot on Capitol Hill incited by the President as House Democrats prepare a second impeachment vote. On Tuesday, Trump traveled to Alamo, Texas, near the border, to mark the completion of more than 450 miles of wall -- a trip that caters to the supporters who put him in office in 2016 despite heightening tensions nationwide and a raging pandemic. The border wall, which Trump repeatedly cited over the last four years as an accomplishment, cost US taxpayers -- not Mexico -- billions and became emblematic of the President's restrictionist immigration policies, which largely sealed the US off from immigrants and refugees. During a brief speech near the wall, Trump listed off a series of those policies Tuesday, citing them as accomplishments and calling them "historic." Indeed, many of the policies rolled out over the last four years are unprecedented, including requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their immigration court date in the US and swiftly removing migrants arriving at the southern border under a public health order. Immigrant advocates and lawyers have challenged the policies in court, arguing that they put migrants in harm's way.

Google backs Biden immigration efforts, covers fees in threatened 'Dreamer' program
Paresh Dave, Reuters 
Alphabet Inc’s Google said it would support President-elect Joe Biden’s efforts to pass a new U.S. immigration law and would help cover application fees for immigrants seeking lawful work under a threatened government program. Google said on Wednesday it would pay for the application fees of about 500 young immigrants seeking employment under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. It comes as Google and other big U.S. employers transition from four years of criticizing outgoing President Donald Trump for restricting immigration policy and undermining the companies’ ability to hire foreign-born workers.

Trump To Boot 3 Countries From Migrant Visa Program
Alyssa Aquino, Law360
The Trump administration announced Tuesday that it was cutting Mongolia, Samoa and Tonga from the H-2A and H-2B migrant visa programs through the end of the year, based on high visa overstay rates and noncooperation with deportation proceedings. Citizens from all three countries will no longer be eligible for the H-2A visa program, which allows employers to fill seasonal and temporary agricultural jobs. Samoan and Tongan citizens will also be barred from the H-2B program, which provides short-term visas to nonagricultural workers and is popular within the landscaping and hospitality sectors, according to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security notice on the Federal Register.

Worth a Read 

Garland Marks Departure From Trump AGs On Immigration
Law360

‘Suitcase Stories’ zooms into the lives of Boston’s immigrant neighbors
Boston Globe 

Biden walking back immigration promises for a reason
The Hill 

Assessing President Trump's Legacy On U.S. Immigration Policy
NPR 

Processing Delays in US Immigration Affecting Foreign Students’ Legal Status
Voice of America 

Trump’s Final Push on Immigration
U.S. News and World Report