There are six congressional districts with a majority Hispanic population and a Republican congressional representative. Here they are, with the percentage of Hispanic population and recent comments well as some past comments about immigration.

On January 29, the three Florida representatives listed below (Diaz-Balart, Giménez and Salazar) released a joint statement that they stood in solidarity with the Venezuelan community, emphasizing the need for humane treatment and legal protections for those fleeing the Maduro regime.

David Valadao (CA-21) Fresno- San Joaquin Valley. 51% Hispanic. Valadao has warned that increased deportations could lead to higher costs for goods, emphasizing the economic impact on the Central Valley’s agricultural sector.  In 2018, he stated: “It is important to create a fair process to give immigrants the opportunity to obtain earned citizenship, thus avoiding the creation of a second-class society.” In 2014, Valadao voted against a bill that would have dismantled the DACA program.

Mario Díaz-Balart (FL-25) Miami-Dade County, 72%. He has represented this reliably Republican district since 2003. He and Gimenez contacted DHS Secretary Kristi Noem regarding the “urgent situation” of Venezuelans losing TPS. They argued that social and political conditions in Venezuela have not significantly improved, implying concern about potential deportations. He wrote about Trump’s policy, “You can’t deport somebody back to a country where you know they’re going to potentially suffer real persecution.” In 2014, he was “eagerly seeking a deal” on undocumented immigrants that could gain bipartisan support.

Carlos Gimenez (FL-26). Miami-Dade County. 67%. As Mayor of Miami-Dade County in 2017, Giménez ordered county jails to comply with federal immigration detention requests. Regarding the termination of TPS for Venezuelans, he wrote Trump, “”I urge you to make a compassionate and individually tailored solution to those who contribute to our country and respect the rule of law.”

Maria Elvira Salazar (FL-27) Miami-Dade County. 69%. District has recently swung to the right. She has been the most vocal of the six express concern about Trump’s policy. She wrote to DHS, “Although President Biden originally created this new program [humanitarian parole for Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua Venezuela] and on dubious legal grounds and brought individuals here without a plan for their future, they were still enrolled under programs offered to them. Therefore, I believe they should have the ability to see their applications out to rectify their legal status.” Salazar, along with other Florida lawmakers, expressed “profound disgust” after reports that a former high-ranking Cuban Communist Party leader was allowed to enter the U.S. through a visa parole program.

Monica De La Cruz (TX-15) McAllen. 83%. She said, “President Trump is focused on taking out of our country illegal immigrations who have committed crimes, crimes such as those that were committed against Laken Riley.”. She acknowledged that while the primary targets are those with criminal records, it’s possible that other undocumented immigrants might also be affected by the policy. She has referred to the Biden administration border policy as a “joke.”

Tony Gonzales (TX-23).San Antonio. 64%. This district was redrawn in 2021 to make it a safe Republican district Regarding mass deportation he recently said, “If the message is, ‘We’re here to deport your abuelita,’ that’s not going to work well. It has to be one of holding these hardened criminals accountable.” And, “If we’re going after the guy that’s picking tomatoes or the nurse at the local hospital and we’re not going after the convicted criminal, then our government has failed us.”

 

 

The Trump Administration’s slashing of indirect costs for federal grants for university-based research to a maximum of 15% may especially threaten STEM research and academic departments.  It may drive many foreign-born research and faculty in STEM to go to another country.

About 45% of STEM Masters and 46% of STEM PhDs awarded by US institutions go to international students on temporary visas. 29% of full-time science and engineering faculty in U.S. universities are foreign-born. 49% of U.S.-trained postdocs were born overseas.

Steve Hsu (@hsu_steve) writes on X: The [indirect cost] cuts will harm overall university budgets, but the main harm will be to very expensive STEM activities on campus, which require large IC charges to fund.

Building new labs, renovating old labs, hiring staff to deal with real regulatory and compliance requirements, etc. all require additional funds from ICs. Existing grants do not cover any of these costs which are very large and very real….Overall this is a huge win for China because the appeal of working as a scientist at a US university is significantly diminished as the available resources decrease.

Here is an article saying that direct costs are immune from Executive Branch interference.

President Trump has issued an Executive Order classifying South African Afrikaners as a specifically designated population for refugee status. This might be the first time an advanced western country provides formal aid to a group of white persons intimately associated with writing, not long ago, racist laws of oppression against non-white persons.

The news of the day is action by the Trump Administration to crush any resistance of countries (mainly Latin American) to flights from the U.S. carrying deported persons back to their country of origin. A blow up with Colombia lasted less than 24 hours.

However, a development with much more serious implications is the plan by the administration to expand “expedited removal.”

Expedited removal is located in Section 235(b)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. This law authorizes immigration officers to summarily remove certain noncitizens without further hearing or review, thus by-passing immigration courts. Generally speaking, expedited removal applies to persons who have been in the United States without authorization for up to two years.   Thus, any long-term authorized resident would not be subjected to expedited removal.

The Trump administration has filed a proposed change to expedited removal by reversing a 2022 policy by the Biden  administration to limited use of expedited removal to persons within 100 miles of the border. The new rule will extend the power throughout the U.S.

The NY Times reported that on January 25 Dept of Homeland Security Secretary Homans issued a memo which extends expedited removal to all so-called CHNV humanitarian visa holders – those who have been admitted up to 30,000 a month since this program was created by Biden to divert persons from the Mexican border. The CBP One app was used for many of these persons as well as by others. The DHS is basically saying that the CHNV program and the CBP App were illegal and thus anyone admitted through one or both of these programs is not authorized. This entire population is about 1.2 million.

This initiative is consistent with my expectation that Trump will go after the large numbers of persons admitted under Biden by temporary visa programs.

 

 

 

 

 

Millions of children already born will have their citizenship revoked. The number of living persons born in past decades in circumstances which Trump’s EO would bar citizenship runs into the millions. Many have had their own children, whose citizenship status would be thrown into doubt. The number of current children (uner 180 affected likely runs into the milllions.

Republicans in Congress got what they sought in the Laken Riley Act, which was a headline in the New York Times saying “House Passes Bill to Deport Immigrants Convicted of Violence Against Women.”

The headlines implies that the law applies to all immigrants. It applies only to persons not authorized to be the country. These persons have always been subject to deportation.  The Biden, Trump and Obama administrations all deported hundreds of thousands of persons annually.

Most deportees had committed a crime, but most of the crimes committed were not crimes committed against persons or property. Rather, they were Illegal entry or reentry, unauthorized work, false claims of U.S. citizenship, and the like.

The headline also implies that the law is especially designed to protect women from violence. The law does not do that.  The past administrations have clearly made a priority of detaining and deporting unauthorized persons who committed any serious crime. This priority was specified in written high-level guidance for years. What this law does is in effect to broaden the range of illegal offences to as low as shoplifting, to mandate detention if is the person is accused of such an act, and to authorize state Attorneys General to have standing in suits that can halt all immigration from a specified country

The incoming Trump administration is trying to create the illusion of a vast population of unauthorized persons who committed some kind of infraction, however trivial, and to lump them together with convicted criminals against property and persons.

 

 

 

 

United Kingdom: The UK’s National Health Service has recruited, as of March 2023, 164,198 internationally educated professionals in its Nursing and Midwifery Council program. This means that approximately one in five nurses, midwives, and nursing associates practicing in the UK were educated abroad. The primary sources of international nurses for the UK include India, Philippines, Nigeria, Ghana and Zambia.  The NHS deeply depends on these foreign born and trained nurses: in 2022-2023, 25,006 internationally educated nurses joined the NHS compared to 27,142 UK-educated nurses.

Germany: It is in a much more challenging situation due to language issues, and its very low volume shows how difficult it will be for non-English or perhaps non-French speaking advanced countries to recruit nurses from abroad. Germany has a “Triple Win” program to address its nursing shortage. The initiative was established in 2013. It targets Bosnia and Herzegovina, Philippines, Tunisia, Indonesia, Jordan, India (Kerala and Telangana states). The program appears to have brought in only about 6,000 nurses, compared to a shortage that has been estimated at 150,000.

The program is run by the German Federal Employment Agency’s International Placement Services (ZAV) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH

 

 

One June 9,2024, I summarized the conflicting estimates of the level of recent foreign born persons. The figures differed widely among Federal estimates. The difficulties arise from the surge of aslyum applicants and temporary visas issued for humanitarian purposes. And, the total figures do not distinquish well between permanent (Gree card) entrants and other entrants.

In the past few days, the Census, which as had the lower bound of estimates, increased its count for FY 2023 from 1.1 million to 2.3 million. its 2024 estimate of 2.8 million holds.

Here is what the Census said on December 20: “Net international migration, which refers to any change of residence across U.S. borders (the 50 states and the District of Columbia), was the critical demographic component of change driving growth in the resident population. With a net increase of 2.8 million people, it accounted for 84% of the nation’s 3.3 million increase in population between 2023 and 2024. This reflects a continued trend of rising international migration, with a net increase of 1.7 million in 2022 and 2.3 million in 2023.”

In the 2010s, the Census recorded a net immigration total hovering around one million. The 2022, 2023 and 2024 totals come to an average annual figure of 2.3 milion, or 1.3 million higher than past trend.