Foreign nationals attempting to enter the United States through various visa programs will now have to prove they have the means return to their native countries as federal law mandates.
As part of President Donald Trump’s Buy American, Hire American Executive Order, the vetting procedures conducted by the State Department of foreign nationals trying to come to the U.S. have been strengthened to weed out not only radicalized individuals, but also foreigners with no documented intentions on departing.
The National Law Review outlined the changes by the Trump Administration, writing that “the revisions appear to instruct officers to apply a more rigorous – and, arguably, protectionist – approach to determining whether an applicant meets the requirements of the visa category in question.”
Under the new guidelines by the State Department, officials will now refuse student visas to foreign nationals who show no evidence or plan of returning to their native countries.
NumbersUSA spokeswoman Rosemary Jenks says the maneuver is a matter of simply enforcing immigration law which previous administrations refused to do.
“They’re basically trying to literally enforce the law,” Jenks said.
The order is meant to enforce federal immigration law that requires nonimmigrant visa-holders leave the U.S. after their visa has expired.
Trump’s Buy American, Hire American agenda throws a wrench into the pipelines of cheap, foreign labor that big business interests and tech giants have created through visa programs like the H-1B visa and the OPT program, where foreign student visa-holders can sign onto the program in order to remain in the U.S. for a longer period of time until they receive their H-1B visa.
“For example, some applicants who already hold F-1 student status but who have H-1B petitions submitted and pending with the USCIS on their behalf may face an uphill battle in applying for a renewed F-1 visa,” the Law Review report notes. “In such instances, if a consular officer asks the student whether he or she intends to depart the United States upon completion of his or her studies, the applicant will truthfully need to advise of his or her pending H-1B petition with USCIS. This information in all likelihood will lead to the consulate’s denial of the student’s F-1 visa application and the applicant will need to remain outside the United States until he or she is able to apply for an H-1B visa.”
As Breitbart Texas reported, in the 2016 Fiscal Year, nearly 630,000 foreign nationals overstayed their visas. Of those overstays, an estimated 545,000 of those now illegal aliens were still in the U.S. as of January 2017.
In that same fiscal year, 42,500 foreign students overstayed their visas, creating a massive backlog for federal immigration officials and ballooning the illegal alien population every year.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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