Two leaders from an anti-immigrant hate group with ties to the White House have given their stamp of approval to a Trump administration move falling in line with his “extreme vetting” plan and designed to make legal immigration to the U.S. much more difficult.
According to POLITICO, immigration authorities will now require in-person interviews for certain visa holders applying for permanent legal status. According to the former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, while this isn’t new, some interviews for prospective green card applicants were waived in the past since they’d already been vetted through initial visa petitions and applications. “The immigration service realized that most of the time it was a colossal waste of everyone’s time,” the expert said, with wait times already delayed enough.
Not anymore. In the mind of Trump officials, if you can’t stop legal immigration, trying to slow it down to a snail’s pace is the next best option:
Immigration authorities will require an in-person interview for certain applicants for green cards, a change likely to slow the process of obtaining one.
The new requirement, which was confirmed Friday by a spokesman for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, will apply to anyone moving from an employment-based visa to lawful permanent residency. Visa holders who are family members of refugees or people who receive asylum will also be required to undergo an in-person interview when they apply for provisional status, a stage that precedes receiving a green card, according to USCIS.
The added interview workload will almost certainly lengthen wait times from green card applications. As of June 30, the office was processing applications received more than six months earlier, according to a tracking tool on the agency’s website.
Stephen Legomsky, USCIS chief counsel from 2011 to 2013, said it’s difficult to say whether the interviews will be worth the effort.
“The interview mandate is part of President Donald Trump’s plan to apply ‘extreme vetting’ to immigrants and visitors to the U.S.,” POLITICO added. Make no mistake—this is pure nativism designed to be an added hurdle. This administration doesn’t care for undocumented immigrants, and it’s not too crazy about legal ones either.
And, an added hurdle that anti-immigrant figures from the Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigrant hate group with ties to anti-Semites and is also behind the push to deport Dreamers by ending Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), love. “Quality over Quantity,” Jessica Vaughn, a policy director with the group, tweeted about the news. “Common sense.”
More on the Center for Immigration Studies from Matt Hildreth of America’s Voice:
Its founder was white nationalist John Tanton, an avowed eugenicist who also founded the hate group that Mark Krikorian now leads.
The Center for Immigration Studies, Krikorian’s organization, is also classified as a hate-group and the ties between Krikorian’s group and white supremacist and nazi organizations run deep. SPLC provided a deep dive into these connections, noting “In recent years, CIS has routinely disseminated the works of white nationalist writers.” In the wake of further protestations, SPLC and the Center for New Communities identified 2,012 times Krikorian’s group linked to white nationalist groups.
“For Krikorian,” Hildreth writes, “ending DACA isn’t just about deporting Dreamers who grew up in this country and graduated from our schools, it’s about using these young people as a political pawn to further his hate groups extremist agenda.”