As Tampa prepares to host the Super Bowl this weekend, Florida hoteliers remain committed to keeping human trafficking out of their hotels and their communities. Every year, thousands of football fans converge on the event’s host city in the runup to the game. Unfortunately, sex traffickers who exploit the most vulnerable in our society are all too eager to bring their illicit enterprise to the party. That is why hotel owners are going on offense to protect their guests, their employees, and trafficking victims by completing AAHOA’s Human Trafficking Awareness Trainings (HTAT). These trainings play a crucial role in empowering hoteliers and their employees to identify and respond to trafficking situations. Owners are keeping their guard up against traffickers even though the number of fans and attendees at this year’s Super Bowl will be significantly lower than in years past due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The sheer number of people at high-profile events like the Super Bowl are an attractive draw to human traffickers. These criminals prize anonymity and seek out low-profile locations to exploit their victims. That is why it is so important for hoteliers and their teams to understand what trafficking looks like and know how to respond if they see something amiss,” said AAHOA President & CEO Cecil P. Staton. “To date, thousands of hotel employees and owners across the country have completed AAHOA HTAT, and our recent training blitz across Florida could not have come at a better time.”
In December, AAHOA held the HTAT Florida Compliance Series to ensure its members in the sunshine state satisfied Florida’s human trafficking awareness training requirement that went into effect on Jan. 1. The Series, held in ten cities throughout the state, offered AAHOA members and their employees a free developed in partnership with Businesses Ending Slavery and Trafficking (BEST). Successful completion of the training, BEST Inhospitable to Human Trafficking Training sponsored by AAHOA, brings hotels into compliance with the mandate.
“Unfortunately, instances of trafficking are on the rise as criminals exploit people struggling with the multitude of hardships the pandemic imposes on our communities,” said Staton. “Hoteliers must remain vigilant, and AAHOA is proud to give them the tools they need to protect their guests and employees and, potentially, save lives.”
AAHOA is the largest hotel owners association in the world. The nearly 20,000 AAHOA members represent almost one in every two hotels in the United States. With billions of dollars in property assets and hundreds of thousands of employees, AAHOA members are core economic contributors in virtually every community. AAHOA is a proud defender of free enterprise and the foremost current-day example of realizing the American dream.
Once one of the world’s most powerful travel documents, the might of the US passport has been diminished during the pandemic. With US Covid-19 cases now beyond the 26 million mark, some nations continue to view American vacationers warily.
The current global pandemic has many Americans rethinking the way they travel. Road trips and camping vacations have grown in popularity, as many Americans have discovered the country has more than its fair share of stunning natural landscapes, from the Grand Canyon to Acadia National Park. Some people have even created memorable vacations in their backyards.
However, if you’re itching to leave the U.S., there are several countries around the world that will accept you (and your negative coronavirus test results), though some specific restrictions will apply. If you decide to travel, be sure to evaluate the risks and understand the safest ways to travel. You should also look out for yourself and others by taking necessary safety precautions and investing in one of the best face masks for travel.
Note that due to the pandemic, travel guidelines are constantly changing; you’ll want to check your destination’s official tourism website periodically before your trip. And, consider purchasing travel insurance, so you don’t lose money if your U.S. passport is no longer accepted at the last minute.
Below are the countries that currently accept travelers from the United States. If you decide to travel, you’ll also want to check with the State Department for information on returning from your visit as there are some restrictions in place, including specific airports you must transit through and quarantine rules in some cases. As of Jan. 26, the CDC requires all passengers traveling to the U.S. from a foreign country (including American citizens) to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken no more than three days before their flight. (Note: All mentions of coronavirus tests refer to the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test unless otherwise stated. This information was accurate at the time of publication and will be updated as additional information becomes available.)
In the end, it’s up to you to decide whether travel to international destinations is a good idea. There are obvious health risks. Nations might change rules at any time. You may have to follow stricter curfews and mask mandates than Americans are used to. Violations could involve hefty fines and even jail time. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US State Department provide Covid-19 risk assessments by country.
Also, keep this in mind: All air passengers age 2 and older must show proof of a negative Covid-19 test that’s no more than 72 hours old to enter the United States. That includes US citizens returning from trips to other countries. Be sure to get information on testing sites in your destination for your return trip before you go. US embassies report some places are having trouble returning test results within the 72-hour window.
One of the most comprehensive COVID-19 travel regulations is now in effect, nearly a year into the pandemic. All travelers—including citizens—entering the U.S. need a negative COVID test in order to board a flight from an international destination. The screening must be a viral test taken within three days of departure, according to the protocols put in place by the CDC.
Airlines are responsible for verifying the medical documentation, and in some cases denying boarding to those without proper test results. As a result, carriers have adapted a slew of new technologies to streamline the new process.
United Airlines, for instance, launched a “Travel-Ready Center” on Monday. Available through United’s app and website, the new online hub is a “one-stop shop where customers can review their specific COVID-19 travel requirements for upcoming travel, find local testing options in select markets, and upload any testing or vaccination records,” the airline says.
When a passenger uploads their test records to the Travel-Ready Center, United employees verify them electronically. After a passenger is deemed “travel-ready,” they are allowed to check in for their flight. Passengers who upload test results can be cleared for check-in and receive a mobile boarding pass all before arriving at the airport.
Later in February, United plans to launch a test-booking feature that would allow its passengers to make an appointment at one of more than 15,000 testing sites around the world. If the passenger tests negative and is able to travel based on the new protocols, the test provider will directly alert United.
Delta has similarly launched an online tool to help its passengers find acceptable testing centers around the world. Additionally, Delta is waiving change fees on international flights booked on or before January 12 (the day the new requirements were announced) if the ticket was originally scheduled for travel through February 16.
The fee waiver is presumably so customers have more time to schedule a test before departure, but getting a test might be less time consuming than travelers think, thanks to some flexibility in the CDC requirements. “A new feature is the inclusion of rapid testing into the mix, so it doesn’t necessarily mean it only has to be a PCR test,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian said on the airline’s recent earnings call. “And with the growth of antigen testing, the quality of antigen testing that’s out there, and the supplies in place, you literally could get some of these tests done within a 10-minute interval shortly before you return.”
American Airlines has also expanded a partnership with health passport app VeriFly: Passengers on all of American’s international flights can now download the app, choose their destination, and see their travel requirements. After uploading their COVID-19 test documents to the app, VeriFly will confirm the date and type of test, and send a QR code once approved for gate agents to scan.
Other airlines in the U.S. and around the world have been taking similar steps, even before the new CDC testing guidelines were announced. In December, JetBlue, Lufthansa, Swiss, United, and Virgin Atlantic began to roll out the CommonPass app—which makes test results easy to read, similar to VeriFly—on certain routes from New York, Boston, London, and Hong Kong. Other international carriers, including heavy hitters like Emirates, Qatar, and Etihad, have signed on for customers to use a similar app: IATA Travel Pass.
The majority of airlines’ new online tools have capabilities for passengers to upload their vaccination status as well, which some experts have predicted could become the next travel requirement in order to board international flights.
Now passengers traveling on Air India can fly direct to Hyderabad from Chicago’s O’hare Airport. The first-ever nonstop flight service between Chicago and Hyderabad launched on Jan 13. The new route is welcomed by passengers traveling from across the US to destinations in Southern and Central India.
“It’s very fortunate that the Indian Government arranged a direct flight from the US to Hyderabad. I came especially to Chicago to take this flight,” said Vijaya Mandeila who traveled from Houston to Chicago O’hare airport to take the maiden flight with his wife and two children.
Mandeila was among the first 238 passengers to board a full flight operated by the state-of-the-art Boeing 777-200LR aircraft offering eight first-class and 35 business class seats on Jan 13. Mandeila says that while he flies to India only once in two years, the new direct flight is very convenient. “The first port of entry will be Hyderabad, and all customs checks and luggage will directly go through Hyderabad instead of Delhi. It saves us time, especially when traveling with family and young children,” Mandeila said.
Air India’s direct flights from Chicago to Hyderabad will operate every Wednesday leaving Chicago at 2130 hrs. (local time) to arrive in Hyderabad at 0040 hrs with domestic connections to Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Kolkata, Bangalore. The return flight from Hyderabad to Chicago will operate weekly every Friday, departing from Hyderabad at 1250 hrs. and arrive in Chicago at 1805 hrs. (local time) on the same day.
Consul General Amit Kumar Commences Launch Ceremonies
The official launch of the first direct Air India flight from Chicago to Hyderabad commenced with a ribbon-cutting ceremony led by Consul General Amit Kumar at Chicago O’hare Airport on Jan 13. Amber Achilles Ritter, deputy commissioner Chicago Dept of Aviation; Benjamin Sipiora, O’Hare terminal manager for the City of Chicago; Chris Diaferio, executive director of The Chicago Airlines Terminal Consortium (CATCO), also participated in the ceremonies.
Hyderabad is the capital of southern India’s Telangana state, a significant center for India’s tech industry and a cultural melting pot with more than four dominant languages, including Urdu, Telugu, Tamil and Hindi.
Consul General Kumar stated that the new route builds connectivity between the US and India, facilitating commerce, trade, tourism and promoting people to people exchanges. Consul General Kumar took the opportunity to commend Air India for its support during the Vande Bharat Mission’s initial phases. “More than 45,000 people have traveled from Chicago as part of Vande Bharat Mission flights in over 160 flights last year. The Government has reached out to our citizens stranded across the world to facilitate a repatriation and outbound international travel of more than 47.2 lakh people under Vande Bharat Mission so far,” Kumar said in remarks after the ribbon-cutting ceremony on Jan 13.
Chicago to Hyderabad Direct Flight Receives Tremendous Community Response
Chris Diaferio, executive director of The Chicago Airlines Terminal Consortium (CATCO), which maintains and services the city-owned equipment that Air India uses, said he was delighted with the expansion and the ongoing commitment and partnership with Air India. “We are thrilled. We love Air India. We love that they continue to support their community with better options for travel. Air India has been here from the very start and is now adding more service, especially when there are continued challenges for the airline industry. We could not be more delighted,” Diaferio said.
Consul General Kumar also congratulated Air India and the team in Chicago headed by Vikash Shahal, airport manager and Sampath Jayasekar, senior sales assistant, on the expansion of Air India’s services in the USA. “We have received a tremendous response for this flight. It is very encouraging to see the amount of enthusiasm. We thank our passengers,” said Shahal. Sampath Jayasekar, senior sales assistant who is originally from Hyderabad, said that he felt proud that his native state of Hyderabad now has a direct flight to the US. “Our flight today is completely sold out, including first-class, business class and economy. We are getting an excellent response from the community. People from Andhra are especially excited about the new route. The nonstop flights to Hyderabad are full for the next three weeks,” Jayasekar said.
Passengers were offered a small token and special meals to commemorate the flight. Air India has also resumed offering full hot meals on board. A small group of community members participated in the launch’s diya lighting ceremony, followed by Ganesh aarti sung by Shreya Addanki. Mythri Addanki, Miss Telugu Universe 2020, was among the prominent youth who joined the launch event. “This is a momentous occasion and a big first step in how we are connecting Indians in the US and back home. I am Hyderabadi. I know we have a huge community here in Chicago and across the US. It’s a great way to make sure we are connected to our home, especially during Covid-19, when family is more important than ever,” said Addanki.
Sunil Shah, a prominent community leader and president of the Federation of India Associations (FIA) who attended the event, stated, “It’s an exciting moment for Chicago and Air India. I think so many people from Hyderabad will benefit from this flight. One more nonstop flight from Chicago will assist business travelers and people traveling back home.”
Neil Khot, Chicago area community leader said that while a nonstop flight from Chicago to Hyderabad is a big feather in the cap and will facilitate India’s economic and technological expansion between India and the US, he looks forward to Air India’s first direct flight to Mumbai.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday it will require a negative Covid-19 test from all air passengers entering the United States — a move it says may help slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Air passengers will be required to get a viral test within three days before their flight to the United States departs, and to provide written documentation of their lab results, or documentation of having recovered from Covid-19, the agency said in a statement to CNN.
CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield is expected to sign the order on Tuesday and it will go into effect on January 26. “Variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus continue to emerge in countries around the world, and there is evidence of increased transmissibility of some of these variants,” the CDC said in a statement. “With the US already in surge status, the testing requirement for air passengers will help slow the spread of the virus as we work to vaccinate the American public.”
If a passenger does not provide documentation of a negative test or recovery, or chooses not to take a test, the airline must not allow the passenger to board, the CDC said.“Testing does not eliminate all risk, but when combined with a period of staying at home and everyday precautions like wearing masks and social distancing, it can make travel safer, healthier, and more responsible by reducing spread on planes, in airports, and at destinations,” Redfield said in the statement.
The new variant of coronavirus, which appears to be more transmissible, has already been found in at least 10 states in samples dating back to mid-December. An airline industry group has expressed support for the new measure.
“[We are] writing to express our support for a [CDC] proposal to control the spread of COVID-19, including variants of the virus, by implementing a global program to require testing for travelers to the United States,” the industry group Airlines for America wrote to Vice President Mike Pence on January 4.
The new rule is similar to one put in place last month for passengers from the UK to the US, which requires that passengers have a negative test within three days of boarding their flight. For the UK requirement that went through last month, airlines can be subject to criminal penalties if they fail to comply, and passengers can be subject to criminal penalties if they willfully give false or misleading information.
The earlier requirement for UK travelers was a response to a new coronavirus variant that was identified in the UK. While the variant appears to spread more easily, there’s no evidence that it’s any more deadly or causes more severe disease, according to CDC.
At least 72 cases of a variant first identified in the UK have been found in 10 US states, according to data posted Monday by the CDC. That includes at least 32 cases in California, 22 cases in Florida, five cases in Minnesota, four cases in New York, three cases in Colorado, two cases in Connecticut, and one case each in Texas, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Georgia.
The variant has been identified in dozens of countries worldwide.
Air India Express announced that Indians in the UAE will no longer be needed to register with the Indian Embassy for travelling back to the nation.
Air India Express, on October 12, announced that Indians in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will no longer be needed to register with the Indian Embassy for travelling back to the nation. As part of the Air Bubble agreement between the two countries, the airline said that passengers travelling from UAE to India can book flights directly with Air India Express.
Phase 7 of Vande Bharat Mission
Last week, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) had said that the Vande Bharat Mission of the central government has brought back nearly 20 lakh employable Indians to the country from foreign shores. The Ministry of External Affairs had also informed that under the phase seven of the Vande Bharat Mission, which has been operational since October 1, 873 international flights have been scheduled from 25 countries to be operated during the course of October 2020.
MEA Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava had said that the Phase 7 mission include flights from among the 14 countries with which India has a bilateral ‘air bubble’ arrangement in place. He added that the air bubble agreement has been working satisfactorily. Further, Srivastava also said that the flights in phase 7 include Air India and Air India Express flights, private and foreign carriers, chartered flights, naval ships and land border crossings.
As the air travel industry attempts to find its footing after the holiday travel rush, Dubai-based airline Emirates has announced a welcome bit of good news: Its much-anticipated premium economy cabin has officially launched.
“While others cut back, Emirates is working hard to restore the products and services that we’ve had to suspend or adjust due to pandemic precautions, and introduce new offerings and enhancements,” Emirates CEO Tim Clark said in a statement.
The new premium economy cabin is located at the front of the double-decker plane’s main deck—or first level—and has 56 seats in a 2-4-2 layout. Each seat has 40 inches of pitch and is 19.5 inches wide. (Seats in its regular economy class have 32 to 34 inches of pitch and are 18 inches wide).
According to the carrier, Emirates premium economy seats emulate design elements found on its beloved business-class product. The new seats feature “cream-colored anti-stain leather with stitching details and a wood panel finishing,” an airline release said. Each seat also has a six-way adjustable headrest, calf rests, footrests, and an in-flight entertainment screen measuring 13.3 inches wide.
“Our First, Business and Economy experiences reset industry standards when they were introduced, and we are confident that our Premium Economy will also make its mark as a distinct premium offering,” Clark said.
The airline received its first Airbus A380 fitted with the new cabin class at the end of December. Five additional A380s with premium economy seats will be delivered throughout 2021 and 2022, in addition to being installed on a handful of the airline’s forthcoming Boeing 777X jets that will join Emirates’ all wide-body fleet in 2023. The carrier is also considering retrofitting its current A380 planes with the new premium cabin.
For now, Emirates premium economy seats on the single A380 will only be offered as a complimentary upgrade to certain customers “until we have a viable number of seats in our inventory,” Clark said. The airline has yet to announce which routes the new plane will fly, but Clark noted that the aircraft will be scheduled “on various routes so that our customers can experience our latest offering in all classes.” No additional service elements were announced, so the new cabin will likely have the same service standards as regular economy.
Other additions on board the new A380 include upgrades and refreshes to Emirates’ three other cabin classes, including wider and taller doors on the first-class suites; revamped flexible leather headrests in economy; refreshed design trims and modern fittings in the jet’s famous first-class shower spa; and a new color scheme for its business- and first-class bar lounge.
Both the shower spa and bar area have reopened to passengers as of October—with some COVID-19 safety tweaks, like drinks to-go from the bar to avoid congregation—after going on pause earlier in the pandemic.
To celebrate the premium economy cabin’s launch and entice bookings in the new year, Emirates is also having a fare sale, bookable through January 18 for travel through the end of May. Round-trip fares in economy between the U.S. and Africa start at $699, $909 to East and South East Asia, and $798 to Dubai; business-class fares start at $3,119 to the Middle East and $3,499 to Africa.
The carrier is allowing fee-free changes for up to two years after the original booking date on all trips for travel on or before June 30, 2021, as long as changes are to the same destination or within the same region in the same travel class. To find fares that are part of the sale, visit .
Four of Air India’s most experienced women pilots took off from San Francisco (SFO) on January 11th, (India time) for Bengaluru to operate the first-ever scheduled service between south India and the US. It is also the first time that an all-women cockpit crew of an Indian carrier flew over the North Pole.
“This will be the longest commercial flight in the world to be operated by Air India or any other airline in India…The total flight time on this route will be of more than 17 hours depending on the wind speed on that particular day,” Air India said in a statement. The direct distance between the two cities at opposite ends of the world is 13,993 km, with a time zone change of around 13.5 hours, an Air India official said.
The four record-setting pilots operating the almost 18-hour AI 176 that was scheduled to reach Bengaluru (BLR) early morning today are captains Zoya Aggarwal, Papagari Thanmai, Akansha Sonaware and Shivani Manhas. They are flying a Boeing 777 200 (long range or LR) VT-ALG that is named ‘Kerala’. The SFO airport wore the Indian flag colours to celebrate this occasion.
Bengaluru-SFO shortest flight distance is over 14,000 km, about 1,000 km more than Delhi-SFO. Very often airlines take longer routes to get tail winds and avoid headwinds. Kerala, for instance, took the longer Pacific route from Delhi to SFO on Wednesday with the same set of four pilots. The inaugural to Bengaluru came back via over the North Pole — getting tail winds on both sectors.
“Air India’s woman power flies high around the world,” Union Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Puri said on Twitter. “All women cockpit crew consisting of Capt Zoya Aggarwal, Capt Papagari Thanmai, Capt Akansha Sonaware & Capt Shivani Manhas will operate the historic inaugural flight between Bengaluru & San Francisco,” Mr. Puri said.
Flight AI176 will depart from San Francisco in the U.S. at 8.30 p.m. (local time) on Saturday, and land at the Kempegowda International Airport at 3.45 a.m. (local time) on Monday. “Captain Zoya Aggarwal is an accomplished pilot with a flying experience of more than 8000 hrs and command experience in a B-777 aircraft of more than 10 years and more than 2500 flying hours,” the national carrier said.
The flight will operate with a Boeing 777-200LR aircraft VT ALG with a seating capacity of 238 seats, including eight First Class, 35 Business Class, 195 Economy class configuration, besides four cockpit and 12 cabin crew, Air India said.
Almost fully booked
The first ever direct flight between the two tech hubs is almost fully booked — 225 out of 238 seats — despite the COVID-19 pandemic and concerns over air travel.
The flight, which has long been in the pipeline, will be the first direct non-stop flight between the west coast of the United States and southern India. Given the significant population of south Indians in San Francisco, home to the Silicon Valley, a direct flight has been a long-pending demand.
The biweekly flight will take off to San Francisco from Bengaluru on Mondays and Thursdays, and leave San Francisco for Bengaluru on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
In the past, research into outbreaks on airplanes focused on flights that took place last spring, when planes were full, passengers mostly didn’t wear masks and preventive measures weren’t broadly understood. A new study, however, examined a more recent outbreak on a flight that put numerous containment measures in place — and the results were not great for travellers.
In September, an outbreak occurred aboard a flight from Dubai to Auckland, New Zealand. The 86 passengers onboard went into a mandatory 14-day quarantine in New Zealand, and seven eventually tested positive. Researchers at the New Zealand Ministry of Health found that at least four were infected on the flight.
The aircraft, a Boeing 777-300ER, with a capacity of nearly 400 passengers, was only 25% full and the four people infected in flight were seated within four rows of one another during the 18-hour trip.
The in-flight outbreak occurred when additional precautions were in place and passengers were more cautious. But researchers still identified a number of holes. Two of the four people infected on the plane said they didn’t wear masks on the flight. The airline also did not require passengers to wear masks in the lobby before boarding or be tested preflight.
Previous studies on the risk of infection during air travel are mixed (airplane filtration systems are thought to help, even when a passenger is infected), but the latest research suggests that airlines need to tighten precautions even more to avert in-flight outbreaks.
Geneva – The International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced that it is in the final development phase of the IATA Travel Pass, a digital health pass that will support the safe reopening of borders. IATA (International Air Transport Association) represents some 290 airlines comprising 82% of global air traffic.
Governments are beginning to use testing as a means of limiting the risks of COVID-19 importation when reopening their borders to travelers without quarantine measures. IATA Travel Pass will manage and verify the secure flow of necessary testing or vaccine information among governments, airlines, laboratories, and travelers.
IATA is calling for systematic COVID-19 testing of all international travelers, and the information flow infrastructure needed to enable this must support:
Governments with the means to verify the authenticity of tests and the identity of those presenting the test certificates.
Airlines with the ability to provide accurate information to their passengers on test requirements and verify that a passenger meets the requirements for travel.
Laboratories with the means to issue digital certificates to passengers that will be recognized by governments, and;
Travelers with accurate information on test requirements, where they can get tested or vaccinated, and the means to securely convey test information to airlines and border authorities.
“Today, borders are double locked. Testing is the first key to enable international travel without quarantine measures. The second key is the global information infrastructure needed to securely manage, share, and verify test data matched with traveler identities in compliance with border control requirements. That’s the job of the IATA Travel Pass. We are bringing this to market in the coming months also to meet the needs of the various travel bubbles and public health corridors that are starting operation,” said Alexandre de Juniac, IATA’s Director General and CEO.
IATA Travel Pass incorporates four open-sourced and interoperable modules which can be combined for an end-to-end solution:
Global registry of health requirements – enables passengers to find accurate travel information, testing, and eventually, vaccine requirements for their journey.
Global registry of testing/vaccination centers – enables passengers to find testing centers and labs at their departure location, which meet the standards for testing and vaccination requirements of their destination.
Lab App – enables authorized labs and test centers to share test and vaccination certificates with passengers securely.
Contactless Travel App – enables passengers to (1) create a ‘digital passport,’ (2) receive test and vaccination certificates and verify that they are sufficient for their itinerary, and (3) share testing or vaccination certificates with airlines and authorities to facilitate travel. Travelers can also use this app to manage travel documentation digitally and seamlessly throughout their journey, improving the travel experience.
IATA and International Airlines Group (IAG) have been working together in the development of this solution. They will undertake a trial to demonstrate that this platform, combined with COVID-19 testing, can reopen international travel and replace quarantine.
The airline industry demands a cost-effective, global, and modular solution to safely restart travel. IATA Travel Pass is based on industry standards, and IATA’s proven experience in managing information flows around complex travel requirements.
IATA’s Timatic is used by most airlines to manage compliance with passport and visa regulations and will be the base for the global registry and verification of health requirements.
IATA’s One ID initiative was endorsed by a resolution at its 75th Annual General Meeting in 2019 to facilitate travel processes with a single identity token securely. It is the base for the IATA Contactless Travel App for identity verification that will also manage the test and vaccination certificates.
“Our main priority is to get people traveling again safely in the immediate term that means giving governments confidence that systematic COVID-19 testing can work as a replacement for quarantine requirements. And that will eventually develop into a vaccine program. The IATA Travel Pass is a solution for both. And we have built it using a modular approach based on open source standards to facilitate interoperability. It can be used in combination with other providers or as a standalone end-to-end solution. The most important thing is that it is responsive to industry’s needs while enabling a competitive market,” said Nick Careen, IATA’s Senior Vice President, Airport, Passenger, Cargo, and Security.
The first cross-border IATA Travel Pass pilot is scheduled for later this year, and the launch is slated for quarter one 2021.
Now that coronavirus vaccines are starting to roll out in the US and abroad, many people may be dreaming of the day when they can travel, shop and go to the movies again. But in order to do those activities, you may eventually need something in addition to the vaccine: a vaccine passport application.
Several companies and technology groups have begun developing smartphone apps or systems for individuals to upload details of their Covid-19 tests and vaccinations, creating digital credentials that could be shown in order to enter concert venues, stadiums, movie theaters, offices, or even countries.
The Common Trust Network, an initiative by Geneva-based nonprofit The Commons Project and the World Economic Forum, has partnered with several airlines including Cathay Pacific, JetBlue, Lufthansa, Swiss Airlines, United Airlines and Virgin Atlantic, as well as hundreds of health systems across the United States and the government of Aruba.
The CommonPass app created by the group allows users to upload medical data such as a Covid-19 test result or, eventually, a proof of vaccination by a hospital or medical professional, generating a health certificate or pass in the form of a QR code that can be shown to authorities without revealing sensitive information. For travel, the app lists health pass requirements at the points of departure and arrival based on your itinerary.
“You can be tested every time you cross a border. You cannot be vaccinated every time you cross a border,” Thomas Crampton, chief marketing and communications officer for The Commons Project, told CNN Business. He stressed the need for a simple and easily transferable set of credentials, or a “digital yellow card,” referring to the paper document generally issued as proof of vaccination.
Large tech firms are also getting in on the act. IBM (IBM) developed its own app, called Digital Health Pass, which allows companies and venues to customize indicators they would require for entry including coronavirus tests, temperature checks and vaccination records. Credentials corresponding to those indicators are then stored in a mobile wallet.
IBM’s Digital Health Pass app creates an online vaccine credential that can be stored in a mobile wallet. In an effort to address one challenge around returning to normalcy after vaccines are distributed widely, developers may now have to confront other challenges, ranging from privacy issues to representing the varied effectiveness of different vaccines. But the most pressing challenge may simply be avoiding the disjointed implementation and mixed success of tech’s previous attempt to address the public health crisis: contact tracing apps.
Early on in the pandemic, Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) set aside their smartphone rivalry to jointly develop a Bluetooth-based system to notify users if they’d been exposed to someone with Covid-19. Many countries and state governments around the world also developed and used their own apps.
“I think where exposure notification ran into some challenges was more of the piecemeal implementation choices, lack of federal leadership … where each state had to go it alone and so each state had to figure it out independently,” said Jenny Wanger, who leads the exposure notification initiatives for Linux Foundation Public Health, a tech-focused organization helping public health authorities around the world combat Covid-19.
To encourage better coordination this time, The Linux Foundation has partnered with the Covid-19 Credentials Initiative, a collective of more than 300 people representing dozens of organizations across five continents and is also working with IBM and CommonPass to help develop a set of universal standards for vaccine credential apps.
“If we’re successful, you should be able to say: I’ve got a vaccine certificate on my phone that I got when I was vaccinated in one country, with a whole set of its own kind of health management practices… that I use to get on a plane to an entirely different country and then I presented in that new country a vaccination credential so I could go to that concert that was happening indoors for which attendance was limited to those who have demonstrated that they’ve had the vaccine,” said Brian Behlendorf, executive director of Linux Foundation.
“It should be interoperable in the same way that email is interoperable, the same way that the web is interoperable,” he said. “Right now, we’re in a situation where there’s some moving parts that get us closer to that, but I think there’s a sincere commitment from everybody in the industry.”
Part of ensuring wide usage for vaccine passports is accounting for the large subset of the global population that still doesn’t use or have access to smartphones. A few companies within the Covid-19 Credentials Initiative are also developing a smart card that strikes a middle ground between the traditional paper vaccine certificates and an online version that’s easier to store and reproduce.
“For us it’s [about] how that digital credential can be stored, can be presented, not only through smartphones but also in other ways for those people who don’t have access to stable internet and also who don’t own smartphones,” said Lucy Yang, co-lead of the Covid-19 Credentials Initiative. “We’re looking into it, and there are companies who are doing really promising work.
\CommonPass has partnered with several airlines to start rolling out its health credential app on select international flights. Once they build a vaccine passport, companies will need to make sure people are comfortable using it. That means confronting concerns about the handling of private medical information.
CommonPass, IBM and the Linux Foundation have all stressed privacy as central to their initiatives. IBM says it allows users to control and consent to the use of their health data and allows them to choose the level of detail they want to provide to authorities.
“Trust and transparency remain paramount when developing a platform like a digital health passport, or any solution that handles sensitive personal information,” the company said in a blog post. “Putting privacy first is an important priority for managing and analyzing data in response to these complex times.”
With vaccines manufactured by multiple companies across several countries in varying stages of development, there are a lot of variables that passport makers will need to account for.
“A point of entry — whether that’s a border, whether that’s a venue — is going to want to know, did you get the Pfizer vaccine, did you get the Russian vaccine, did you get the Chinese vaccine, so they can make a decision accordingly,” said Crampton. The variance can be wide: the vaccine developed by Chinese state-owned pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm, for example, has an efficacy of 86% against Covid-19, while the vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna each have an efficacy of around 95%.
It’s also unclear how effective the vaccines are in stopping the transmission of the virus, says Dr. Julie Parsonnet, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University. So while a vaccine passport app will show that you’ve received the shot, it may not be a guarantee that you safely attend an event or get on a flight.
“We still don’t know if vaccinated people can transmit infection or not,” she told CNN Business. “Until that is clarified, we won’t know whether ‘passports’ will be effective.”
Still, Behlendorf anticipates that the rollout and adoption of vaccine passports will happen rather quickly once everything falls into place and expects a variety of apps that can work with each other to be “widely available” within the first half of 2021. “Rest assured, the nerds are on it,” he said.
India’s national carrier Air India is set to connect Bengaluru and San Francisco via a non-stop flight from 2021, the Kempegowda International Airport. As of January 11, 2021, Air India will launch 2x weekly flights between Bangalore and San Francisco, as follows: AI175 Bangalore to San Francisco departing 2:30PM arriving 5:00PM
AI176 San Francisco to Bangalore departing 8:30PM arriving 2:30AM (+2 days)
The US-bound flight will operate Mondays and Thursdays and will take 16hr, while the India-bound flight will operate Tuesdays and Saturdays and will take 16hr30min. The Boeing 777-200LR that will be used for this route features three cabins, including first class, business class, and economy.
“This would be the first non-stop flight between Bengaluru and the United States, connecting the world’s two tech hubs — the original Silicon Valley and the Silicon Valley of India.
“The first non-stop flight between Bengaluru and San Francisco is a significant milestone for BLR Airport and will transform it as the new gateway to India. This will tremendously help passengers, enabling faster and easier access to cities on the West Coast of the United States.”
As per the statement, the new non-stop service is expected to meet the demand of corporate customers for travel to San Fracisco and adjoining areas in the US.
“Air India plans to operate a 238-seater Boeing 777-200 LR aircraft, to serve the largest unserved international origin/ destination (O/D) market for BLR Airport. Bengaluru and San Francisco are ranked first and second, respectively, among the world’s top 45 digitally advanced cities.”
“The new route sets two records — it would be Air India’s longest route at 14,000+ km (8,698 miles) and longest flight to and from India (over 16 hours). The national carrier has opened ticket booking from November 25.”
The United Arab Emirates will extend its “golden” visa system – which grants 10-year residency in the Gulf state – to certain professionals, specialized degree-holders and others, the UAE’s vice president said on Sunday.
Foreigners in the UAE usually have renewable visas valid for only a few years tied to employment. The government in the past couple of years has made its visa policy more flexible, offering longer residencies for certain types of investors, students and professionals.
All holders of doctorate degrees, medical doctors and also computer, electronics, programming, electrical and biotechnology engineers are eligible, UAE Vice President and the ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum said in a statement.
Also eligible are those with specialized degrees in artificial intelligence, big data and epidemiology, as well as high school students living in the UAE who rank top in the country and students from certain universities with a GPA of 3.8 or higher.
After first announcing a long-term visa plan in 2018, the UAE in 2019 started granting 5- and 10-year renewable visas to certain foreign investors, entrepreneurs, chief executives, scientists and outstanding students.
The emirate of Dubai, a Middle East trade and tourism hub, in September said it would grant visas renewable every five years to wealthy foreign retirees.
An oil and gas producer, the UAE’s economy has been hit by the coronavirus pandemic and low oil prices, prompting many expatriates to leave.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today announced a proposed rule that would limit discretionary work authorization for aliens who have final orders of removal and who have been temporarily released from DHS custody on an order of supervision (OSUP). The rule would align the issuance of discretionary employment authorization with the administration’s priorities to protect U.S. workers and strengthen immigration enforcement. The rule will encourage these aliens to depart the country. Orders of supervision allow DHS to place conditions on and monitor aliens with final orders of removal who have been temporarily released from DHS custody until DHS has the travel documents necessary to remove the alien from the United States. The OSUP contains several conditions for release, including a requirement that aliens cooperate with efforts to procure the travel documents for removal, check in with DHS on designated dates, and present themselves for removal once it is arranged. “Authorizing employment benefits to aliens who have already had due process and have been ordered removed by the U.S. government undermines the rule of law and weakens DHS enforcement and removal operations,” said USCIS Deputy Director for Policy Joseph Edlow. “This effort would also remove the economic incentive for these aliens to not cooperate in the effort to obtain travel documents to return to their home countries.” Under current regulations, an alien who has a final order of removal and who is temporarily released from DHS custody on an OSUP is generally eligible for an employment authorization document (EAD). This creates a disincentive for the alien to depart or cooperate with their home country to obtain travel documents to depart the United States. These aliens have used substantial government resources throughout the removal process and have ultimately been ordered removed from the United States by an immigration judge. Under the proposed rule, only a small subset of these aliens who can demonstrate that DHS has determined that their removal from the United States is impracticable would remain eligible for discretionary employment authorization. DHS will require such aliens to establish economic necessity to work, consistent with other discretionary EAD categories, and USCIS will assess whether they warrant a favorable exercise of discretion for a grant of employment authorization. In addition, aliens who qualify for discretionary employment authorization under the proposed rule and subsequently seek to renew their work authorization would also be required to establish that their employer participates in E-Verify and is in good standing in the program. The proposed rule also would limit the validity period of the employment authorization for aliens released on an OSUP to one year, regardless of whether it is an initial or a renewal employment authorization. When a final rule is published, the changes made by the rule will apply to initial and renewal applications filed on or after the final rule’s effective date. Aliens who are employment-authorized prior to the final rule’s effective date will remain employment authorized until the expiration date on their EAD, unless the EAD is terminated or revoked. The final rule also would not affect applications to replace EADs granted before the final rule’s effective date.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced today plans to implement a revised version of the naturalization civics test. The agency first announced plans to revise the civics test in July 2019. USCIS revised the civics test as part of a decennial update to ensure that it remains an instrument that comprehensively assesses applicants’ knowledge of American history, government and civic values. The civics test is administered to applicants who apply for U.S. citizenship and is one of the statutory requirements for naturalizing. Applicants who apply for naturalization on or after Dec. 1, 2020, will take the updated version of the test.Those who apply before Dec. 1, 2020, will take the current version of the test. “USCIS has diligently worked on revising the naturalization test since 2018, relying on input from experts in the field of adult education to ensure that this process is fair and transparent,” said USCIS Deputy Director for Policy Joseph Edlow. “Naturalization allows immigrants to become fully vested members of American society, with the same rights and responsibilities as citizens by birth, and offering a fair test, which prepares naturalization applicants for these responsibilities, is of upmost importance to our agency.” The revised test includes more questions that test the applicant’s understanding of U.S. history and civics, in line with the statutory requirements, and covers a variety of topics that provide the applicant with more opportunities to learn about the United States as part of the test preparation process. The revised test will not change the passing score, which will remain at 60%. Candidates must answer 12 questions correctly, out of 20 in order to pass. USCIS will maintain the current guidelines for statutorily established special considerations for applicants who are 65 years old or older and have at least 20 years of lawful permanent resident status. These applicants will be asked 10 questions and must answer a minimum of six questions correctly in order to pass. The test items and study guides can be found on the Citizenship Resource Center on the USCIS website. USCIS has also updated the USCIS Policy Manual (PDF, 323.82 KB) accordingly; see Volume 12, Part E, English and Civics Testing and Exceptions, Chapter 2, English and Civics Testing. USCIS piloted the test with community-based organizations and volunteers across the country in summer 2020. The data collected from this pilot was used to help USCIS make determinations about the language and grammatical structure of individual test items, linguistic and cognitive weights assigned to each test item, and to identify those items appropriate for applicants who are 65 years or older, have held lawful permanent resident status for at least 20 years and are granted special consideration by statute. For more information on USCIS and its programs, please visit uscis.gov or follow us on Twitter (@uscis), Instagram (/uscis), YouTube (/uscis), Facebook (/uscis) and LinkedIn (/uscis).
New York’s LaGuardia Airport is the city’s latest hub to open a COVID-19 testing site—and the tests are free to all, even those without insurance. Although all three New York-area airports now have testing facilities, LaGuardia became the first to offer tests free of charge when the new site opened its doors earlier in October. Located on the first floor of the Terminal B parking garage, the walk-up testing site is open to New York residents, visitors, and airport employees with no appointments required. The facility is open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., and those getting tested will also receive free parking in the Terminal B garage.
Tests are administered by NYC Health & Hospitals clinicians via PCR nose swabs, and results are available by phone within 48 hours. While the tests are free, patients with insurance will be asked to provide their policy information but will not be charged a copay or co-insurance fees. (More information can be found on New York’s Test and Trace Corps website.) Similar nose swab tests conducted at other airport sites run about $150 per screening.
Although the airport location is a convenient option for fliers on their way to countries or states that require a negative COVID-19 test to enter or travel more freely, there is no guarantee results will be available by the time the plane lands.
LaGuardia’s free tests are part of a larger push from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to have complimentary tests available at New York’s airports. A similar free testing site is set to open John F. Kennedy International Airport in coming weeks, according to the Port Authority.
Numerous airports and airlines are hoping that widespread testing for COVID-19 can help restart air travel by enabling fliers with negative test results to bypass lengthy quarantine requirements. The airports’ free tests come as United Airlines announced a similar free rapid testing trial program for passengers on its Newark-to-Heathrow route. Although only customers who test negative for the virus will be allowed to board those flights, the passengers will still be required to follow the U.K.’s 14-day quarantine regulations upon landing in London
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced last week it sent a proposed rule to the Federal Register radically changing how it selects H-1B temporary professional workers. The H-1B program was intended to allow employers to fill gaps in their workforce and remain competitive in the global economy, however it has now expanded far beyond that, often to the detriment of U.S. workers. Data shows that the more than a half million H-1B nonimmigrants in the United States have been used to displace U.S. workers. This has led to reduced wages in a number of industries in the U.S. labor market and the stagnation of wages in certain occupations. These latest efforts on H-1B visas are part of a larger Trump Administration goal to protect American workers.
“We have entered an era in which economic security is an integral part of homeland security. Put simply, economic security is homeland security. In response, we must do everything we can within the bounds of the law to make sure the American worker is put first,” said Acting Secretary Chad Wolf. “The Department of Homeland Security is honored to take this important step toward putting Americans first and to continue to implement President Trump’s agenda to keep our economy secure.”
This rule will combat the use of H-1B workers to serve as a low-cost replacement for otherwise qualified American workers.
The new rule will:
Narrow the definition of “specialty occupation” as Congress intended by closing the overbroad definition that allowed companies to game the system;
Require companies to make “real” offers to “real employees,” by closing loopholes and preventing the displacement of the American worker; and,
Enhance DHS’s ability to enforce compliance through worksite inspections and monitor compliance before, during, and after an H1-B petition is approved.
Stephen Yale-Loehr, professor of immigration law at Cornell Law School and co-author of a leading 21-volume immigration law series, says that though the rule is premised on preserving jobs for U.S. workers, it overlooks the economic benefits of high skilled foreign workers. If you’d like to connect with Prof. Yale-Loehr about this development please contact him directly at 607-379-9707 or SWY1@cornell.edu
Yale-Loehr says: “The rule would scrap the current random selection system and instead select H-1B workers based on their salaries. The highest paid workers would be allowed to file an H-1B petition; workers offered lower salaries might not be able to file a petition if more than 85,000 higher paid H-1B workers filed petitions first. Current H-1B regulations already require employers to pay the higher of the actual or prevailing wage for similarly situated U.S. workers. Thus, it is hard to know what more the proposed rule would do.
“By effectively increasing salaries for H-1B workers, the proposed rule would harm all employers trying to hire foreign temporary professional workers, but especially schools, startup companies, and smaller companies that cannot afford to pay the high salaries that Silicon Valley and other big companies offer.
“The rule is premised on preserving jobs for U.S. workers. However, the rule fails to understand that many nonimmigrant workers, especially high skilled foreign workers, help grow the economy. For example, one study found that every H-1B worker creates about five jobs for U.S. workers in the technology sector. “The new proposed rule may score points with the President’s political base, but it flunks Economics 101.”
The Indian Embassy in Washington, D.C, issued a public notice regarding a change in its outsourcing service provider. The notice is as follows: The existing service center of Cox & Kings Global Services (CKGS) located at 1250, 23rd Street, NW, Washington DC 20037, for providing outsourcing services for Visa, OCI, Renunciation, Passport and Global Entry Program (GEP) (Website: in.ckgs.us) will shut down its operations at close of business (5 p.m. EST) on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2020.
The Consulate General of India in New York has changed its service provider for visas and other services from Cox & Kings Global Services (CKGS) to VFS Global. According to a press release, the existing service center of Cox & Kings Global Services (CKGS) located at 235 West, 23rd Street, New York 10011 will no longer be providing outsourcing services for Visa, OCI, Renunciation, Passport and Global Entry Programme (GEP) (Website: www.in.ckgs.us)and will shut down its operations at close of business on October 14, 2020.
The new service provider, VFS Global will commence its operations from November 02, 2020. The press release detailed the options available to applicants during this transition as follows:
In this context, applicants can only submit applications on the CKGS website before the above deadline. Applicants must ensure that the documents are shipped to CKGS with suitable pre-paid return envelope in a manner to ensure it reaches CKGS by October16, 2020. Any applications received after October 16, 2020 at CKGS will be returned to the applicants without processing.
With effect from October 14, 2020 and till VFS Global commences its operations on November 02, 2020, the Consulate General of India, New York will provide services in emergency cases directly. Applicants falling under CGI, New York jurisdiction are advised to follow the instructions given below to avail emergency service
(i) Visa: Emergency visa will be issued to the eligible categories allowed to travel to India as per the advisories issued by the Government of India. Applicants for emergency visa may write an email to visa.newyork@mea.gov.in or through PRAMIT dashboard available on our website www.indiainnewyork.gov.in explaining the exigency, The Consulate thereafter will inform you of the next steps.
(ii) Passport: For emergency passport services, applicants are requested to send an email to passport.newyork@mea.gov.in or through PRAMIT dashboard available on our website www.indiainnewyork.gov.in. Once the request has been approved by the Consulate, the applicant will be informed of the procedure for initiating application process. The approved applicants may send the completed form by postal mail to Consulate along with return pre-paid envelope for further processing.
(iii) OCI: All OCI services will remain suspended till the new service provider takes over on November 02, 2020.
(iv) Attestation Services: Miscellaneous Consular services such as Power of Attorney, Birth Certificate, PCC etc. shall be continue to be accepted by postal mail. These can be applied through the following link — https://www.indiainnewyork.gov.in/Miscellaneous_general_info_new
The contact details of VFS Global, service fee details, operational hours, website e will be published on Consulate’s website shortly.
Any further query should be addressed through PRAMIT dashboard available onwww.indiainnewyorgov.in
Resuming international flights remains one of the most contentious issues in reopening as several countries across the world are going through a second wave of Covid-19 infections, and opening airports to foreigners is being seen as a major reason.
Most of the countries have resumed international flights in a staggered manner but these central and South American countries have so far not allowed international flights since March.
Panama: Panama will welcome international tourists from October 12. A negative SARS-CoV-2 PCR or antigen test from within 48 hours will be required to get an exemption from quarantine. On March 23, Panama suspended all international passenger flights.
Argentina: Argentina is likely to resume international flights from October 12, or a few days later, but by mid October, the government has said. This South American nations has been observing one of the most stringent lockdowns.
Guyana: This South American country will resume international flights from October 12.
British Airways will start its London-Lahore flights from October 12. At present, British Airways flies between London and Islamabad. British Airways will start its London-Lahore flights from October 12. At present, British Airways flies between London and Islamabad.
Global airlines body International Air Transport Association has recently predicted that the global airline industry will burn through USD 77 billion in cash during the second half of 2020 despite the resumption of flight services. “The cash drain continued during the summer months, with airlines expected to go through an additional USD 77 billion of their cash during the second half of this year and a further USD 60-70 billion in 2021. The industry is not expected to turn cash positive until 2022,” it said.
The aviation sector in India has also been significantly impacted due to the pandemic. In July, the country’s largest airline IndiGo declared a net loss of Rs 2,884.3 crore for the first quarter of 2020-21.
My international travelers, their trip begins the moment they arrive at an airport abroad. And entering a country from any of these top 10 international gateways ensures your journey will get off to a smooth start. Many of them have undergone dramatic transformations in recent years, as various famous architects worked their magic, creating bright and airy spaces, with amenities ranging from spas and yoga rooms to outdoor gardens and swimming pools. These terminals are such an antidote to jet lag, you might even want to extend your layover. Read on to see how the votes stacked up in our 33rd edition of our annual Readers’ Choice Awards.
Istanbul Airport (IST)
Opened just last year amid great fanfare—and with bold ambitions to become theworld’s biggest airport—the new IST is already garnering praise for its modern design by Grimshaw Architects, which has netted awards for its emphasis on efficiency and sustainability. With high-tech touches like a fleet of robots to direct passengers through the 818-million-square-foot hub and runway capacity to move a total of 90 flights per hour, the airport is poised to take off as a major global player.
Zurich Airport (ZRH)
As Switzerland’s largest international airport, Zurich is also the main hub for Swiss International, which operates no fewer than nine lounges (and those lounges are no joke, with champagne and whiskey bars). Looking for a place to buy some duty-free chocolate? There are more than 80 shops here to browse. Readers also like the variety of restaurants and bars—even grocery stores—and, if weather cooperates, an outdoor observation deck with sweeping views of the action on the runways.
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, Mumbai (BOM)
As the second busiest airport hub in India, Chhatrapati Shivaji has been transformed in recent years from an aging, overcrowded facility to a gleaming international hub. The modern Terminal 2, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, has won prizes for its airy, open design; it also features a wealth of dining and shopping options, including its GVK First and Business class lounge that offers spa and shower facilities and a full meal service. There’s also a four-star transit hotel right in the airport for layover travelers
Hong Kong International Airport (HKG)
Hong Kong’s international airport offers fast connections to the city from its island aerie, via an Airport Express that whisks travelers from terminal to city center in 24 minutes. It’s also one of the region’s top connecting hubs, with service to dozens of destinations in mainland China alone. Passengers on a layover appreciate the wide array of premium class lounges, amenities like nap rooms, and the Regal Airport Hotel attached to the main terminal, which Skytrax consistently ranks as one of the world’s best airport hotels.
Tokyo International Airport/Haneda (HND)
For years, Tokyo’s Haneda was primarily a domestic airport, but it’s gaining long-distance flights—and a strong international following. What accounts for its popularity? Simply put, it’s not Narita, the country’s bustling international hub that’s a 45-mile drive from the capital, notorious for, among other things, the $200 cab fare it takes to get there. Haneda, by contrast, is just ten miles from city center, but it’s not just proximity that wins over fliers. More than just a close-in alternative, Haneda gets high marks for the comfort and cleanliness of its terminals, a wide array of shopping and dining options, and fast and efficient transportation links to downtown Tokyo.
Sangster International Airport (MBJ)
For travelers to Jamaica, a great way to begin a vacation is to avoid the region’s hectic hub airports and fly directly into Montego Bay airport. A quieter alternative to, say, San Juan, it’s developed a following not only for its clean and efficient facilities, but for its “Club Mobay” VIP lounge program for both arrivals and departures, offered in partnership with the area’s leading hotels. Essentially, it’s a concierge-style service that whisks you through formalities, ensuring that you barely touch the airport on your way out the door—and onto that blissful beach retreat you came for.
Dubai International Airport (DXB)
As one of the biggest airports in the world overall, Dubai, unsurprisingly, also has one of the world’s biggest duty-free shopping centers. As the base for flag airline Emirates, a Reader’s Choice favorite, Dubai is also served by scores of international airlines—and it’s long been a popular stopover destination for North American travelers heading to the Far East or South Pacific. Amenities like zen gardens and nap pods help make pass the time on a stay of any length.
Incheon International Airport (ICN)
Seoul’s main international airport opened 20 years ago on reclaimed land in the port city of Incheon, and has been expanding ever since: A second passenger terminal opened in 2018, part of the airport’s aim to double its capacity to 100 million passengers annually. Primarily serving the country’s two main airlines, Korean and Asiana, Incheon International also gains points for its spacious VIP lounges and amenities, including an indoor skating rink, a spa, and a “Cultural Street” with local cuisine and dance performances. While it’s 30 miles from the capital, a high-speed rail link makes the trip from terminal to city center in 43 minutes.
Doha (DOH)
Hamad International Airport is a major connecting hub for Qatar’s eponymous home airline, also a Readers’ Choice pick, and at times, it can seem more like a resort hotel than a bustling transportation hub, with amenities like a fitness center, squash courts and an indoor swimming pool. It’s gotten high marks for its premium amenities, with no fewer than eight premium lounges, plus quiet rooms and child’s entertainment zones for passengers in any airline class. For those on longer layovers, there is an upscale hotel right inside the terminal, with half- or full-day rates available.
Singapore Changi Airport (SIN)
That Changi again snagged the top spot among world airports is no surprise, given that it’s home to our readers’ favorite carrier, Singapore Airlines, making it an ideal gateway to dozens of locations in the region. The airport is a destination in itself, with an indoor waterfall, butterfly garden, and open-air decks and restaurants. Transit passengers can take a free city tour, lounge by the swimming pool, or binge-watch flicks at the free 24-hour cinema. Traveler readers also like the self-boarding gates and free and fast Wi-Fi, and family travelers appreciate the vast play areas.
The Trump administration moved Oct. 6 to cut back H-1B visas for foreign skilled workers and tightened wage-based entry barriers citing “data” that more than 500,000 Americans have lost their jobs because of “H-1B non-immigrants.” India and China account for the lion’s share of H-1B visas. As per U.S. government data, India accounts for upwards of 70 percent, most years.
In a call with reporters, Acting Deputy DHS Secretary Ken Cuccinelli said about one-third of the people who have applied for H-1B visas would be denied under the new rules. With Trump laid up with COVID-19, his poll numbers tanking and less than 30 days to go before the U.S. election, the timing of the H-1B visa hammering is business as usual for foreign workers.
“It would have been a surprise if this hadn’t happened,” an H-1B worker on site at JP Morgan in New York City told IANS. The worker asked not to be named. The salary requirement will be a “game changer” in favor of the Trump administration, this worker said.
Many H-1B workers expressed a version of the same sentiment. They’ve seen this movie before. It’s Trump’s all-base, all the time anthem to fire up his most vocal supporters, they said.
The latest blow comes as the ducks line up across multiple departments that coordinate and monitor the crisscrossing elements of foreign worker visas: U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Department of Homeland Security.
The Department of Labor’s revisions to minimum salary requirements take effect Oct. 8 and the DHS’ H-1B revisions will hit home in 60 days. “When seeking to employ an H-1B, H-1B1, or E-3 visa, U.S. employers must attest that they will pay non-immigrant workers, during the period of authorized employment, the higher of the prevailing wage or the actual wage paid to other employees with similar experience and qualifications,” the Department of Labor announced.
The gaslighting of the “low cost H-1B pay check is a well worn anthem and has become louder in the Trump years. The word “undercut” was used multiple times on Oct. 6 in a round robin of smoothly coordinated press-releases and telephonic briefings across the DOL and DHS.
The DOL rule will raise the four salary tiers for employees on H-1Bs and other professional visas, which currently begin at the 17th percentiles for each industry, to the 45th percentile.
“Under the existing wage levels, artificially low prevailing wages provide an opportunity for employers to hire and retain foreign workers at wages well below what their US counterparts – meaning U..S workers in the same labor market, performing similar jobs, and possessing similar levels of education, experience, and responsibility – make, creating an incentive – entirely at odds with the statutory scheme – to prefer foreign workers to U.S. workers, and causing downward pressure on the wages of the domestic workforce,” reads an excerpt from the DOL interim final rule.
The Department is also tightening the screws on the definition of “specialty occupation” to make it align with what it calls the “verbatim” description.
In parallel, DHS will narrow the definition of “specialty occupation,” require companies to make “real” offers to “real employees,” and turbocharge its own ability to ensure compliance “before, during, and after an H1-B petition is approved.”
“Data shows that the more than a half million H-1B non-immigrants in the United States have been used to displace U.S. workers,” reads a statement from the Department of Homeland Security
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in Oakland, Calif., agreed with several big U.S. business groups, which argued President Donald Trump exceeded his authority by imposing the immigration restrictions. The order, at odds with the conclusion reached by a federal judge in Washington, means the fight will likely move to an appeals court.
White said his order doesn’t apply nationwide but only to the members of the plaintiff organizations. Those members, which include giants like Amazon.com and Microsoft Corp., comprise hundreds of thousands of U.S. businesses of all sizes and from a cross-section of economic sectors.
Trump declared in a June proclamation that foreign workers pose a threat to the U.S. labor market amid the downturn caused by coronavirus pandemic. His decree froze new H-1B and H-4 visas, used by technology workers and their families, as well as L visas for intracompany transfers and most J visas for work- and study-abroad programs, including au pairs, through the end of the year. Thursday’s order also blocks restrictions on J and L visas.
In his ruling, White distinguished the visa ban from Trump’s earlier travel ban restricting nationals of six predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S., which was upheld by the Supreme Court as a legitimate exercise of the president’s power to conduct foreign affairs.
The visa ban “deals with a purely domestic economic issue — the loss of employment during a national pandemic,” the judge wrote. “This court rejects the position that the proclamation implicates the president’s foreign affairs powers simply because it affects immigration.”
White added, “There must be some measure of constraint on presidential authority in the domestic sphere in order not to render the executive an entirely monarchical power in the immigration context.”
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Retail Federation sued to block the restrictions, saying they impede the hiring of engineers, executives, IT experts, doctors, nurses and other critical workers who help drive the American economy.
The Chamber is a longtime supporter of high-skilled immigration and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which provides legal status for some migrants who entered the country as children.
Approximately 580,000 foreign workers with H-1B visas in specialized jobs are in the United States, according to the suit. Almost 160,000 L visas were issued in 2019 for executives, managers and employees with special experience and their dependents, and about 300,000 exchange visitors enter the U.S. annually on J visas, the Chamber said. Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, is among the companies that have expressed support for a court order blocking Trump’s policy.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has vowed to address the Indian-American community’s concerns related to the H-1B work visa, which President Donald Trump’s administration has temporarily suspended, the media reported.
Biden made the remarks while addressing a virtual fundraiser organized by the community on Tuesday, The American Bazaar reported on Wednesday. “It makes parents wonder whether their kids will have the kind of future they dreamed of when they came here.
“As President, I promise I am going to draw on the best, not the worst, beat this pandemic and build the economy back, help our kids get a good education and make sure healthcare is a right not a privilege,” the former Vice President was quoted as saying.
In June, the Trump administration suspended the H-1B and several other categories of foreign work visas until the year end. The decision has been opposed by Indians, who have received as much as 70 per cent of H-1B visas over the past five years.
US business leaders have also criticized the move saying it will block their ability to recruit critically needed skilled workers from foreign countries. Slamming Trump for the move, the Democratic nominee said: “This President makes things worse, not better.”
While praising the community for their hard work and entrepreneurship, he said Indian-Americans have powered the economic growth of the US and helped forge cultural dynamism in the country, adding: “That is a continuation of who we are, we are a nation of immigrants.”
Biden has chosen Indian-origin California Senator, Kamala Harris as his running mate for Vice President. During the virtual event, Biden also spoke to Vivek Murthy, who served as surgeon general during the former Barack Obama administration, during which also recalled the work he had done to forge close India-US relations, reports The American Bazaar.
“Seven years ago, as Vice President, I told a business owner in Mumbai that the US-India partnership was the defining relationship in the 21st century. “I am not just saying it now, I said it then and I mean it… I will work to make sure it occurs,” he added.
Meanwhile, support for Biden among Indian-Americans appears to have fallen by 11 per cent compared to the voting for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the 2016 elections, according to polls.
While she received 77 per cent of votes from Indian-Americans, the 2020 Asian American Voter Survey (AAVS) released earlier this month found Biden getting only the support of 66 per cent. Trump’s support has however, increased by 12 per cent in the court years to 28 per cent. (IANS)
India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has updated the Guidelines for international arrivals in India. Per the announcement of the Ministry, here are the guidelines:
Before Planning for Travel
i. All travelers should submit self-declaration form on the online portal (www.newdelhiairport.in) at least 72 hours before the scheduled travel. ii. They should also give an undertaking on the portal that they would undergo mandatory quarantine for 14 days i.e. 7 days paid institutional quarantine at their own cost, followed by 7 days isolation at home with self-monitoring of health. iii. Only for compelling reasons/ cases of human distress such as pregnancy, death in family, serious illness and parent(s) with children of the age of 10 years or below, home quarantine may be permitted for 14 days. iv. If they wish to seek such exemption under para (iii) above, they shall apply to the online portal (www.newdelhiairport.in) at least 72 hours before boarding. The decision taken by the government as communicated on the online portal will be final. v. Travelers may also seek exemption from institutional quarantine by submitting a negative RTPCR test report on arrival. This test should have been conducted within 96 hrs prior to undertaking the journey. The test report should be uploaded on the portal for consideration. Each passenger shall also submit a declaration with respect to authenticity of the report and will be liable for criminal prosecution, if found otherwise. The test report could also be produced upon arrival at the point of entry airport in India.
Before Boarding
i. Dos and Don’ts shall be provided along with ticket to the travelers by the agencies concerned. ii. All passengers shall be advised to download Arogya Setu app on their mobile devices. iii. At the time of boarding the flight/ ship, only asymptomatic travelers will be allowed to board after thermal screening. iv. Passengers arriving through the land borders will also have to undergo the same protocol as above, and only those who are asymptomatic will be enabled to cross the border into India. v. Suitable precautionary measures such as environmental sanitation and disinfection shall be ensured at the airports. vi. During boarding and at the airports, all possible measures to ensure social distancing to be ensured.
During Travel
i. Travelers who had not filled in self-declaration form on the portal shall fill the same in duplicate in the flight/ship and a copy of the same will be given to Health and Immigration officials present at the airport/ seaport/ Iandport. Alternatively, such travelers may submit self-declaration form on the online portal at arriving airport/ seaport/ Iandport as per the directions of the concerned authorities, if such facility is available. ii. Suitable announcement about COVID-19 including precautionary measures to be followed shall be made at airports/port and in flights/ships and during transit. iii. While on board the flight/ ship, required precautions such as wearing of masks, environmental hygiene, respiratory hygiene, hand hygiene etc. are to be observed by airline/ ship staff, crew and all passengers.
On arrival
i. Deboarding should be done ensuring social distancing. ii. Thermal screening would be carried out in respect of all the passengers by the Health officials present at the airport/ seaport/ Iandport. The self-declaration form filled online shall be shown (or a copy of physical self-declaration form to be submitted) to the airport health staff. iii. The passengers found to be symptomatic during screening shall be immediately isolated and taken to medical facility as per health protocol. iv. Post thermal screening, the passengers who have been exempted from institutional quarantine (decision as indicated on the online portal in advance) will show the same to the respective State Counters on their cell phones/other mode before being allowed home quarantine for 14 days. v. The remaining passengers shall be taken to suitable institutional quarantine facilities, to be arranged by the respective State/ UT Governments. vi. These passengers shall be kept under institutional quarantine for a minimum period of 7 days. They shall be tested as per ICMR protocol available at https://www.mohfw.gov.in/pdf/Revisedtestingguidelines.pdfIf they test positive, they shall be assessed clinically. a. If they are assessed as asymptomatic / pre-symptomatic/ very mild cases, they will be allowed home isolation or isolated in the Covid Care Centre (both public & private facilities) as appropriate. b. Those having mild/ moderate/ severe symptoms will be admitted to dedicated Covid Health facilities and managed accordingly.If found negative, they shall be advised to further isolate themselves at home and self-monitor their health for 7 days. vii. In case, any symptoms develop they shall inform the district surveillance officer or the state/national call center (1075). NOTE: States can develop their own protocol with regards to quarantine and isolation as per their assessment post arrival of passengers in the state concerned.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services today announced a Policy Memorandum adopting the Administrative Appeals Office (AAO) decision on Matter of Z‑R‑Z‑C.
The decision holds that Temporary Protected Status (TPS) beneficiaries who travel abroad using a Department of Homeland Security (DHS)-issued travel document under Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) section 244(f)(3) generally will retain the same immigration status on their return that they had at the time of departure. Exceptions apply to aliens inadmissible under certain criminal or national security grounds or with immigrant or nonimmigrant visas they present for admission to the United States.
This travel does not satisfy the “inspected and admitted or paroled” eligibility requirement for obtaining adjustment of status to lawful permanent residence. This is consistent with the agency’s previous clarification that a TPS beneficiary’s authorized travel does not execute a final order of removal.
Furthermore, this decision is in line with the Miscellaneous and Technical Immigration and Naturalization Amendments Act of 1991 (MTINA), which specifies that TPS beneficiaries who travel using a valid DHS-issued travel document retain the same immigration status upon return.
“Temporary Protected Status is by its very nature temporary,” said USCIS Deputy Director for Policy Joseph Edlow. “It should not provide a path to lawful permanent resident status or citizenship. Misinterpretation and inconsistent application of this law has previously allowed those pathways for alien TPS beneficiaries. This was a mistaken distortion of what Congress intended when creating this temporary program.”
Recognizing TPS beneficiaries’ potential reliance on USCIS’ past practice and treatment of their temporary travel abroad, USCIS will limit how it applies Matter of Z-R-Z-C to minimize adverse impacts to this group. This decision does not affect TPS beneficiaries who adjusted status to lawful permanent residence under past practice and/or prior guidance or who have pending applications for adjustment of status.
In addition, USCIS will only apply Matter of Z-R-Z-C prospectively to TPS beneficiaries who departed and returned to the United States under section 244(f)(3) of the INA after Aug. 20, 2020, the date of the AAO’s adopted decision.
Meanwhile, Office for Immigrant Advancement Director Yusufi Vali has said that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is making significant changes to the naturalization application. Starting October 2, it is raising the cost of application from $725 to $1,200 and eliminating the fee waiver for most low-income residents.
USCIS is also increasing the permanent residence (green card) application fee and implementing an asylum application fee, making the United States one of four countries to do so.
For more information on USCIS and its programs, please visit uscis.gov or follow us on Twitter (@uscis), Instagram (/uscis), YouTube (/uscis), Facebook (/uscis), and LinkedIn (/uscis).
The United States has more immigrants than any other country in the world. Today, more than 40 million people living in the U.S. were born in another country, accounting for about one-fifth of the world’s migrants. The population of immigrants is also very diverse, with just about every country in the world represented among U.S. immigrants.
Pew Research Center regularly publishes statistical portraits of the nation’s foreign-born population, which include historical trends since 1960. Based on these portraits, here are answers to some key questions about the U.S. immigrant population.
How many people in the U.S. are immigrants?
The U.S. foreign-born population reached a record 44.8 million in 2018. Since 1965, when U.S. immigration laws replaced a national quota system, the number of immigrants living in the U.S. has more than quadrupled. Immigrants today account for 13.7% of the U.S. population, nearly triple the share (4.8%) in 1970. However, today’s immigrant share remains below the record 14.8% share in 1890, when 9.2 million immigrants lived in the U.S.
What is the legal status of immigrants in the U.S.?
Some 27% of immigrants were permanent residents and 5% were temporary residents in 2017. Another 23% of all immigrants were unauthorized immigrants. From 1990 to 2007, the unauthorized immigrant population more than tripled in size – from 3.5 million to a record high of 12.2 million in 2007. By 2017, that number had declined by 1.7 million, or 14%. There were 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. in 2017, accounting for 3.2% of the nation’s population.
The decline in the unauthorized immigrant population is due largely to a fall in the number from Mexico – the single largest group of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. Between 2007 and 2017, this group decreased by 2 million. Meanwhile, there was a rise in the number from Central America and Asia.
Do all lawful immigrants choose to become U.S. citizens?
Not all lawful permanent residents choose to pursue U.S. citizenship. Those who wish to do so may apply after meeting certain requirements, including having lived in the U.S. for five years. In fiscal year 2019, about 800,000 immigrants applied for naturalization. The number of naturalization applications has climbed in recent years, though the annual totals remain below the 1.4 million applications filed in 2007.
Generally, most immigrants eligible for naturalization apply to become citizens. However, Mexican lawful immigrants have the lowest naturalization rate overall. Language and personal barriers, lack of interest and financial barriers are among the top reasons for choosing not to naturalize cited by Mexican-born green card holders, according to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey.
Where do immigrants come from?
Mexico is the top origin country of the U.S. immigrant population. In 2018, roughly 11.2 million immigrants living in the U.S. were from there, accounting for 25% of all U.S. immigrants. The next largest origin groups were those from China (6%), India (6%), the Philippines (4%) and El Salvador (3%).
By region of birth, immigrants from Asia combined accounted for 28% of all immigrants, close to the share of immigrants from Mexico (25%). Other regions make up smaller shares: Europe, Canada and other North America (13%), the Caribbean (10%), Central America (8%), South America (7%), the Middle East and North Africa (4%) and sub-Saharan Africa (5%).
Who is arriving today?
More than 1 million immigrants arrive in the U.S. each year. In 2018, the top country of origin for new immigrants coming into the U.S. was China, with 149,000 people, followed by India (129,000), Mexico (120,000) and the Philippines (46,000).
By race and ethnicity, more Asian immigrants than Hispanic immigrants have arrived in the U.S. in most years since 2010. Immigration from Latin America slowed following the Great Recession, particularly for Mexico, which has seen both decreasing flows into the United States and large flows back to Mexico in recent years.
Asians are projected to become the largest immigrant group in the U.S. by 2055, surpassing Hispanics. Pew Research Center estimates indicate that in 2065, those who identify as Asian will make up some 38% of all immigrants; as Hispanic, 31%; White, 20%; and Black, 9%.
Is the immigrant population growing?
New immigrant arrivals have fallen, mainly due to a decrease in the number of unauthorized immigrants coming to the U.S. The drop in the unauthorized immigrant population can primarily be attributed to more Mexican immigrants leaving the U.S. than coming in.
Looking forward, immigrants and their descendants are projected to account for 88% of U.S. population growth through 2065, assuming current immigration trends continue. In addition to new arrivals, U.S. births to immigrant parents will be important to future growth in the country’s population. In 2018, the percentage of women giving birth in the past year was higher among immigrants (7.5%) than among the U.S. born (5.7%). While U.S.-born women gave birth to more than 3 million children that year, immigrant women gave birth to about 760,000.
How many immigrants have come to the U.S. as refugees?
In fiscal 2019, a total of 30,000 refugees were resettled in the U.S. The largest origin group of refugees was the Democratic Republic of the Congo, followed by Burma (Myanmar), Ukraine, Eritrea and Afghanistan. Among all refugees admitted in fiscal year 2019, 4,900 are Muslims (16%) and 23,800 are Christians (79%). Texas, Washington, New York and California resettled more than a quarter of all refugees admitted in fiscal 2018.
Where do most U.S. immigrants live?
Nearly half (45%) of the nation’s 44.4 million immigrants live in just three states: California (24%), Texas (11%) and Florida (10%). California had the largest immigrant population of any state in 2018, at 10.6 million. Texas, Florida and New York had more than 4 million immigrants each.
In terms of regions, about two-thirds of immigrants lived in the West (34%) and South (34%). Roughly one-fifth lived in the Northeast (21%) and 11% were in the Midwest.
In 2018, most immigrants lived in just 20 major metropolitan areas, with the largest populations in the New York, Los Angeles and Miami metro areas. These top 20 metro areas were home to 28.7 million immigrants, or 64% of the nation’s total foreign-born population. Most of the nation’s unauthorized immigrant population lived in these top metro areas as well.
How do immigrants compare with the U.S. population overall in education?
Immigrants in the U.S. as a whole have lower levels of education than the U.S.-born population. In 2018, immigrants were over three times as likely as the U.S. born to have not completed high school (27% vs. 8%). However, immigrants were just as likely as the U.S. born to have a bachelor’s degree or more (32% and 33%, respectively).
Educational attainment varies among the nation’s immigrant groups, particularly across immigrants from different regions of the world. Immigrants from Mexico and Central America are less likely to be high school graduates than the U.S. born (54% and 47%, respectively, do not have a high school diploma, vs. 8% of U.S. born). On the other hand, immigrants from every region except Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America were as likely as or more likely than U.S.-born residents to have a bachelor’s or advanced degree.
Among all immigrants, those from South Asia (71%) were the most likely to have a bachelor’s degree or more. Immigrants from Mexico (7%) and Central America (11%) were the least likely to have a bachelor’s or higher.
How many immigrants are working in the U.S.?
In 2017, about 29 million immigrants were working or looking for work in the U.S., making up some 17% of the total civilian labor force. Lawful immigrants made up the majority of the immigrant workforce, at 21.2 million. An additional 7.6 million immigrant workers are unauthorized immigrants, less than the total of the previous year and notably less than in 2007, when they were 8.2 million. They alone account for 4.6% of the civilian labor force, a dip from their peak of 5.4% in 2007. During the same period, the overall U.S. workforce grew, as did the number of U.S.-born workers and lawful immigrant workers.
Immigrants are projected to drive future growth in the U.S. working-age population through at least 2035. As the Baby Boom generation heads into retirement, immigrants and their children are expected to offset a decline in the working-age population by adding about 18 million people of working age between 2015 and 2035.
How well do immigrants speak English?
Among immigrants ages 5 and older in 2018, half (53%) are proficient English speakers – either speaking English very well (37%) or only speaking English at home (17%).
Immigrants from Mexico have the lowest rates of English proficiency (34%), followed by those from Central America (35%), East and Southeast Asia (50%) and South America (56%). Immigrants from Canada (96%), Oceania (82%), Europe (75%) and sub-Saharan Africa (74%) have the highest rates of English proficiency.
The longer immigrants have lived in the U.S., the greater the likelihood they are English proficient. Some 47% of immigrants living in the U.S. five years or less are proficient. By contrast, more than half (57%) of immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for 20 years or more are proficient English speakers.
Among immigrants ages 5 and older, Spanish is the most commonly spoken language. Some 42% of immigrants in the U.S. speak Spanish at home. The top five languages spoken at home among immigrants outside of Spanish are English only (17%), followed by Chinese (6%), Hindi (5%), Filipino/Tagalog (4%) and French (3%).
How many immigrants have been deported recently?
Around 337,000 immigrants were deported from the U.S. in fiscal 2018, up since 2017. Overall, the Obama administration deported about 3 million immigrants between 2009 and 2016, a significantly higher number than the 2 million immigrants deported by the Bush administration between 2001 and 2008. In 2017, the Trump administration deported 295,000 immigrants, the lowest total since 2006.
Immigrants convicted of a crime made up the less than half of deportations in 2018, the most recent year for which statistics by criminal status are available. Of the 337,000 immigrants deported in 2018, some 44% had criminal convictions and 56% were not convicted of a crime. From 2001 to 2018, a majority (60%) of immigrants deported have not been convicted of a crime.
How many immigrant apprehensions take place at the U.S.-Mexico border?
The number of apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border has doubled from fiscal 2018 to fiscal 2019, from 396,579 in fiscal 2018 to 851,508 in fiscal 2019. Today, there are more apprehensions of non-Mexicans than Mexicans at the border. In fiscal 2019, apprehensions of Central Americans at the border exceeded those of Mexicans for the fourth consecutive year. The first time Mexicans did not make up the bulk of Border Patrol apprehensions was in 2014.
How do Americans view immigrants and immigration?
While immigration has been at the forefront of a national political debate, the U.S. public holds a range of views about immigrants living in the country. Overall, a majority of Americans have positive views about immigrants. About two-thirds of Americans (66%) say immigrants strengthen the country “because of their hard work and talents,” while about a quarter (24%) say immigrants burden the country by taking jobs, housing and health care.
Yet these views vary starkly by political affiliation. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, 88% think immigrants strengthen the country with their hard work and talents, and just 8% say they are a burden. Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, 41% say immigrants strengthen the country, while 44% say they burden it.
Americans were divided on future levels of immigration. A quarter said legal immigration to the U.S. should be decreased (24%), while one-third (38%) said immigration should be kept at its present level and almost another third (32%) said immigration should be increased.
Note: This is an update of a post originally published May 3, 2017, and written by Gustavo López, a former research analyst focusing on Hispanics, immigration and demographics; and Kristen Bialik, a former research assistant.
With the severity of the Covid-19 pandemic in near constant fluctuation, state rules and regulations are having to adapt rapidly. For those planning a family vacation or simply wishing to travel to another state, it is important to stay up-to-date on the latest statewide regulations.
There are some states that do not have restrictions. For those that do, here is a list of what each state is mandating.
Alaska
Beginning on August 11, nonresidents have to arrive with a negative Covid-19 test that was administered 72 hours or less. There is one other testing option.Travelers who opt for testing five days or less before arrival must be retested at the airport and limit their interactions until the test returns negative.
All travelers also must complete a traveler declaration form and receive another Covid-19 test seven to 14 days after arriving in Alaska.
Travelers can opt out from taking Covid-19 tests, but they must self-quarantine for 14 days or the duration of their stay, whichever is shorter.
According to the CDC, “people in quarantine should stay home, separate themselves from others, monitor their health, and follow directions from their state or local health department.” Leaving your home state to enter a state with a mandatory quarantine means you need one place to stay and to stay put.
Connecticut
Any traveler coming from a state that has a positive rate of 10 out of 100,000 people or a 10% or higher positivity rate must self-quarantine for 14 days. The traveler must have spent more than 24 hours in said state for the rule to apply. Everyone also needs to complete a travel health form.
Visitors can opt out of the 14-day quarantine if they can provide proof that they have had a negative Covid-19 test in the past 72 hours.
There are currently 34 states on the 10% or higher positivitylist.
Florida
People traveling from Connecticut, New Jersey and New York are required to self-quarantine for 14 days once arriving in Florida. Some exceptions include those involved in commercial activity or for any academic purpose such as internships. Everyone is responsible for their own costs that are involved with quarantining.
Hawaii
Anyone traveling to Hawaii must quarantine for 14 days after their arrival. Beginning September 1, travelers can show proof of a negative Covid-19 test within 72 hours to avoid the quarantine. Hawaii delays quarantine lift until September 1
Upon arrival, passengers are required to sign a form saying that they know about the 14-day quarantine and that it is a criminal offense should they violate it.
For travel between islands, a mandatory form must be submitted online within 24 hours of departure. Passengers cannot fly if their temperature is above 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
Idaho
In Ada County, which includes Boise, travelers coming from outside Idaho are encouraged to quarantine for 14 days.
Illinois
There are no statewide restrictions, but a 14-day quarantine is required for visitors heading to Chicago from Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah and Wisconsin.
Kansas
Travelers need to quarantine for 14 days if they have traveled to Florida or been on a cruise. Travelers must also quarantine if they traveled to Arizona between June 17 and July 27 or if they’ve traveled to a country with a CDC Level 3 Travel Health Notice With Restrictions. Some countries include the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Brazil and China.
Travelers must quarantine for 14 days upon arrival or sign a form stating they’ve received a negative Covid-19 test within 72 hours. Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Vermont are exempt from quarantining or having a negative test.
Maryland
Maryland residents who travel out-of-state need to have received a negative Covid-19 test within 72 hours of their arrival or get tested as soon as they return. Nonresidents should be tested within 72 hours of arrival and quarantine until they receive a negative result. If their test is positive, it is recommended that they cancel their trip.
Any resident who travels outside of Maryland to a state with a coronavirus testing positivity rate of more than 10% needs to self-quarantine until a negative test result is received. The District of Columbia and Virginia are exempt from this rule. As of July 31, the states include Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina and Texas.
Massachusetts
Beginning August 1, all visitors and residents must complete a travel form before arriving in Massachusetts (unless they are arriving from a state designated by the Department of Public Health as low risk).
Travelers must “quarantine for 14 days or produce a negative COVID-19 test result that has been administered up to 72 hours prior to your arrival in Massachusetts.”
Those waiting on test results need to quarantine until they receive their negative results.
Failure to comply with these directives may result in a $500 fine.
New Hampshire
Those traveling from outside New England states (Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island) that are visiting for an extended period of time are asked to self-quarantine for two weeks.
New Jersey
All travelers to New Jersey from states that have a Covid-19 testing positivity rate of 10% or higher or have 10 people test positive for every 100,000 residents is asked to quarantine for 14 days. This rule does not apply for visitors spending less than 24 hours in the state.
The state government is also asking travelers to fill out a voluntary survey regarding information about where you are traveling and your destination.
As of July 31, there are 36 states and US jurisdictions on the list.
New Mexico
As of July 1, those traveling from out-of-state are required to self-quarantine for 14 days or the length of their stay in New Mexico, whichever is shorter.
New York
All travelers who have recently visited a state with a positive testing rate of 10% or higher over a seven-day rolling period or had a positive test rate of 10 or more per 100,000 residents must quarantine for 14 days.
There are 36 states currently on the list.
Those traveling by airplane must fill out a travel form before exiting the airport or face a fine of $2,000. Those traveling to New York through other methods such as cars and trains must fill out the form online.
Ohio
Travelers visiting Ohio from states reporting positive testing rates of 15% or more must self-quarantine for 14 days. As of July 29, the states currently include Arizona, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Idaho, Kansas and South Carolina.
Pennsylvania
Visitors traveling from states with a high number of Covid-19 cases are asked to quarantine for 14 days. As of July 24, they are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.
Rhode Island
Those traveling to Rhode Island from a state that has a positive testing rate of 5% or more must quarantine for 14 days. Travelers can opt out of the quarantine if they can provide proof of a negative Covid-19 test taken within 72 hours of their arrival.
Those waiting on test results must self-quarantine until a negative test result arrives. However, the state still recommends quarantining for 14 days as opposed to relying on a negative test result.
South Carolina
Travelers who have visited an area with ongoing community spread of the coronavirus should quarantine for 14 days from when they left that area.
Vermont is allowing visitors to self-quarantine before they travel as long as they use a personal vehicle to travel. They must make minimal stops and follow precautions such as wearing a face mask or covering, washing their hands and staying six feet apart. They must self-quarantine for 14 days or for seven days if they receive a negative test.
If travelers use public transportation such as an airplane or bus, they must quarantine for 14 days upon arrival or for seven days followed by a negative Covid-19 test.
Washington, DC
Visitors traveling to or from a high-risk state must self-quarantine for 14 days. The restrictions exclude Virginia and Maryland.
There are currently 27 states on the list.
Wisconsin
There is no statewide quarantine mandate, but all visitors coming from elsewhere to Wisconsin are being asked to stay home as much as possible for 14 days upon arrival while checking for Covid-19 symptoms. Within Wisconsin, it is not recommended that people travel to other private or rental homes within the state.
(Courtesy: CNN.COM)
Underwater habitats allow scientists to perform continuous night and day diving without requiring hours of decompression between dives. Like astronauts in space, they can stay underwater for days or weeks at a time.
Currently, the only underwater habitat that exists is the 400-square-foot Aquarius, in the Florida Keys, which Costeau stayed in with a team of aquanauts for 31 days in 2014. Designed in 1986 and originally owned by the NOAA, in 2013 Florida International University saved Aquarius from being abandoned after the NOAA lost government funding. Family tradition
Cousteau comes from a family of famous oceanographic explorers. He’s the son of filmmaker Jean-Michel Cousteau and grandson of Aqua-Lung co-creator Jacques-Yves Cousteau. The project is a joint effort between the Fabien Cousteau Ocean Learning Center (FCOLC) and Béhar’s design firm Fuseproject, as well as their partners, which include Northeastern University, Rutgers University and the Caribbean Research and Management of Biodiversity Foundation.
Despite his emphasis on ocean research, Cousteau said he’s “a big proponent of space exploration,” noting they are similar in nature. Both types of missions require humans to be in isolation in extreme, untenable conditions. Because of that, Béhar’s design, which can house up to 12 people, focuses on wellness as well as scientific and technological capabilities, including recreation areas and windows designed to let in as much light as possible.
“We’ve worked recently on a lot of small living environments. We’ve worked on robotic furniture for tiny apartments,” Béhar said about Fuseproject. “So I think we had a good sense of how to design for comfort in constrained environments. That said, the underwater environment is completely different.”
“We wanted it to be new and different and inspiring and futuristic,” he continued. “So (we looked) at everything from science fiction to modular housing to Japanese pod (hotels).” The design is also meant to echo ocean life, with its structure inspired by the shape of coral polyps.
Béhar and his team also studied the underwater research habitats that have come before Proteus, including the Aquarius. All other forerunners were temporary structures built for single missions, like NASA’s experimental SEALAB I, II, and III from the 1960s.”Those habitats were purpose built, they were small and they had great limitations,” Cousteau said. “So we’re building off of…(a) foundation by all those amazing pioneers that came before us.”
Diving ahead
While the project currently has some backing from the private sector, it is currently seeking further funding. Beyond backers, the station’s wet and dry labs can be leased to government agencies, corporations and academic institutions.
Part of the plan is to offer regular visibility about what is happening on Proteus, including live streams and VR/AR content. In this way Cousteau hopes to engage a wider audience. “Imagine if you found something amazing — whether it be microcosmic like a pharmaceutical, or macrocosmic like the next greatest animal — if you could show it to classrooms and universities,” he said. “Our mission is to be able to translate complex science into something that the average person not only maybe will understand, but fall in love with.”
The government of India has agreed to allow U.S. air carriers to resume passenger services in the U.S.-India market starting July 23, the U.S. Transportation Department said on Friday. The Indian government, citing the coronavirus, had banned all scheduled services, prompting the U.S. Transportation Department in June to accuse India of engaging in “unfair and discriminatory practices” on charter air carriers serving India. The Transportation Department said it was withdrawing an order it had issued requiring Indian air carriers to apply for authorization prior to conducting charter flights, and said it had approved an Air India application for passenger charter flights between the United States and India. A group representing major U.S. airlines and the Indian Embassy in Washington did not immediately comment on Friday. India‘s Ministry of Civil Aviation said on Twitter it was moving to “further expand our international civil aviation operations” and arrangements from some flights “with US, UAE, France & Germany are being put in place while similar arrangements are also being worked out with several other countries.” “Under this arrangement,” it added, “airlines from the concerned countries will be able to operate flights from & to India along with Indian carriers.” The U.S. Transportation Department order was set to take effect next week. The Trump administration said in June it wanted “to restore a level playing field for U.S. airlines” under the U.S.-India Air Transport Agreement. The Indian government had banned all scheduled services and failed to approve U.S. carriers for charter operations, it added. The U.S. government said in June that Air India had been operating “repatriation” charter flights between India and the United States in both directions since May 7.
President Trump has been calling for ban on immigrant workers to the US. He has suspended work visas to the end of the year. However, as per a report from CII, a total of 155 companies with origins in India are responsible for generating over $22 billion in investments and nearly 125,000 jobs in the US, according to a report by the Confederation of Indian Industry.
The report titled ‘Indian Roots, American Soil 2020’ showed that the states with the top concentrations of Indian companies reporting were New Jersey, Texas, California, New York, Illinois and Georgia.
The corporate social responsibility and research and development expenditure of the companies stood at $175 million and $900 million, respectively.
Texas, California, New Jersey, New York, and Florida are home to the greatest number of workers in the US directly employed by the reporting Indian companies.
The surveyed companies disclosed the highest amounts of foreign direct investment were in Texas, New Jersey, New York, Florida, and Massachusetts.
Indian investments in 20 U.S. states stand at over $100 million each, showed the survey.
Around 77 percent of the companies plan to make more investments in the world’s largest economy and 83 percent of the companies plan to hire more employees locally in the next five years.
The CII survey respondents are from sectors including pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, aerospace and defense, financial services, manufacturing, tourism and hospitality.
Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII, said: “The survey results show that the U.S. is a preferred investment destination for Indian companies which are contributing significantly to supporting local jobs. The results in the survey capture a snapshot in time, documenting tangible investments and direct jobs only, so I believe that the actual economic impact of Indian FDI in the U.S. is much larger.”
He further said that it is critical that the U.S. government continues to provide a supportive policy environment for Indian companies to flourish and enhance their operations in the U.S., especially to aid economic recovery at this time.
Actress Soundarya Sharma, who had approached the Indian embassy and Ministry of External Affairs for assistance to return to India amid a coronavirus pandemic, has opted out of travelling by the repatriation flight phase one so that people who are in distress can travel back home first.
Soundarya said, “I am certainly missing my folks back home but the priority is not me. It’s for those who are in a difficult situation here and have to get back. As it’s a must have for them and I always have felt my happiness should not be at anyone cost. My appeal was for the people and I am so thankful to everyone for mission VANDE BHARAT,” she added.
Soundarya had approached the Indian embassy and Ministry of External Affairs for assistance, along with more than 400 Indians including students who are stranded in the USA amid the coronavirus pandemic. The actress was in Los Angeles to attending an acting course at Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute.
The actress, who featured in the film Ranchi Diaries, had earlier said, “I would humbly request the Indian embassy and the MEA for a stimulus package for all those students and fellow Indians who are stuck here to help overcome this situation and hopefully arrange an evacuation flight back to India,” she said.
Actress Soundarya Sharma believes getting stuck in Los Angeles due to COVID-19 pandemic and experiencing the struggle to get access to essentials things has turned out to be a life-altering period for her. She says that she tries not to think about when she will be able to return to India because the wait is “never-ending”.
“Honestly, it’s been a true life-learning experience for me. I had never even imagined myself to be in lockdown in a place like Los Angeles,” Soundarya told IANS.
“I had come here to attend an intensive acting course at Lee Strasberg and New York Film Academy and then we were shooting in Universal Studios the day they announced this pandemic. Since then, things changed completely. The corona happened and now these protests are going on. The situation is quite grim and things are different, so it’s been an experience and I’ve learnt so many things during this time,” she added.
Reflecting upon the challenges that came with the global shutdown, she said: “When they announced this pandemic, I was here in Los Angeles and I used to go out every day at 6 am in the morning, standing in the queues, I could not get grocery for almost one-one and half month and I had to manage with very little whatever I used to get. There was so much paranoia. Then, I did not have masks and sanitisers and gloves, initially. So, that was again a big challenge. I had to make my own mask.
“My flight was cancelled almost 5 times. So that was another challenge for me. Now because of these protests and riots which were happening, my apartment where I used to live was West Hollywood, West Beverly Hills and I had to move out of my apartment because of the situation. Now, I have moved to a much safer place in Central Beverly Hills. I mean challenges were there at different levels, we all do have challenges,” she added.
The actress, who made her debut in the digital world with “Raktanchal”, is coping up with her struggles by keeping a positive attitude.
“I am learning Spanish. I am watching a lot of performances, as in movies and important shows. Because being a medical student, I never watched films and performances so I am doing my homework that way. I do lots of workouts, I go for a walk because it was not a 100% lockdown, so I used to go for my workout. Since, I’m spiritually inclined, I meditate a lot. It really helps me. I realise that we all do take things so much for granted in our life but life has its own plans now, it’s become like we are taking it day-wise. So, this whole period of quarantine and lockdown has been really different and evolving, as in on a personal level,” she said.
She has realised that “life is not about just achievement, it’s about fulfilment”.
“I felt fulfilled by helping and doing my bit for people who were needy, who needed the most and people who were stranded, whatever bit I could do, I cooked for them for Eid. I had to give up my seat on the repatriation flights. So, this whole process, this whole thing has made me very selfless and made me realise the value of things and grateful for even the smaller things we have in a nutshell. This is a quite selfless period for me,” she added.
The actress who has worked in the Bollywood film “Ranchi Diaries” is not spending her time fretting over getting back to India.
“I try not to think too much about when I’ll be flying back home because it’s never-ending. It’s been almost 5 months for me to be here and months that I’ve seen my folks. So stuck in a foreign land alone can be quite emotionally challenging. I’m just taking it day-by-day. I do face-time my family but then being on your own and dealing with things and you know so many things happening, it can be quite emotionally draining and challenging,” she said.
On the work front, she was recently seen in the web series “Raktanchal”. The crime drama is inspired by real events that happened in Purvanchal, Uttar Pradesh, in the eighties, around the time when state development work was distributed through tenders. It streams on MX Player.
The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected President Donald Trump’s effort to end legal protections for 650,000 young immigrants, the second stunning election-season rebuke from the court in a week after its ruling that it’s illegal to fire people because they’re gay or transgender.
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the program that protects immigrants who were brought to the country as children and allows them to work. The court on Thursday ruled President Donald Trump didn’t properly end the program, which then-President Barack Obama created in 2012. Trump attempted to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2017 shortly after being elected on a largely anti-immigrant platform. Here’s what the high court’s decision means:
Immigrants who are part of the 8-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program will retain their protection from deportation and their authorization to work in the United States — safe almost certainly at least through the November election, immigration experts said.
The 5-4 outcome, in which Chief Justice John Roberts and the four liberal justices were in the majority, seems certain to elevate the issue in Trump’s campaign, given the anti-immigrant rhetoric of his first presidential run in 2016 and immigration restrictions his administration has imposed since then.
Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the liberal wing of the court in a 5-4 decision. Roberts, citing the Administrative Procedure Act, called the administration’s reasoning for ending the protections “arbitrary and capricious.”
The justices rejected administration arguments that the eight-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) is illegal and that courts have no role to play in reviewing the decision to end it.
“We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies,” Roberts wrote. “We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action. Here the agency failed to consider the conspicuous issues of whether to retain forbearance and what if anything to do about the hardship to DACA recipients.”
Trump, through the Department of Homeland Security, committed in September 2017 to ending the program, leading to the court challenges. He blasted the decision in a series of tweets on Thursday, calling it “horrible and politically charged.”
Trump didn’t hold back in his assessment of the court’s work, hitting hard at a political angle. “These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives. We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020!” he wrote on Twitter, apparently including the LGBT ruling as well.
DACA was created by President Barack Obama in 2012 after intense pressure from immigrant advocates who wanted protections for the young immigrants who were mostly raised in the U.S. but lacked legal status.
The program protects them from deportation — granting a two-year reprieve that can be extended and by issuing a work permit and a Social Security number.
DACA recipients must meet several requirements, including having no criminal record. Immigrants who are accepted into the program and later get arrested face deportation to their home country.
They also must have been 30 or younger when the program was launched and brought to the U.S. before age 16.
The application cost is nearly $500, and permits must be renewed every two years. The application and renewal process take several weeks, and many immigrants hire lawyers to help navigate the process.
DACA does not give beneficiaries legal U.S. residency; they are simply given a reprieve from deportation while being allowed to legally work. The overwhelming majority of DACA recipients are from Mexico. One in four of them live in California.
Frustration grew during the Obama administration over repeated failures to pass the “Dream Act,” which would have provided a path to legal U.S. citizenship for young immigrants brought to the country as children.
The last major attempt to pass the legislation was in 2011. Immigrant activists staged protests and participated in civil disobedience in an effort to push Obama to act after Congress did not pass legislation. DACA is different than the Dream Act because it does not provide a pathway to legal residency or citizenship. Still, DACA recipients are often referred to as “Dreamers” — a reference to the earlier proposals that failed in Congress before Obama’s action.
Years of impasse in Congress over passing comprehensive immigration reform are what prompted then-president Barack Obama to create DACA by executive order in the first place, in 2012. The program gives people two-year renewable reprieves from the threat of deportation while also allowing them to work.
DACA recipients were elated by the ruling. “We’ll keep living our lives in the meantime,” said Cesar Espinosa, a DACA recipient who leads the Houston immigration advocacy group FIEL. “We’re going to continue to work, continue to advocate.”
International graduates in the US Optional Practical Training (OPT) program may have to deal with OPT suspension soon. This comes as the US government considers further immigration restrictions to manage the devastating impact of COVID-19.
The OPT is a student visa extension which allows eligible international graduates to work in the US for up to 12 months after completing their studies. STEM majors get an additional 24 months. OPT is one of the only options available to graduating international students to stay and work in the United States and suspending OPT would mean that most international students who get a degree from a U.S. college or university would be forced to leave the country after graduating.
News reports suggest the Administration will soon take steps to suspend OPT, the Optional Practical Training program for international students who graduate from U.S. colleges and universities, along with restrictions to other legal immigration channels. This would be a significant mistake that will hurt our economy long term while providing no substantial impact on job or wage growth in the short term.
[Suspending OPT] would be a significant mistake that will hurt our economy long term while providing no substantial impact on job or wage growth in the short term. Research shows that each foreign-born STEM graduate who stays and works in the U.S. creates 2.62 jobs for native-born Americans. Suspending OPT would mean that most international students who get a degree from a U.S. college or university would be forced to leave the country after graduating.
First, the US government took the first step by suspending entry of immigrants deemed risky to the US. Then, it released an executive order directing agencies to “address this economic emergency by rescinding, modifying, waiving, or providing exemptions from regulations and other requirements that may inhibit economic recovery”.
If the Administration immediately ends OPT and stops issuing renewals and extensions, many international graduates, including those graduating this year with pending OPT applications, might no longer qualify for their immigration status and could be forced to leave before having an opportunity to fully contribute to the U.S.
OPT allows international students who are studying at or have graduated from universities and colleges in the U.S. to maintain their student status and be authorized to work for an American employer in their field of study. Approximately 200,000 international students are living in and contributing to the United States thanks to OPT today.
Providing options to stay and work in the country after graduation is critical for retaining U.S. educated graduates, and for attracting future students, as well. Over the last few years, the Trump Administration’s ongoing efforts to limit legal immigration have contributed to alarming drops in international student enrollment rates, costing the U.S. economy more than $11 billion. Meanwhile, countries like Canada have rolled out more options for international students, and have seen enrollment rates grow as a result.
Because international students typically pay full tuition, their enrollment helps subsidize costs for domestic students and expands teaching and research capacity. However, recent drops in enrollment have cost some universities millions of dollars in lost revenue, and experts are already predicting a 25% drop in international enrollment next year because of COVID-19. Ending OPT could dramatically accelerate these losses.
If graduates are forced to leave, America’s investment in their education will directly benefit our competitors and leave a massive gap in our skilled workforce. With no prospect of employment after graduation, many students would stop coming to study in the first place, sacrificing one of America’s greatest competitive advantages and abandoning our role as the global leader in education and innovation.
International graduates on OPT make critical contributions to America’s national security and economy; that’s why more than 324 employers in trade, industry, and higher education associations wrote to the President, urging him to keep OPT in place.
Recently 21 Republican Members of Congress wrote to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf ahead of an announcement, urging the Administration to keep OPT intact. The letter explains:
“We urge the administration to publicly clarify that OPT will remain fully intact so we send the right messages abroad about the U.S. as an attractive destination for international students. As countries like Canada, the United Kingdom, China and Australia bolster immigration policies to attract and retain international students, the last thing our nation should do in this area is make ourselves less competitive by weakening OPT. The program is essential to the many international students who desire not just to study in the U.S. but also have a post completion training experience.”
There are thousands of citizens-in-waiting who, amid a ballooning backlog, may be unable to complete their naturalizations in time to vote in the 2020 election. An estimated 650,000 citizenship applications were pending in the first quarter of the 2020 fiscal year, which ended Dec. 31.
As state after state imposed social distancing and other measures to mitigate the virus’s spread, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services suspended most of its activity on March 18, and the agency notified thousands of immigrants of the delay to sworn them in as US citizens.
Lawmakers from both parties have urged the Trump administration to conduct the oath remotely to make up for a pause in naturalization ceremonies during the health crisis.
The agency recently began holding naturalization ceremonies in small groups, compared with the hundreds who typically gather to be sworn in, but many of those working with immigrants say that so few are being processed that it may be impossible to make up for lost time this year.
Before the pandemic, about 63,000 applicants took the oath of allegiance each month in small-town courthouses and convention centers around the country. Covid-19 lockdowns postponed the final steps in the process — interviews and ceremonies — potentially delaying citizenship for several hundred thousand people before the end of 2020, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, which leads a network of nonprofits helping green-card holders become naturalized citizens.
The delays caused by the pandemic follow moves by the Trump administration to tighten scrutiny of naturalization applications, making the process more cumbersome, as well as financial troubles engulfing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is expected to start furloughing workers in coming weeks.
“I do not anticipate this administration will drop their emphasis on vetting and fraud detection to expedite these naturalization applications,” said Randy Capps, who researches naturalization at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. “It means this backlog will probably keep growing.”
A group of lawful permanent residents whose applications have been approved by the U.S.C.I.S. office in Philadelphia but stalled because of the pandemic filed a lawsuit in federal court this month asking for an expedited process to ensure that they are sworn in as citizens by late September in order to meet voter-registration deadlines.
Naturalization applications generally surge during presidential election cycles, but the potential implications of clearing the way for thousands of new citizens to vote differ from state to state.
Polls have indicated that most Latin American and Asian immigrants, who most likely account for the majority of those whose citizenship petitions are pending, would tend to vote Democratic. In states like California, which is solidly blue, the addition of tens of thousands of newly minted voters would be unlikely to have a significant effect.
It could be a different story if potential voters were excluded in contested states, such as Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Texas. Nearly 200,000 immigrants became citizens in those four states in the 2018 fiscal year, according to official data, representing 26 percent of those naturalized that year.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle in recent weeks have urged U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to administer the oath remotely or waive it altogether.
Senators Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, and Martin Heinrich, Democrat of New Mexico, who are both sons of naturalized citizens, sent a letter on May 22 to Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, who heads the agency, requesting that he “take all necessary measures” to enable naturalizations to proceed, including with virtual ceremonies.
Then, earlier this month, 14 members of Congress from both parties sent a letter of their own, calling the oath “largely ceremonial” and citing a law that could be invoked to justify temporarily suspending it.
“Given the unprecedented circumstances currently facing our country, we ask that these authorities be utilized to remotely administer or waive the Oath of Allegiance amid the Covid-19 pandemic,” said the letter.
A spokesman for U.S.C.I.S. said that rescheduling naturalization ceremonies was a “top priority as we enter our phased reopening,” which began on June 4. The agency had introduced ceremonies with social distancing last month, and the sessions are starting to be held more frequently, he said.
However, he ruled out remote oaths. The ceremonies must be public under immigration law, he said, and to comply with federal regulations, all applicants must appear in person.
The spokesman also said that online ceremonies presented “logistical challenges” because personal appearances allow reviewers to verify applicants’ identities and collect their green cards, which previously served as proof of legal residency. Holding the ceremonies online also raised security concerns, he added.
Many of those who work with immigrants seeking naturalization said there was a need for flexibility during a health emergency.
“There is legal room for U.S.C.I.S. to make appropriate accommodations for remote oath ceremonies, but it takes will and interest to do so,” said Ur Jaddou, who was chief counsel at the agency during the Obama administration.
“All around the government, agencies have made bold accommodations in response to Covid-19,” said Ms. Jaddou, who is now director of D.H.S. Watch, an advocacy organization that monitors immigration agencies.
While there have been partisan splits over how to address unauthorized immigration and overhaul the country’s immigration system, historically there has been a bipartisan embrace of naturalization. Former President George W. Bush has hosted a ceremony at his institute.
Under President Trump, who has issued a series of policies to curb legal immigration, the leadership of the agency — which handles visas, green cards and asylum claims, in addition to citizenship applications — has adopted a policy of strict scrutiny when adjudicating applications.
About nine million legal permanent residents are eligible for citizenship, but a much smaller number typically apply. Applicants must fill out a 20-page application, pass background checks, submit an array of supporting documents, and pass civics and English tests as well as an interview. They pay a $725 fee. If they hire a lawyer, the additional cost ranges from $1,500 to $3,500.
OCI card holders who wish to come to India on account of family emergencies like critical medical conditions of immediate family members or death have also been granted permission to travel to India.
The Home Ministry on Friday eased restrictions on entry of foreign nationals into the country norms, allowing a larger number of Overseas Citizen of India cardholders and foreign nationals related to OCI cardholders or citizens to enter India.
The specific categories who have been issued permit to travel to India include minors who the OCI Card and whose parents are Indian nationals.
OCI card holders who wish to come to India on account of family emergencies like critical medical conditions of immediate family members or death have also been granted permission to travel to India.
Government has also allowed married couples, where one spouse is an OCI card holder and the other is an Indian national, to enter the country.
Students who are OCI card holders, where at least one of their parents is an Indian citizen or an OCI card holder, can also travel to India.
75 special repatriation flights to 7 US and Canadian cities between June 5 & June 30
State-run carrier Air India has opened bookings for around 300 flights to various destinations in the USA, Canada, UK and Europe under phase-3 of the Vande Bharat Mission. The move resulted in “overwhelming” demand from travelers as the airline received around six crore hits on its website during the first two hours of opening the bookings.
“Demand for seats from India on flights planned under Mission Vande Bharat-3 is overwhelming. Sectors/ Flights are being opened in a systematic manner for booking, on the website,” AIR INDIA tweeted.
“Those who wish to travel to US and Canada and fulfil required entry conditions can book themselves on these outbound flights. Some foreign airlines have already carried out evacuation flights & are planning to operate more flights. These flights will also take foreign nationals,” Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri informed on Twitter on Wednesday.
However, he added that normal international civil aviation operations will only start when the situation normalises. “Right now most of our metro cities are under some form of restrictions due to which people from other cities cannot travel to catch flights and we also have a requirement for mandatory quarantine on arrival. We have to wait for the domestic operations to touch about 50-60 per cent and consider the behaviour of the virus and its spread to fully lift these restrictions and lockdown. Till then flights under Vande Bharat Mission are facilitating both inbound and outbound international passengers,” he said in a series of tweets.
Also, the behaviour of the virus and its spread will be taken into account before a decision is taken about international travel. Till then flights under Vande Bharat Mission are facilitating both inbound and outbound international passengers, the minister said.
According to the latest MHA guidelines, international flights can resume in the third phase of unlocking, which does not yet have a tentative deadline to it.
The airline later tweeted again, “Bookings for select destinations in USA, Canada, UK & Europe etc under Phase3 of #MissionVandeBharat opened at 5pm today. Around 60 million hits received till 7 pm on our website & 1700 seats sold through website alone in 2 hrs. Bookings continue & tickets are being issued.”
The third phase of the mission will begin from (Thursday) June 11 and continue till June 30. Air India will operate five flights in this phase of Vande Bharat Mission to evacuate nearly 1,200 Indians nationals stranded in the UK between June 18 to June 23. The airline will operate 70 flights to evacuate Indians stranded in the US and Canada between June 11 to June 30, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri had said.
Giving a major relief to the Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) cardholders stranded abroad, the Ministry of Home affairs on Friday relaxed the visa and travel restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 lockdown for certain categories.
The MHA Spokesperson in a tweet said, “Relaxing visa and travel restrictions imposed in wake of COVID-19, certain categories of OCI cardholders stranded abroad have been permitted to come to India.”
The MHA in a detailed notification said that the categories now eligible to return to India for minor children born to Indian nationals abroad and holding OCI cards, OCI cardholders who wish to come to India on account of family emergencies, such as a death in the family, couples where one spouse is an OCI cardholder and the other is an Indian national, and they have a permanent residence in India and University students who are OCI cardholders (but are not minors) and whose parents are Indian citizens living in India.
The MHA also said that travel restrictions imposed on May 7 would not apply to any aircraft, ship, train or any other vehicle deployed for bringing back the above-mentioned categories of OCI cardholders who are stranded abroad.
The decision comes in the wake of several complaints raised by the Indians stranded abroad. The OCI card is issued to people of Indian origin, allowing them visa-free travel in most cases.
Over 23,000 Indians, who had been stranded abroad after the lockdown was imposed in March, have been repatriated from dozens of countries under the government’s “Vande Bharat Mission”.
The government has deployed Air India passenger jets and Indian Navy warships to the United States, Europe, the Gulf region, Australia and several countries in Southeast Asia, as well as neighbouring nations like Nepal and Bangladesh, to bring back Indian citizens.
On Thursday the government said the “Vande Bharat Mission”, whose second phase was to end today, had been extended to June 13, with nearly 50 countries being covered. (IANS)
“AAPI supports the Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act S.3599/ HR6788, introduced by Senators Durbin, Perdue, Young, Coons addressing Shortage of doctors, nurses, and urges the Congress to approve the bill and allow the thousands of immigrant Indian American doctors on green card backlog to bolster the American health care system and extend their patient care whole-heartedly without disruption,” said Dr. Suresh Reddy, President of AAPI.
Dr. Reddy was responding to the Bill. the Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act, introduced by U.S. Senate Democrats Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee, along with Senators David Perdue (R-GA), Todd Young (R-IN), and Chris Coons (D-DE), which recaptures 15,000 green cards to provide a temporary stopgap to quickly address our nation’s shortage of doctors. This legislation will help underserved communities with physician shortage to recruit more physicians and thus effectively extend health care coverage.
The Health care Resilience Act S.3599/ HR6788 would recapture 25,000 unused immigrant visas for nurses and 15,000 unused immigrant visas for Physicians. This would help the American health care force to mobilize the medical professionals to the areas of health care needs.
Healthcare continues to be at the center of the national debate, especially in the context of the global Corona Virus pandemic affecting millions of people in the United States. This deadly virus has claimed lives of many healthcare professionals who are in the frontline caring for the hundreds of thousands of patients affected by this disease.
An estimated 800,000 legal immigrants who are working in the United States are waiting for green card. This unprecedented backlog in employment-based immigration has fueled a bitter policy debate but has been largely ignored by the Congress. Most of those waiting for employment-based green cards which would allow them to stay in the United States are of Indian origin. The backlog among this group is so acute that an Indian national who applies for a green card now can expect to wait up to 50 years to obtain it. The wait is largely due to the annual per-country quota immigration law, which has been unchanged since 1990.
This heightened demand for physicians will only continue to grow, and will soon outpace supply leading to a projected shortfall of nearly 122,000 physicians by 2032. Thus, recapturing the unused visas/Green cards that are available for International Medical Graduates is critical to addressing this mounting shortage of physicians.
In a detailed report on Green Card delays affecting Indian American physicians, the Green Card Backlog Task Force by AAPI had pointed out that there are over 10,000 Physicians waiting for Green Card for decades. AAPI members would like to see the Green Card backlog addressed, which it says has adversely impacted the Indian American community. During their annual Legislative Day on Capitol Hill, they have stressed the need for bipartisan efforts in passing the Health care Resilience Act, which will recapture and provide Green Cards for physicians serving in America’s under-served and rural communities.
“Consider this: one-sixth of our health care workforce is foreign-born. Immigrant nurses and doctors play a vital role in our health care system, and their contributions are now more crucial than ever. Where would we be in this pandemic without them? It is unacceptable that thousands of doctors currently working in the U.S. on temporary visas are stuck in the green card backlog, putting their futures in jeopardy and limiting their ability to contribute to the fight against COVID-19,” said Sen. Durbin.
“This bipartisan, targeted, and timely legislation will strengthen our health care workforce and improve health care access for Americans in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support these vital health care workers,” the Senator from Illinois pointed out.
“The growing shortage of doctors and nurses over the past decade has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis,” said Sen. Perdue. “Fortunately, there are thousands of trained health professionals who want to practice in the United States. This proposal would simply reallocate a limited number of unused visas from prior years for doctors and nurses who are qualified to help in our fight against COVID-19. This shortage is critical and needs immediate attention so that our healthcare facilities are not overwhelmed in this crisis.”
Specifically, the Senators’ proposal:
Recaptures unused visas/green cards from previous fiscal years for doctors, nurses, and their families
Exempts these visas/green cards from country caps
Requires employers to attest that immigrants from overseas who receive these visas will not displace an American worker
Requires the Department of Homeland Security and State Department to expedite the processing of recaptured visas
Limits the filing period for recaptured visas to 90 days following the termination of the President’s COVID-19 emergency declaration
“AAPI joins other similar organizations including American Medical Association, Illinois Health and Hospital Association, American Hospital Association, American Organization for Nursing Leadership, Physicians for American Healthcare Access, American Immigration Lawyers Association, and National Immigration Forum, that have come in support of The Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act,” said Dr. Sampat Shivangi, Chair of AAPI’s Legislative Committee.
Dr. Seema Arora, Chair of the Board of Trustees of AAPI, urged the members of Congress to include physicians graduating from U.S. residency programs for Green Cards in the comprehensive immigration reform bill. “Physicians graduating from accredited U.S. residency programs should also receive similar treatment. Such a proposal would enable more physicians to be eligible for Green Cards and address the ongoing physician shortage,” she said.
Dr. Sudhakar Jonnalgadda, President-Elect of AAPI, said, “AAPI has once again succeeded in bringing to the forefront many important health care issues facing the physician community and raising our voice unitedly before the US Congress members.”
“AAPI welcomes this bipartisan legislation introduced by Senators Perdue, Durbin, Young and Coons; the bill would help address the critical healthcare shortage in the United States, a weakness that has been evident during the COVID-19 national emergency,” said Dr. Anupama Gotimukula, Vice President of AAPI.
“The Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act recognizes the importance and the need of immigrant doctors, nurses and their families. At this critical time, addressing shortages in the health care workforce is imperative. By ensuring unused visas do not go waste, the bill will help doctors, nurses and their families, who have been waiting in line, immigrate sooner,” said Dr. Raghuveer Kurra, Chair of AAPI Committee on Green Card Backlog.
“Thousands of Indian-American Physicians have been affected by the backlog for Green Card. This negatively impacted their ability to work and provide the much-needed health care services for the people affected by the COVID-19 pandemic across the nation,” said Dr. Ram Sanjeev Alur, Co-Chair, AAPI Committee on Green Card Backlog. “These Indian physicians constitute less than one percent of the country’s population, but account for nine percent of the American physicians. One out of every seven doctors serving in the US health care system is of Indian heritage. These Indian origin Physicians provide medical care to over 40 million American population living in rural and underserved areas,” added Dr. Pavan Panchavati, Co-Chair, AAPI Committee on Green Card Backlog.
Dr. Ravi Kolli, Secretary of AAPI, said, “Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. was already facing a serious shortage of physicians largely due to growth, aging of the population and the impending retirements of many physicians.” Raj Bhayani, Treasurer of AAPI, pointed out, “This shortage was dramatically highlighted by the lack of physicians in certain key areas during the COVID-19 pandemic which forced states to recall retired physicians, expand physicians’ scope of practice, and amend out of state licensing laws.”
AAPI has recently heard calls from New York , New Jersey and California for physicians from out of state to help them care for patients, and there will be more areas of need in these states and also nationally who certainly will need additional physician force for staffing their hospitals, fever clinics, COVID care centers and Emergency rooms in near future.
According to Dr. Suresh Reddy, “AAPI has been consistent in bringing many important health care issues faced by the physician community and raising our voice unitedly before the US Congress members. we have been able to discover our own potential and have been playing an important role in shaping the health of each patient with a focus on health maintenance rather than disease intervention. AAPI is also instrumental in crafting the health care delivery in the most efficient manner and has been striving for equality in health care globally.”
For more details on AAPI and its legislative agenda, please visit: www.aapiusa.org
Though most of us don’t know when we’ll travel again, Emirates is ready to put its planes back in the air. Today, the Dubai-based airline announced that it will resume passenger flights to nine destinations this month, including one city in the U.S.
As of May 21, Emirates flights will operate from Dubai to Chicago, London, Paris, Milan, Madrid, Toronto, Sydney, Frankfurt, and Melbourne, making it among the first airlines to resume long-haul services to the U.S. “We are pleased to resume scheduled passenger services to these destinations, providing more options for customers to travel from the UAE to these cities,” Adel Al Redha, Emirates’ chief operating officer said in a statement. As several of the destinations currently have travel bans and other entry restrictions in place, the airlines says it will only accept passengers who meet the criteria for entering their destination country.
For those concerned about safety on planes during the ongoing pandemic, the airline says they’ve made the necessary accommodations. “We have implemented additional measures at the airport in coordination with the relevant authorities in respect to social distancing and sanitization,” Al Redha said in the statement. “The safety and well-being of our employees, customers and communities, remain our top priority.”
Last month, the airline became the first in the world to begin using blood tests to screen passengers before they board Emirates flights; they have also announced that Emirates’ cabin crews, boarding agents, and ground staff who interact with travelers will be wearing personal protective equipment, including safety visors and disposable gowns. In-flight service has been modified to minimize contact, printed reading materials removed, and all cabin baggage must be checked. Planes are also being disinfected between every flight.
Since April, Emirates has primarily been operating repatriation flights for United Arab Emirates’ residents, after a two-week suspension of operations in late March per UAE government orders. In addition to the just announced passenger flights, Emirates will continue to fly repatriation routes prior to May 21, including those from Dubai to Tokyo Narita; Dubai to Conakry, Guinea; and Dubai to Dakar, Senegal.
Earlier this month, Qatar Airways announced that it was beginning to gradually resume service as well, and is planning to fly to 52 destinations by the end of this month. This includes two U.S. cities, Dallas and Chicago, according to a press representative for the airline. Turkish Airlines—which had stopped all international flights—is also increasing flight service gradually, Reuters reports. They plan to fly to 19 countries this month, and work up to 99 in September.
Though most of us don’t know when we’ll travel again, Emirates is ready to put its planes back in the air. Today, the Dubai-based airline announced that it will resume passenger flights to nine destinations this month, including one city in the U.S.
As of May 21, Emirates flights will operate from Dubai to Chicago, London, Paris, Milan, Madrid, Toronto, Sydney, Frankfurt, and Melbourne, making it among the first airlines to resume long-haul services to the U.S. “We are pleased to resume scheduled passenger services to these destinations, providing more options for customers to travel from the UAE to these cities,” Adel Al Redha, Emirates’ chief operating officer said in a statement. As several of the destinations currently have travel bans and other entry restrictions in place, the airlines says it will only accept passengers who meet the criteria for entering their destination country.
For those concerned about safety on planes during the ongoing pandemic, the airline says they’ve made the necessary accommodations. “We have implemented additional measures at the airport in coordination with the relevant authorities in respect to social distancing and sanitization,” Al Redha said in the statement. “The safety and well-being of our employees, customers and communities, remain our top priority.”
Last month, the airline became the first in the world to begin using blood tests to screen passengers before they board Emirates flights; they have also announced that Emirates’ cabin crews, boarding agents, and ground staff who interact with travelers will be wearing personal protective equipment, including safety visors and disposable gowns. In-flight service has been modified to minimize contact, printed reading materials removed, and all cabin baggage must be checked. Planes are also being disinfected between every flight.
Since April, Emirates has primarily been operating repatriation flights for United Arab Emirates’ residents, after a two-week suspension of operations in late March per UAE government orders. In addition to the just announced passenger flights, Emirates will continue to fly repatriation routes prior to May 21, including those from Dubai to Tokyo Narita; Dubai to Conakry, Guinea; and Dubai to Dakar, Senegal.
Earlier this month, Qatar Airways announced that it was beginning to gradually resume service as well, and is planning to fly to 52 destinations by the end of this month. This includes two U.S. cities, Dallas and Chicago, according to a press representative for the airline. Turkish Airlines—which had stopped all international flights—is also increasing flight service gradually, Reuters reports. They plan to fly to 19 countries this month, and work up to 99 in September.
History was made as India’s national carrier, AIR INDIA’s inaugural flight to the United States originating from Bombay, now renamed as Mumbai, the commercial capital of India, after brief layover in London, arrived at the Idlewild Airport, now known as the JFK International Airport in New York on May 14th,1960.
Nancy Kuo, the first local employee hired in 1959 by the then country head of AIR INDIA, Peter Mahta, recalls the initial days, as it set forth on a new journey, adding a new feather to its long flying history around the world. Ms. Kuo, a Columbia University graduate was 23 years old when she had joined AIR INDIA in New York and retired after 40 years of service. “I was interviewed by Peter Mahta, the U.S & Canada Regional Director at Air India, for a position as a reservation agent,” recalls Ms. Kuo. “I was the first local Reservation agent hired by Air India in the U.S. There was a total of eight employees, including Ashok Dutt, Sales Manager; Bill Shaw, Cargo Manager; Don Gazdar, Reservations Manager; and I.”
Air India ad in May 4,1960 edition of the New York Times
Working in four small rooms within the offices of Tata Inc., on 425 Park Avenue in New York City, AIR INDIA’s successful business operation began 60 years ago. Reservations, ticketing and teletype were in a one room with three desks. “As we were preparing for the first transatlantic flight on May 14, 1960, we needed more staff and larger offices and moved to the 11th floor on 410 Park Avenue,” Ms. Kuo says.
Dilip Dulai was hired for accounting and stayed with Air India until his retirement. Airport traffic was handled by British Airways and there weren’t any AIR INDIA staff at JFK Airport. “I remained with AIR INDIA — through numerous personnel changes, in different positions and office locations in New York City — until my early retirement almost 40 years later. Now, in 2020, it has been 60 years since the inaugural flight. It is a bittersweet milestone as most of my colleagues from that time have passed on,” says Ms. Kuo, who is now in her Eighties living in Queens, NY.
Andy Bhatia, a veteran of Air India sales department in North America, a close link between the fast-growing Indian American community and the national carrier of India, had served the Airline for 34 years in the US. For several decades he was the face of AIR INDIA at numerous community events, where the national carrier made its mark among the community members across the country.
AIR INDIA was not only a carrier to the small Indian community in the US, recalls Anil Bansal, President, Federation of Indian Associations (FIA), Founder & Executive Chairman of the former Indus American Bank, and the President of the First National Realty Management, Lyndhurst, NJ. AIR INDIA was a link and a life line between India and the early settlers who had come to the US pursuing greener pastures in this land of opportunities.
First Day Cover issued by the Indian Postal Department
In a congratulatory note on this special occasion, Mr. Bansal said, “Congratulations to Air India for serving the Indian community in the US for the past 60 years since their first flight arrived in New York on May 14, 1960. Those of us who came here as students in the 1960s or 1070s, remember how AIR INDIA brought news and entertainment from back home by making available a selection of new feature length Indian movies to be shown every weekend on the University Campuses and a special edition of the Hindustan Times with condensed weekly news from back home,” Mr. Bansal gratefully acknowledges.
By organizing art and essay competitions, and by offering books, magazines, entertainment, unique posters and recipe books, which were always much sought after by all, Mr. Bansal says, AIR INDIA played a significant role in the life of the growing Indian community in the US.
“Best of all, AIR INDIA helped many Indian organizations in showcasing India’s rich history and culture in the United States,” Mr. Bansal, who is leading the largest Indian organization in the US on its golden jubilee years, says. “FIA has been partners with Air India for 50 years, virtually from Day 1 that FIA was founded. They have always supported us, it has been a great association, partnership and friendship.”
Headquartered in Bombay (Mumbai), AIR INDIA’s first ever scheduled air service was inaugurated in 1932 by J.R.D. Tata, flying mail and passengers between Karāchi, Ahmadābād, Bombay, Bellary, and Madras. By 1939 routes had been extended to Trivandrum, Delhi, Colombo, Lahore, and intermediate points. After World War II, in 1946, Tata Airlines was converted into a public company and renamed Air-India Limited. Two years later, to inaugurate international services between Bombay (Mumbai) and Cairo, Geneva, and London, Air-India International Limited was formed.
Nancy Kuo, First Air India employee
In 1953 India nationalized all Indian airlines, creating two corporations—one for domestic service, called Indian Airlines Corporation (merging Air-India Limited with six lesser lines), and one for international service, Air-India International Corporation. The latter’s name was abbreviated to Air-India in 1962. In the following decades as India’s flag carrier, the airline extended its international routes to all continents except South America and Australia, and it expanded its cargo operations. To gain a competitive advantage in computerized reservation searches, the airline removed the hyphen from its name in 2005 to become Air India.
J. R. D. Tata founded Tata Airlines in 1932 as a division of Tata Sons Ltd. (now Tata Group). After World War II, regular commercial service in India went back to normal, Tata Airlines changing its name to Air India and becoming a public limited company on the 29th of July 1946.
On June 9th, 1948, Air India introduced a regular service from Bombay to London, and two years later, AIR INDIA started regular flights to Nairobi. In 1993, AIR INDIA’s first Boeing 747-400, named Konark, operated the first non-stop flight between New York City and Delhi. In 1996, Air India started using its second US gateway at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. Services to Air India’s third US gateway at Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark were introduced in the year 2000.
In October 2016, AIR INDIA changed the Delhi – San Francisco route previously operated over the Atlantic Ocean to flying over the Pacific Ocean, in order to take advantage of jet stream winds and use less fuel. With the total flown distance being over 15,200 kilometres (9,400 miles), AIR INDIA operated the world’s longest non-stop regular scheduled commercial flight.
Nancy Kuo being congratulated and presented with a memento on 35 years of service by Shankar Ghose, Regional Director USA & Canada on her left and P.K. Sinha, Manager USA & Canada on her right.
AIR INDIA has been an innovator of sorts, flying chef-on-board as early as 1987 when the four best restaurant chefs of them world flew on board AI flights serving delectable food to First and Business food on order. The meal sampling that followed from the myriad choice in the menu served onboard was a great experience. Not only was the taste very good, the health issue was attended by no visible oil or heavy spices. It was a gastronomical delight for all media participants.
AIR INDIA has many first in its glorious 60 years history of flying to the US. It marked the International Women’s Day in 2019 by flying all-women-crews to various cities – Washington DC, Newark, Chicago & San Francisco. The national carrier flew four flights to the US with women pilots as its commanders. Air India says it has become the first airline to fly around the world with an all-female crew, just ahead of International Women’s Day. “Air India scripted history by flying an all-women crew flight around the world,” the airline said in a statement on Facebook, after Flight AI 174 touched back down in New Delhi.
“Literally with high flying women. All 4 Air India flights into US today, JFK, Newark, Chicago & SFo were commandered by women pilots. We were delighted to honour 8 women pilots at the Consulate on #Internationalwomensday. Big thanks to Vandana Sharma of @airindiain& FIA,” tweeted Consul General of India, New York, Sandeep Chakravorty.
In addition to the four flights to the US, the airline flew all-women-crew flights to destinations including Milan, Frankfurt, and Singapore. Air India reiterated that by flying all-women-crew in its flights it wants to stress on its constant efforts to encourage women by giving them an equal opportunity in the workplace.
Air India’s Delhi-San Francisco non-stop service on August 15, India’s 73rd Independence Day, created history — it became the first Indian commercial flight to fly over the Polar region, The flight did its bit to save the environment and also ensured that the journey between the two cities becomes shorter.
The opening of the Polar route will help Air India’s operations to all the five cities in the US that it flies to — New York, Newark, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington DC. Potentially, the opening of the Polar route could lead to Air India no longer operating the ‘around the world’ flight that it currently plies to reach San Francisco. The Delhi-San Francisco route was launched in 2015.
AIR INDIA has been in the forefront when calamities struck Indians living abroad. The services rendered by AIR INDIA has continued to this day. “Right now, during this COVID pandemic, we salute AIR INIDIA for the bravery and the service they are providing to evacuate stranded Indians from America and other countries. FIA and the Indian community will remain grateful,” Mr. Bansal acknowledges.
Nancy Kuo is seen with Peter Mahta, Regional Director-Americas (retired) on his 80th birthday
The first AIR INDIA special flight, which took off from San Francisco with 225 Indians on board, landed in Mumbai on Monday, May 11th, 60 years later it started its operations in the US. The passengers departed from San Francisco International Airport on Saturday under the Government of India’s Vande Bharat mission on Sunday. “First AI spl flight from the US brings in 225 Indians from San Francisco to Mumbai. Thank @airindiain @MoCA_GoI and Maharashtra Govt for support and coordination. Great work by CG Sanjay Panda and Team @CGISFO,” External Affair Minister S Jaishankar tweeted.
According to India’s Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, of the 64 flights that will leave for the 12 countries, seven flights would be dedicated to the U.S., another seven to U.K., 10 to UAE, five to Saudi Arabia, five to Singapore, two to Qatar.
Over the past six decades, AIR INDIA has come to be trusted for its consistency and dedicated services unique to the national carrier. “If I were to send my aged parents or a minor child, or any newcomer to the United States, I always look forward to AIR INDIA for a reliable service and confidence in helping them reach safely home,” says Dr. Narendra Kumar, past President of American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin. “While many of us ignore the lack of services or the attitude of other international flights, we tend to complain about or take for granted several services AIR INDIA offers to the Indian American community,” he adds.
With expansion and bigger competitions from other airlines, AIR INDIA began to borrow in order maintain its operations around the world. In 2013, Air India cleared some of its debts by selling and leasing back the newly acquired Boeing 787 Dreamliners. Also, as a part of the financial restructuring, the airline sold five of its eight Boeing 777-200LR aircraft to Etihad Airways.
In 2018, the Indian government tried to privatize Air India by selling 76% of its stake in the national carrier but failed because no private-sector buyer expressed interest in the state-owned airline. In January 2020, the Indian government approved a new proposal to divest 100% stake in Air India, which will be followed by the Expression of Interest (EoI) document to be issued this month.
Not many are happy are happy about the national carrier of India becoming privately owned business. “We wish Air India a bright future and hope things will improve, and they will continue as an independent airline,” Mr. Bansal says.
(By Ambassador Anil Trigunayat, former Indian Ambassador to Jordan, Libya and Malta)
Covid 19 virus has brought the world to a stand still and overly defensive mode. Countries are cut off with one another with increasing restrictions on movement. Only stranded citizens or some special categories have been allowed to be repatriated or evacuated from abroad. Borders are sealed within countries and with the outside world. Economies are in recession, industry in shut down and the countries in lock down. Travel and Tourism have become things of the past at least in the short term. Airlines and other logistics are looking for lifelines and financial bail outs to stay afloat. Health care of citizens and handholding of the industry and economy are the primary concerns of the world leaders.
In this dire situation of isolation and social distancing some restrictive measures have been taken that might impact on the free movement of people to other countries for travel, tourism, or immigration. It might take much longer for the world to become a normal place.
On April 22, President Trump has signed an executive order “Proclamation Suspending Entry of Immigrants Who Present Risk to the U.S. Labor Market During the Economic Recovery Following the COVID-19 Outbreak” declaring that “In the administration of our Nation’s immigration system, we must be mindful of the impact of foreign workers on the United States labor market, particularly in an environment of high domestic unemployment and depressed demand for labor…..Furthermore, lawful permanent residents, once admitted, are granted “open-market” employment authorization documents, allowing them immediate eligibility to compete for almost any job, in any sector of the economy. There is no way to protect already disadvantaged and unemployed Americans from the threat of competition for scarce jobs from new lawful permanent residents by directing those new residents to particular economic sectors with a demonstrated need not met by the existing labor supply. Existing immigrant visa processing protections are inadequate for recovery from the COVID-19 outbreak. The vast majority of immigrant visa categories do not require employers to account for displacement of United States workers. While some employment-based visas contain a labor certification requirement, because visa issuance happens substantially after the certification is completed, the labor certification process cannot adequately capture the status of the labor market today. Moreover, introducing additional permanent residents when our healthcare resources are limited puts strain on the finite limits of our healthcare system at a time when we need to prioritize Americans and the existing immigrant population. In light of the above, I have determined that the entry, during the next 60 days, of certain aliens as immigrants would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” It does exclude the spouses of US citizens, Doctors and Nurses and Health care professionals in the context of Covid 19 and those Immigrant Investor E-5 visa programme. ALL US visas have already been temporarily suspended and may take much longer to be revived. Green Card applications have been put on hold. It may sound innocuous. But it is in keeping with President Trump’s election speeches during 2015-16 and his subsequent emphasis on “American first“ and even most recently announced special financial assistance to the US industries which will shift back their businesses to the country. It also tends to set an example that for all the US problems the immigrant work force is responsible forgetting in the process that USA is a nation of immigrants and whose contributions have been critical to it becoming a hyper power and the biggest economy in the world. Similar anti-immigrant rhetoric has become a common place of political parlance. in European countries where extreme political right wingers are gaining substantial mileage, it is a dangerous trend even if politically expedient in the short term.
India has a highly successful diaspora of over 30 million comprising Non Resident Indians (NRIs) and Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) who have acquitted themselves creditably in their host countries and the country of origin. Several have reached the pinnacles of success and are heading the biggest Multi-National Corporations in the West. They have done well in science, medicine, industry, agriculture and enterprise. In the Silicon Valley the Indian software professionals and companies have become a gold standard and contributed to US becoming the most advanced knowledge economy. They are the largest claimants of the H1B professional visas even though it has been a point of discussion between the Indian and US authorities time and again. Many have become successful politicians and Governors and, in some countries, even the Prime Ministers and Heads of State. It is a matter of pride that in the UK the Finance and Interior Ministers belong to this category. In the top ten industrialists in the UK there are several early Entrepreneurs of Indian Origin (EIO). In the Canadian Cabinet of PM Trudeau several accomplished Indians from the sub-continent have made a mark. Indian origin people in the US account for nearly 4 million about whom President Trump spoke glowingly during his February visit to India let alone the famous “Howdy Modi “ event in Houston Texas where he walked around the stadium with PM Modi for the cheering huge Indian crowds. NRIs and PIOs have become the hall mark of excellence and a reliable bridge between their adopted countries and India. The Brain drain of yore has converted into the “Brain trust” of modern times.
Likewise, in the West Asian region over nine million Indians have become the integral part of the exceptional development and progress especially of the oil rich gulf economies. They comprise of high-quality professionals, bankers, entrepreneurs, medical professionals including nurses and para medic staff and blue-collar workers.Their enterprise, loyalty and discipline are admired and respected by their local hosts. They have helped the Indian economy through foreign exchange remittances and most of it stays back in the country unlike from some other regions which are market driven deposits. They have been remitting over US $ 40-50 bn annually from the gulf region and India gets the highest remittances world wide. However, the general down turn in the gulf economies and low crude oil prices have had an impact on employment and remittances in recent years . With the Covid 19 pandemic combined with lower crude prices the economies are expected to contact by 25-30% and major projects might be deferred or a complete restructuring of their economic model might ensue in a changed global order. This obviously will have an adverse effect on the employability of expatriate work force in these countries. World Bank estimated that in view of deadly corona virus pandemic remittances to India are likely to drop by 23 percent from US$ 83 bn ( 2019) to US$ 64 bn this year. It will be largely due to fall in the wages of migrant workers. Retrenchments and repatriation in large number may follow which will have its socio-economic consequences on several sending states. In addition those industrialists and entrepreneurs who set up shops abroad might find it difficult to salvage their balance sheets without huge injection of capital and state support. This vicious cycle will have its own dynamic that is difficult to exactly define and predict at this stage.
Indian government has been the first responder to evacuate thousands of her citizens as well as from many other countries from the conflict and Covid zones. In the wake of Covid 19 and to express solidarity with the world, Prime Minister Modi initiated the digital diplomacy and video conferencing with our neighbours and many world leaders including G20 to galvanize global concert and effort. To ensure the welfare of Indian citizens he spoke to the Heads of State and Governments of the countries where larger numbers of the Indian diaspora are located and sincere assurances have been received from their leadership at the highest level. Embassies have been charged to extend all assistance to the community in distress.
By the end of Covid 19 Government interventions and role will be enhanced to mitigate, control the spread of virus and ensure healthy recovery of the maximum people and to salvage the economy. But this will also likely lead to greater restrictions on the border management and immigration controls will be severe especially in the developed world which has as such failed the high standards the rest of the world held them in this fight against the pandemic. Restrictions on movement will be unfortunate and must be dispensed with even by those who feel the rising unemployment in their countries has increased due to migrant workforce and not due to wrong policy choices and lack of factual determination on the part of political and industrial leadership. Unfortunately, UN and other international bodies have also disappointed in recent times. Recourse, therefore, lies in continued bilateral and multilateral engagement.
India has kept in abeyance multiple-entry, life-long visas given to Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) card holders till international travel remains suspended, the Ministry of Home Affairs said on Tuesday.
The order, however, said that card holders who are already in India can stay in the country for any length of time.
The ministry said that it has issued an order “specifying that the right of multiple entry life-long visa facility for visiting India for any purpose granted to persons registered as OCI cardholders would continue to be kept in abeyance till the prohibition on international air travel of passengers from/to India is lifted by the Government of India”.
“Any foreign national holding an OCI card who intends to travel to India for compelling reasons during this period would have to contact the nearest Indian Mission,” it said.
Further, in case of persons holding OCI card who are already in India, the OCI card shall remain valid for their stay in India for any length of time.
All existing visas granted to foreigners — except those belonging to diplomatic, official, UN international organisations, employment and project categories — shall remain suspended till prohibition on international air travel of passengers from and to India is lifted by the government, the order said. (IANS)
The Finance Ministry on Friday announced relief to those who have been facing difficulty with the status of their residency in India under the provisions of the Income Tax Act, due to lockdown and suspension of international flights.
Owing to outbreak of coronavirus (Covid-19), several NRIs and foreign visitors have been forced to prolong their stay in India. This has changed the status of their residency having implications on their taxability in India.
The Finance Ministry has now decided not to include extended stay of foreign visitors and NRIs in India due to lockdown in determining their residential status.
Considering various representations received from people who had to prolong their stay in India due to lockdown and suspension of international flights, expressing concerns that they will be required to file tax returns as Indian residents, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday allowed discounting of prolonged stay period in India for the purpose of determining residency status, a government statement said.
The Finance Ministry further stated that as the lockdown continues during the financial year 2020-21 and it is not yet clear as to when international flight operations would resume, a circular excluding the period of stay of these individuals up to the date of normalisation of international flight operations, for determination of the residential status for the financial year 2020-21 shall be issued after the flights are resumed.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) issued a necessary circular to this effect. The circular makes it clear that any period of stay in India post March 22 to March 31 will not be included for calculation of number of days required to determine residency status for tax purpose. Also, visitors who had to be quarantined for a period even before March 22 will also get relief.
Even if an individual has departed on an evacuation flight on or before March 31, 2020, his period of stay in India from March 22 to his date of departure shall not be taken into account.
It may be noted that there are number of individuals who had come on a visit to India during the previous year 2019-20 for a particular duration and intended to leave India before the end of the previous financial year for maintaining their status as non-resident or not ordinary resident in India.
The status of an individual whether he is resident in India or a non-resident or not ordinarily resident, is dependent, inter-alia, on the period for which the person is in India during a year. (IANS)
Indian Embassy in US calls for registration of Indian Citizens to be transported back to India
Almost 200,000 Indians have registered with the country’s missions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for repatriation flights that will begin operating from May 7, with officials saying priority would be given to workers who have lost jobs and people with medical emergencies.
The Indian government had on Monday announced it would begin repatriating Indians stranded around the world because of the Covid-19 crisis from May 7 and authorities said naval ships and chartered flights would bring back hundreds of thousands of people in phases.
“Given that the Embassy/Consulate have received almost 200,000 registrations for travelling back, it will take time for all people to be accommodated on these flights,” said a statement issued by the Indian consulate in Dubai late on Monday.
The first two special flights from the UAE to India will operate from Abu Dhabi to Kochi and from Dubai to Kozhikode on Thursday, the statement said. “The passenger lists for both these flights will be finalised by the Embassy of India, Abu Dhabi, and the Consulate General of India, Dubai, on the basis of registrations in the…database for this purpose launched a few days back,” it added.
The statement said priority would be given to “workers in distress, elderly people, urgent medical cases, pregnant women as well as to other people who are stranded in difficult situations”.
The cost of tickets and other facilities, such as quarantine after reaching India, would be “conveyed in due course and will have to be accepted by each passenger”, the statement said.
However, experts from the UAE’s aviation and travel industries indicated to Gulf News that the cost of a ticket on the special flights would be almost double the price of a normal ticket for this time of the year.
“A one-way repatriation ticket to Delhi will cost approximately Dh 1,400-Dh 1,650 – this would earlier have cost between Dh 600-Dh 700 [during these months],” said Jamal Abdulnazar, CEO of Cozmo Travel.
“A one-way repatriation flight ticket to Kerala would cost approximately Dh 1,900-Dh 2,300,” he said.
Gulf News reported that price could be a burden for a majority of people taking these flights because they had “either lost their jobs or are sending back their families because of uncertainty on the work front”. The aviation and travel industry experts said the higher rates couldn’t be avoided because social distancing norms would limit the number of passengers on each flight.
Indian ambassador Pavan Kapoor told the daily that the missions in the UAE had “prioritised the list of passengers and given it to Air India”. He added, “We would call and email each passenger to contact Air India to get their tickets issued. The first two flights on Thursday would be to Kerala, considering the high number of applicants from the state.”
One of the three Indian Navy ships that set off on Monday night to evacuate stranded Indians – INS Shardul – will go to Dubai to bring back expatriates, the defence ministry said. The other two warships – INS Jalashwa and INS Magar – were sent to the Maldives. All three warships will return to Kochi.
Kapoor also said there would be flights almost on a daily basis to various destinations in India. Other officials said Indians stranded in the UAE with visit and tourist visas and those with cancelled visas would also be given preference for returning home.
The Indian missions in the UAE will convey details of further flights to different destinations in India in the coming days. “We seek patience and cooperation from everyone as the Government of India undertakes this massive task of repatriation of Indian nationals,” the statement said.
The UAE is home to more than two million Indian expatriates. Their welfare figured in a telephone conversation between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed on March 26.
Transport from USA
As per the press release issued by Ministry of Home Affairs on 4 May 2020, Government of India will be facilitating the return of Indian nationals stranded abroad on compelling grounds in phased a manner. Details may be seen at Click Here
The purpose of this form is only to collect relevant information for planning purposes by the Government of India. The Embassy/Consulate will inform you about the commencement of flights from US to India. Incomplete forms will not be considered.
In case of any flights arranged from the U.S. to India, one must agree to:
Undergo a 14-day mandatory quarantine, either in a hospital or in an institutional quarantine on payment-basis, on my arrival in India as per the protocols framed by the Government of India;
Bear the expenditure of travel and mandatory quarantine for self and family members;
Abide by the instructions and requirements as detailed by the crew of the flight/Embassy or Consulate/Government of India/ medical personnel before, during and after boarding of the flight, and also after disembarkation at the designated airport in India; and
Submit the undertaking as provided at (Download Undertaking Form), to authorized Embassy/ Consulate staff before boarding the flight.
Register on the Aarogya Setu App on reaching destination
Sens. Durbin, Perdue teamed up on the bill to bring relief to US health care professionals
A bipartisan group of senators introduced new legislation Thursday to grant 40,000 unused green card slots to foreign health care workers needed to help U.S. medical professionals fight the coronavirus pandemic.
Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., a longtime stalwart of immigration-related legislation, unveiled the bill with his colleagues, Sens. David Perdue, R-Ga., Todd Young, R-Ind., and Chris Coons, D-Del.
The bill would authorize up to 25,000 immigrant visas to go to foreign nurses and up to 15,000 for doctors who are eligible to come to the United States or who are already here on temporary work visas. These immigrant visas would lead to employment-based green cards. The legislation would also allow U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to give out slots from a pool of previously unclaimed green cards for the families of these medical workers.
“Consider this: One-sixth of our health care workforce is foreign-born. Immigrant nurses and doctors play a vital role in our healthcare system, and their contributions are now more crucial than ever. Where would we be in this pandemic without them?” said Durbin, the Democratic whip, in a statement. “This bipartisan, targeted, and timely legislation will strengthen our health care workforce and improve health care access for Americans in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Perdue noted that a growing shortage of doctors and nurses in the United States over the past decade has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis.
“Fortunately, there are thousands of trained health professionals who want to practice in the United States,” he said. “This proposal would simply reallocate a limited number of unused visas from prior years for doctors and nurses who are qualified to help in our fight against COVID-19.”
Every year, 160,000 employment-based green cards are slated to be given out, but not all of the slots get filled. The ones that don’t get used get taken off the table for that year.
That has let to an accumulation of about 200,000 such unused green cards over the last three decades. Under the legislation introduced Thursday, the government would be allowed to “recapture” around 40,000 of those visas.
“I think this is a really surgical intervention, to use a relevant term,” said Bruce Morrison, a former congressman who lobbies for the American Hospital Association.
“At a time when the problem we have on the front lines of our response to the pandemic is that there aren’t enough resources, doctors and nurses,” he said. “This is a tailored and targeted response to precisely that problem.”
Currently, there are more than 10,000 medical residents already in the country on nonimmigrant J-1 visas and H-1B visas, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Those residents are American-trained health care workers, but their strict visa requirements often do not afford them the flexibility to serve changing needs amid the coronavirus crisis. For example, they are not allowed to take on telehealth appointments or take shifts at hospitals other than the ones that have specifically sponsored their visas.
Foreign nurses, on the other hand, often are approved to come to America on employment-based green cards. But even after their applications are approved, many get stuck in their home countries due to U.S. processing delays and backlogs.
The new Senate bill would circumvent the politics that typically bog down immigration-related legislation in Congress, Morrison said.
“It is very easy to keep something from happening in Washington — it’s the skill that is very prevalent,” he said. “This is not a change that the so-called restrictionists may be concerned about.”
Well who doesn’t like travelling and exploring new, beautiful places? And if you are a travel enthusiast as well as someone who travels a lot, you know the struggle of deciding what clothes to pack to take along with you. However, let’s not forget how important it is to take out the time to decide an airport outfit. Well, you can now search for your favorite travel outfit with the help of an image search tool. Using an image finder tool is now so helpful for the young travelers to keep their outfit up to date. By performing reverse image search of fashion image or photo, they can easily find out the exact features of their favorite travelling outfit.
The era of wearing really fancy and heavy clothes to the airport has long been bid farewell to. People now do consider what they should wear while travelling which will keep the in the trend game while making comfort as a top priority. The right clothing can have a very positive influence on you overall. The confidence that is felt in a cool outfit is beyond the imagination. Obviously, when you are travelling, you have to make sure that you reach your destination with a clear mind and your clothing can really have an influence on your thinking pattern.
So it is essential that you take out the time to decide an airport outfit that will inspire your 2020 travel and we have surely come up with some of the best and the most trending ideas of the year, for you.
Lili Reinhart look absolutely gorgeous and all ready to travel
No better way to make these super versatile jeans pop up other than by pairing them up this super cool black shirt because you can never go wrong with black and as everyone says, ‘’when you feel confused, wear black.’’
But these aren’t the only things making Lili look spot on. The real show stopper is the tweed coat which adds up all the spice to this really simple outfit. And well, mules were definitely the best option to go with because not only would they provide you with comfort while you travel, but they also add that classiness to your look.
So, wouldn’t it have been unfair if Lili’s this look wasn’t on top of the list? Well, exactly. This is the perfect go-to look which doesn’t make her look to plain and at the same time not too off the board.
Isn’t this the boss-girl kind of look to fly to your destination?
Well, if you want to get that ‘’model-off-duty’’ kind of appearence, then be sure to pair a high-rise trousers with a tucked in shirt. And to make one look more composed and if you are someone who thinks long coats are just a little too much or uncomfortable and want a replacement, then you should definitely go with the cropped jacket because let’s just admit it, this does look graceful from every aspect.
This is the most put together look for 2020 which is ideeal to be classified as one of the favorite airport outfits of the year.
Gigi’s travel outfit
And guess who it is? The queen herself. This was Gigi’s travel outfit to Milan for the year 2020. As we all know that this year is all about oversized clothing and big capacious bags, it is appropriate to say that this year screams the ‘’go big or go home’’ motto. And Gigi’s look really goes hand in hand with the trend.
The olive green oversized coat is everything you need to make your outfit look chic. Not to forget the beige tote in her hand which looks a perfect fit with the overall look. She paired these up with monochrome trainers and them amazing shades.
We ain’t calling Gigi a queen without any reasons. She is a real show stopper. And just like the look she did to the airport for Milan, Gigi made sure that she didn’t violate the fashion trends of 2020 while being at Tokyo’s airport as well.
Again, an oversized blazer but this time, she went for a black T-shirt and obviously, you can not get the right look without the right sunglasses and so Gigi went with the micro sunglasses for the look making sure, that her look would make the heads turn and stay in the best airport lookbook of the year.
Victoria Beckham with the oversized bottoms
Victoria Beckham with the oversized bottoms look absolutely iconic at the airport. Although she wore this look for 2017, but we think that the oversized bottoms and the top that she’s wearing, wouldn’t limit the appreciation to a specific year only.
Sometimes, you just have to go with a very easy look but you have to make sure that you stay classy, and this is surely what Victoria did. Her ‘’Fashion stole my smile’’ shirt was the perfect top-off to the look and made everyone go crazy for it.
Rihanna adds style to whatever she does
Well Rihanna for sure knows how to do it. Starting off with how gorgeous her fluffy coat looks, let’s just appreciate and agree on the fact that Rihanna adds style to whatever she does. Rihanna’s JFK look at the airport holding not one but TWO bags makes everybody’s jaws drops because she has proved it that the amount of bags do not matter until or unless you carry yourself with all the grace and class. And she, for sure is doing so.
Following the sharp economic downturn and suspension of business operations triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, a lot of US firms employing H-1B visa holders have laid off numerous employees.
If an employer terminates the contract of H-1B visa holders, the employees need to find new employment within 60 days to retain the H-1B status or face the prospect of being deported to their home countries. This existing rule has exacerbated the problems of H-1B visa holders who have been laid off.
Several reports in the US media have cited Indian H-1B visa holders as expressing concerns that it will be virtually impossible for them to find new jobs if they are laid off, given the rapidly slowing economy.
The Indian government has asked the US to extend the validity of visas, including H-1B and other types of visas, held by Indian nationals who have been hit by the Covid-19-related economic slump, people familiar with developments said on Friday.
A petition on the White House website is requesting the US administration to extend the 60-day period to 180 days to protect H-1B workers in these difficult times. The petition further states: “Most H-1B workers are from India and cannot travel home with children who are US citizens as many nations [have] announced an entry ban, including India.”
It adds: “The Covid-19 situation is getting worse with massive lay-offs expected. The economic conditions may have a significant impact on H-1B workers.”
The petition has nearly 49,000 signatures but will get a response from the White House only if it reaches 100,000 signatures by April 18.
The Indian side is hopeful the US administration will step in to help H-1B visa holders.
The H-1B programme is a non-immigrant work visa that allows American employers to hire foreign workers for specialist jobs, and Indians are the largest beneficiary of the programme.
Foreign secretary Harsh Shringla took up the matter during his telephone conversation with US deputy secretary of state Stephen Biegun on Wednesday, when the two sides also discussed ways to enhance cooperation to counter the pandemic and ensure the availability of essential medicines and equipment.
“We have been in touch with the US government, requesting them to extend the validity of visas of Indian nationals – H-1B and other types of visas – who are stranded in the US due to the pandemic,” said one of the people cited above, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“We are closely monitoring related developments,” the person added, without giving details.
As New York state climbs the steep face of its COVID-19 curve, Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order vastly widening the scope of practice for some healthcare providers and absolving physicians of certain risks and responsibilities.
Along with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, both the states’ governors signed executive orders this week waiving licensing requirements or granting temporary licenses to foreign-born and foreign-licensed physicians in training in the U.S., in order to lessen the pressure on the work force currently stretched thin, according to a Times of India report.
The new relaxation of the rules could mean that nearly 1,000 Indian physicians currently on J-1 and H-1B visas could join coronavirus fight.
Med Page Today reports that, the order’s provisions include eliminating physician supervision of physician assistants, nurse practitioners, certified registered nurse anesthetists, and others; enabling foreign medical graduates, such as those of Indian origin, with at least a year of graduate medical education to care for patients; allowing emergency medical services personnel to operate under the orders of NPs, PAs and paramedics; allowing medical students to practice without a clinical affiliation agreement, and lifting 80-hour weekly work limits for residents; granting providers immunity from civil liability for injury or death
Suspending usual record-keeping requirements; allowing several types of healthcare professionals with licenses in other states to practice in New York; and suspending or revoking hospitals’ operating certificates if they don’t halt elective surgeries.
The order, which remains in place through at least April 22, was met mostly with applause, though with some hesitation around work-hour limits, the report said.
Meanwhile, the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin is doing its part to help as well. AAPI announced it has organized national tele-conferences on COVID-19, in collaboration with the Indian Embassy and National Council of Asian Indian Americans.
“While COVID-19 continues to disrupt life around the globe, AAPI is committed to helping its tens of thousands of members across the U.S. and others across the globe,” said AAPI president Dr. Suresh Reddy.
Reddy notes that, as concerned physicians witnessing the growing COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on our society, healthcare system and economy, AAPI has embarked on several initiatives.
The most effective so far, he said, has been offering twice a week conference calls having been attended by over 2,000 physicians from across the United States.
The teleconference on March 27 was unique as it was jointly organized by AAPI, Indian Embassy in Washington, DC, and National Council of Asian Indian Americans, the release said.
Anurag Kumar, Minister of Community Affairs, while praising the numerous efforts of AAPI, especially in this season of pandemic affecting the world, enumerated the many efforts of the Embassy to help Indians, and with particular focus on the nearly 200,000 Indian students in the U.S., the release said.
The teleconference was moderated by Dr. Lokesh Edara, who lauded AAPI’s efforts in providing such a forum to join in and share their expertise with their fellow physicians and thus provide the best care practice to their patients, especially in this season of fastspreading Covid-19 global pandemic, the AAPI release said.
Dr. Prasad Garimella was a main speaker at the conference. The Indian American physician is a critical care medicine specialist in Lawrenceville, Georgia, and has been practicing for 20 years.
He specializes in critical care medicine, pulmonary disease. Garimella gave an overview of the situation in the state of Georgia, and the many challenges his state faces as the pandemic is fast spreading.
“Everyone needs to act like a health care professional and needs to have the best attitude in order to defeat this deadly virus,” he said, according to the news release. “Social distancing is not isolating. Keep in touch with loved ones. Stay busy and stay connected. Filter and assess the news, look for credible sources to rely upon.”
Dr. Arunachalam Einstein was another speaker, who is an emergency medicine specialist in Everett, Washington. He specializes in emergency medicine and internal medicine. Einstein gave an update of case status in his state.
Another main speaker for the day was Dr. Usha Rani Karumudii, an infectious disease specialist in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who is affiliated with multiple hospitals in the area, including Easton Hospital and UPMC Passavant.
Kanumudi, in her address, said coronavirus has been there for long. The new virus is called novel because it’s highly infectious and we have high number of people with symptoms.
Another major initiative of AAPI has been the “Donate a Mask” program.
March 30 was National Doctors Day, an annual celebration aimed at appreciating and honoring physicians who help save lives everywhere.
“I want to take this special opportunity to thank our physicians for responding to late-night phone calls, working long hours and providing unswerving care. Today, more than ever, we know the sacrifices they make to put the health of their communities first,” Reddy said in a statement.
“We do acknowledge that these are challenging times, more than ever for us, physicians, who are on the frontline to assess, diagnose and treat people who are affected by this deadly pandemic, COVID-19. Many of our colleagues have sacrificed their lives in order to save those impacted by this pandemic around the world,” he said.
As weary travelers returned to the U.S. amid coronavirus-related travel restrictions, they were greeted with packed, hourslong waits for required medical screenings at airports.
Posts on social media indicated passengers at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport waited upward of four hours in winding lines, eliciting criticism from elected Illinois officials.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker tweeted at President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, noting that the customs process is under federal jurisdiction and demanding they take action to address the crowds. His concerns were echoed on Twitter by his fellow Democrats, Illinois Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth.
“This is unacceptable, counterproductive and exactly the opposite of what we need to do to prevent #COVID19,” Duckworth tweeted. “The Trump Administration must send more support to O’Hare immediately.”
While U.S. citizens, green card holders and some others are allowed to return home, travelers from Europe are being funneled to one of 13 U.S. airports where they’re subject to health screenings and quarantine orders.
Acknowledging the long lines at those airports in tweets posted just after midnight, the Department of Homeland Security’s acting secretary said the screenings take about a minute per passenger.
“Right now we are working to add additional screening capacity and working with the airlines to expedite the process,” Chad Wolf tweeted. “I understand this is very stressful. In these unprecedented times, we ask for your patience.”
The dense crowds at the selected airports — among the busiest across the country — formed even as public health officials call for “social distancing” to stem the spread of the virus.
“I’m less concerned about having to stand here for the amount of time that I am, and more concerned about where the people are traveling from that are around me and what they may or may not have been exposed to,” Dorothy Lowe told WFAA-TV at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, where some waits stretched to three hours.
The Texas airport’s Twitter account responded to passengers who raised concerns about the cramped conditions, saying its customer experience team was taking “extra precautions” and that hand sanitizer was available in all terminals. Meanwhile, O’Hare and Chicago police offered queuers bottled water and snacks, according to the airport’s Twitter account.
For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia.
The vast majority of people recover from the new virus. According to the World Health Organization, people with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to recover.
Travelers from restricted countries in Europe, China and Iran are being advised to self-quarantine for 14 days after reaching their final destination in the U.S. “If you don’t have to travel, I wouldn’t do it,” Trump said.
In view of the rapid spread of coronavirus, the Government of India has suspended Travel Visas to India until April 15, with a few exceptions, according to a statement by the Indian Embassy in Washington, DC.
The Indian government has issued the following instructions:
All existing visas, except diplomatic, official, UN / International Organizations, employment and project visas, stand suspended till 15 April 2020. This will come into effect from 1200 GMT (0800 EST) on 13 March 2020 at the port of departure.
Visa free travel facility granted to OCI card holders is kept in abeyance till 15 April 2020. This will come into effect from 1200 GMT (0800 EST) on 13 March 2020 at the port of departure.
Any foreign national who might need to travel to India for compelling reasons may contact the nearest Indian Mission / Consulate.
All incoming travelers, including Indian nationals, arriving from or having visited China, Italy, Iran, Republic of Korea, France, Spain and Germany after 15 February 2020 shall be quarantined for a minimum period of 14 days. This will come into effect from 1200 GMT (0800 EST) on 13 March 2020 at the port of departure.
All incoming travelers, including Indian nationals, would be subject to medical screening and can be quarantined for a minimum of 14 days on their arrival in India.
International traffic through land borders will be restricted to designated check posts with robust screening facilities. Ministry of Home Affairs will separately notify these check posts.
Following the shutting down of university campuses in various parts of the US in view of the coronavirus pandemic, the government on Thursday advised Indian students to avoid international travel.
The Consulate General of India in New York in its advisory asked the students to either stay put in on-campus housing or move in with friends unless it is necessary. The campuses which have closed are now offering online classes to the students in the US.
The government advised the students who are staying in on-campus housing and have been asked to leave by the school authorities, to check with the university if they can stay back. “If the universities are not accepting applications or have not approved applications for continued housing, ask friends if they will be able to host for the period for which the university has shut down,” the advisory said.
The consulate asked the students to check with their respective university about how to avail of health services, international student services, and any other essential services which are impacted in case on-campus services are suspended.
The consulate has advised the students to avoid all non-essential travel internationally and domestically. “In case students do plan on international travel, they should check with designated school officials (DSOs) how any possible future international travel restrictions may challenge their F1 or J1 visa status,” the advisory said.
The government in its advisory told students that they will be subjected to medical screening upon arrival and may be put in quarantine for a minimum of 14 days, in case they plan to return home in India. (IANS)
Think your driver’s license is enough to get you through airport security in the United States and onto your domestic flight? Maybe not.
Some two-thirds of US state driver’s licenses are not compliant with a post-9/11 security law set to go into effect on October 1. Those who are not compliant will not be able to fly if they don’t have other forms of “REAL ID-compliant” identification.
Concerned about the impact on travel, the head of the US Department of Homeland Security loosened the restrictions this week, allowing the various state agencies to accept identity documents electronically.
“Ensuring every state is REAL ID compliant by October is one of the Department’s top priorities,” said DHS Acting Secretary Chad Wolf, in a press release. “While progress has been made, the real work is still ahead because approximately two-thirds of all licenses are presently not compliant with REAL ID.
“Rest assured, our Department will continue to examine other viable options to improve upon this process and continues doing everything it can to inform Americans ofthe requirement to obtain a REAL ID before the full enforcement deadline later this year.”
While Wolf says this “pre-submission” of documents will result in a faster application process, it’s not clear how much faster it will be.
That’s because, as Wolf says, “an in-person visit is still required, as is showing up with physical copies of your documents.”
Starting October 1, travelers must have a “REAL ID-compliant” driver’s license, US passport, US military ID or other acceptable identification to fly within the United States.
The REAL ID Act, which established minimum security standards for the issuing of state licenses and their production, prohibits federal agencies from accepting licenses from states not meeting those minimum standards for certain activities.
To get a REAL ID-compliant state driver’s license, the DHS requires applicants provide documentation showing their full legal name, their date of birth, their Social Security number, two proofs of address of principal residence and lawful status. States may impose more requirements.
If you can’t produce acceptable identification, your US airport’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint will not clear you for flight. The TSA is part of the Department of Homeland Security. That could lead to serious backups at US airports starting October 1.
While many states have been issuing compliant documents for years, travelers shouldn’t assume their driver’s licenses and other documents meet the requirements. For example, Georgia became compliant in 2012 and California became compliant in 2018, but their driver’s licenses issued prior to those times in those states are not compliant.
Check if your state driver’s license or identification card is REAL ID compliant simply by looking for a star in the upper right-hand corner. Some state departments of motor vehicles will confirm REAL ID status online.
Still a backlog
The Department of Homeland Security reported this week that 48 of 50 states in the US are REAL ID compliant, up from January 2017, when only 26 states were. The two remaining states that haven’t started issuing new IDs are Oklahoma and Oregon.
Collectively, those 48 states have issued more than 95 million REAL ID-compliant driver’s licenses and ID cards.
While the US Travel Association applauded the government’s “pre-submission,” decision, “the challenge remains that tens of millions of Americans do not yet possess REAL ID-compliant identification,” said Tori Emerson Barnes, USTA executive vice president of public affairs and policy, in a statement.
A post 9/11 measure
The REAL ID Act’s requirement were part of the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation that the federal government set standards for the issuance of sources of identification, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Since the act’s 2005 passage, the federal government has implemented TSA Pre-Check and other programs that offer more security than REAL ID, said Barnes. That’s why the USTA is lobbying federal authorities to accept membership in those programs as a substitute for REAL ID. (DHS hasn’t said yes, at least not yet.)
US House Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Arizona) and Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Florida) have introduced legislation that would allow the TSA to accept membership in its Pre-Check program as a substitute for REAL ID.
Officials at USTA, which represents major airlines, hotels, state and local tourism boards and other travel industry members, worry that their members will lose customers who suddenly can’t fly within the US starting October 1, 2020.
A US passport qualifies as a REAL ID.
Jeff Haynes/AFP/Getty Images
REAL ID-compliant state driver’s licenses or other state photo identity cards
A new federal regulation that took effect throughout the US could make it more difficult for legal immigrants dependent on government assistance to obtain permanent residency permits, known as green cards.
The so-called “public charge” rule, which went into effect on Monday, also applies to applicants for extension of non-immigrant stay in the US or change of non-immigrant status, reports Efe news.
Amid a months-long legal battle, President Donald Trump’s administration will start enforcing the regulation, which may transform the current US immigration system into one with a heavier emphasis on criteria such as a migrants’ income, age or academic training.
Although court appeals were still pending, the measure was implemented after the US Supreme Court on February 21 lifted an injunction that had been imposed by an Illinois district court.
The high court had earlier lifted injunctions against the policy that had been imposed by courts in the states of New York, California, Washington and Maryland.
The rule will not apply to immigrants who already have green cards nor to those applying for citizenship.
Refugees and people seeking or have been granted political asylum were also among those excluded from the restrictions.
Trump’s run to the White House in 2016 was fuelled in part by his vow to build a wall along the US-Mexico border and take other steps to crack down on illegal immigration.
Although the President enjoys strong backing from within his own Republican Party just over eight months prior to the 2020 general election, some former supporters-turned-critics say he has not done enough in that regard.
But many Republicans also want a partial – or even total – crackdown on legal immigration, warning that conservatives will not be able to win national elections in the future due to a steadily increasing number of traditionally Democratic-voting Hispanics in Texas and other states.
The new system, which has a lower annual salary threshold (£25,600) is likely to enable more Indians to access employment opportunities in the post-Brexit UK. Citizens of the European Union will no longer enjoy preferential access to living and working in the post-Brexit UK from January 1, 2021 under a new points-based immigration system likely to benefit Indian professionals who are already preferred by British employers.
Announcing the radical change on Wednesday, home secretary Priti Patel – daughter of Indian-origin immigrants – said the ‘free movement’ enjoyed by EU citizens over decades of UK’s membership of the EU will end, offering more opportunities to global talent.
The UK already issues more than half of its work visas to Indian professionals (52 per cent of Tier 2 visas). The new system, which has a lower annual salary threshold (£25,600) is likely to enable more Indians to access employment opportunities in the post-Brexit UK.
British business organizations cautiously welcomed the new regime, hailing the scrapping of cap on work visas, but feared severe labor shortages when low-skilled EU citizens will no longer be available in hospitality, care, food processing and other sectors.
Patel advised them to adapt and train 8 million economically inactive people in the UK population: “UK businesses will need to adapt and adjust to the end of free movement…(It) is important that employers move away from a reliance on the UK’s immigration system as an alternative to investment in staff retention, productivity, and wider investment in technology”.
The new system’s policy document states: “For too long, distorted by European free movement rights, the immigration system has been failing to meet the needs of the British people. Failing to deliver benefits across the UK and failing the highly-skilled migrants from around the world who want to come to the UK”.
“Our approach will change all of this. We are implementing a new system that will transform the way in which all migrants come to the UK to work, study, visit or join their family…From 1 January 2021, EU and non-EU citizens will be treated equally”.
Applicants will need to have at least 70 points under heads such as a confirmed job offer, knowledge of English, education qualifications and salary level. Indian students enrolling from September this year will also be eligible for post-study work visa valid for two years.
Jim Bligh of the UK chapter of Confederation of Indian Industry said: “We welcome the Home Office’s proposed new system, which rightly recognises that immigration to the UK should be based on skills, salaries and knowledge of the English language”.
“For business, it’s essential that the system retains flexibility for employers, particularly those bringing in highly-skilled workers on short-term assignments to support UK plc’s growth and transformation. It will also be important to ensure salary thresholds are not a deterrent to finding staff with the right specialist skills from around the world.”
Acting British high commissioner to India, Jan Thompson, added: “The new is great news for Indian nationals looking to work in the UK. It puts Indian applicants on a level playing field, and prioritizes those with the greatest skills and talent – something which India has in abundance”.
Usha Parashar, chair of FICCI UK, said: “The majority of Indian businesses in the UK require skilled manpower. The new point-based immigration system coupled with the lower salary threshold is a positive move. This has been a long standing demand of FICCI members”.
“The new system will benefit not just qualified professionals from India but also large number of Indian students in UK universities”.
Taranjit Singh Sandhu, India’s new Ambassador to the United States, has presented his credentials to President Donald Trump at a special ceremony held in the White House on Thursday, February 7th, 2020. The envoy was accompanied by his wife and peer Reenat Sandhu, currently serving as the Indian Ambassador to Italy.
According to a statement released by the Indian Embassy in Washington, Trump warmly welcomed Sandhu back to Washington and wished him success in his new role as New Delhi’s top diplomat in America. President Trump also fondly recalled his friendship with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and their several interactions.
Ambassador Sandhu said in a statement that the vision and guidance provided by Prime Minister Modi and President Trump in the last three years have moved India and the United States towards greater strategic convergence.
Ambassador Sandhu affirmed his commitment to work towards strengthening strategic partnership between India and the United States, which is anchored in mutual trust and friendship, democratic values and people-to-people ties.
At the State Department, Alice Wells, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs, welcomed Sandhu back to Washington and said in a tweet that the new envoy was a “strong champion of US-India ties”.
Addressing a 200-plus strong gathering of senior US administration officials, lawmakers, business leaders, educators, Indian-American community activists including a good number of Sikhs, press and media persons, at his official residence in Washington, Thursday evening, Sandhu said: “It is like coming back home.”
With more than 2,000 US companies present in India and over 200 Indian companies in the United States, India-US bilateral trade last year hit $160 billion, said Taranjit Singh Sandhu, newly-appointed Indian Ambassador to the United States.
Speaking at a reception hosted by US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), Ambassador Sandhu said that than 2,000 US companies have a presence in India today. “Over 200 Indian Companies have invested US$18 billion in the US, creating more than 100,000 direct jobs,” Ambassador Sandhu said in his remarks. “Two-way investment, between India and US reached, US $60 billion in 2018. Bilateral trade is growing at 10 percent, on a year-to-year basis, and reached $160 billion in 2019.”
He said bilateral numbers made him bullish about Indo-US relationship. “The best is yet to come. When US capital and expertise meets the Indian market and Indian mind, we should aim for nothing less, but the sky,” Ambassador Sandhu said. “I look forward to working with, USISPF and each one of you, in this endeavor of taking our relationship to new heights.”
Here are other highlights from his speech:
India has one of the youngest populations in an aging world. India is a land of 800 million young people. By 2020, the median age in India is just 28, compared to 37 in China and the US, 45 in Western Europe and 49 in Japan. The youth have the ability to think big, think out of the box, innovate, and bring, transformational changes. They are forward looking, and are hungry, for development. They are full of hope, and optimism.
The youth are the drivers of, the new start-up, ecosystem in India. India is the third largest, start-up base in the world. India added 13,00 tech startups last year.
India is home today to around 27 unicorns, i.e. startup companies, valued at over $1 billion. Companies like Zomato, Swiggy, Big Basket, are home-grown, and have revolutionized lives in India.
India is also home to more than 2 million social enterprises, companies which cater to diverse social causes. In the last eight years, over 1.2 billion Indians have received their biometric IDs — Aadhaar, as it called.
Aadhaar is also the largest and most successful IT project ever undertaken in the world, with 1.1 billion people (92% of the population) having a digital proof of identity. In 2016, India overtook the US in terms of internet users. India’s internet user base is now the second largest in the world. There are about 1 billion, mobile users today.
In mobile data consumption today, India is in the first position, ahead of US and China put together. India is the fourth largest automobile market in the world, and the 7th largest for manufacturer of commercial vehicles.
Indian educational institutes have produced the minds, that now lead the global corporations, like Google, Microsoft, MasterCard, Nokia, IBM. India is fast becoming an Artificial Intelligence Hub in the world, with reports suggesting, that 60% of India’s GDP by 2021 will come from AI.
India is the also, largest cinema producer in the world. More Bollywood films are watched by people than from any other industry. There are more Bollywood and Hollywood collaborations now.
Prime Minister Naredra Modi has set the goal for India to grow from a $3 trillion economy today to a $5 trillion economy by 2024 and a $10 trillion economy by 2030. In this journey, Prime Minister Modi has made it clear that the US is a preferred partner for trade and business.
The potential for co-operation between United States and India is limitless. The relations between two governments has found a new momentum, getting its energy from the warm friendship between President Trump our Prime Minister Modi.
Sandhu, who has replaced Harsh Vardhan Shringla, had previously served as the deputy chief in the Indian embassy in Washington.
Streamlined and elegant, with two long wings situated at the rear, this looks like a gas-guzzling super jet built for criss-crossing the planet with scant regard for environmental impact.
In fact, it’s the design for electric passenger airplane that strives for efficiency, sustainability and glamor. The concept aircraft is the work of New-York based designer Joe Doucet, who was inspired by his frequent business travel short-haul flights to produce something capable of making the journey without producing typical aviation engine emissions.
Doucet’s design, the Her0 Zero Emissions Airplane uses electric-powered propellers located at its rear to provide the thrust, while sweeping wings that end in large, upturned winglets, provide the lift.
Her0 is one of several electric jet concepts that have premiered in recent years, as the aviation industry grapples with how to continue to grow while also trying to reduce its environmental impact.
This Her0 blueprint, Doucet tells CNN Travel, has both practical and aesthetic purpose. Propellers, he says, are reliable and efficient. The trade off is a slightly longer flight time — about 20% — but the designer reckons this wouldn’t be an issue on short or medium haul flights.
As for the swept-back wing design, this is to ensures the airplane’s well balanced — most of the weight will be in the back of the aircraft, as that’s where the battery will be situated.
Aesthetically speaking, Doucet says he wanted the plane to look “somewhat futuristic” but also be an attractive travel option for fliers.
“If you can make this something that is desirable, something that makes people question why it’s not there, you have a better chance of forcing the hand of industry to respond to consumer demand,” he says.
Doucet describes himself as a “designer, entrepreneur, inventor and creative director” — but he’s not an aeronautical engineer, and this his first foray into the world of aviation.
The designer says he drew upon his years of frequent flying in an attempt to find a solution to an issue that he’d been considering for some time. “I really follow problems where they take me, and try to address the solutions elegantly,” he says.
Her0, Doucet acknowledges, may never see the light of day. But the designer’s sole goal is to open up a conversation, if interest around his design encourages progress towards electric planes, he’ll count it as a success. As it is, he’s already been approached from aviation engineers, suggesting improvements and discussing potential collaboration.
A British Airways flight has set a new speed mark for a commercial passenger plane crossing the Atlantic. The fight landed early Sunday morning at Heathrow Airport in London after leaving John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York just four hours and 56 minutes earlier.
British Airways confirmed the flight time for the Boeing 747 plane, saying the company prioritizes safety over speed. That set a new speed record for subsonic — or slower than the speed of sound — commercial aircraft, according to Flightradar24, which tracks global flights.
The previous record was held by a Norwegian Air flight, which flew between the two cities with a flight time of five hours and 13 minutes. The flight had been expected to take 102 minutes longer.
The recent average flight time between New York and London is 6 hours and 13 minutes, according to Flightradar24. The wind and air currents were considered ideal for a fast flight. The supersonic Concorde flights used to fly across the Atlantic in just over three hours, but stopped flying in 2003.
“The flight was riding a much stronger than usual jet stream, with winds over 200 mph propelling the aircraft,” says senior CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller.
“The supercharged jet stream is also responsible for powering Storm Ciara, which has brought damaging wind gusts and massive waves to the UK, Ireland and other parts of Northern Europe this weekend.
“The jet stream is a fast moving ‘river of air’ high in the atmosphere, around the height that commercial airliners fly. The jet stream is responsible for carrying weather systems around the planet.”
The plane landed at Heathrow airport at 4:43 a.m., almost two hours earlier than scheduled. Its top speed during the flight was 825mph (1,327km/h), according to Flightradar24, an online flight-tracking service.
Motivated by more restrictive immigration policies under the Trump administration and the difficulty of obtaining green cards in the United States, the number of Indians obtaining permanent residence in Canada has more than doubled since 2016. Given current trends, Indian scientists and engineers will likely continue to see Canada as an attractive alternative location to make their careers and raise a family.
The number of Indians who became permanent residents in Canada increased from 39,340 in 2016 to 80,685 in 2019, through the first 11 months of 2019, an increase of more than 105%, according to a National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) analysis of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada data. Full-year Canadian statistics will likely show more than 85,000 Indian immigrants in 2019.
What are the reasons for this stunning increase in immigration from India to Canada? “Canada is benefitting from a diversion of young Indian tech workers from U.S. destinations, largely because of the challenges of obtaining and renewing H-1B visas and finding a reliable route to U.S. permanent residence,” said Peter Rekai, founder of the Toronto-based immigration law firm Rekai LLP, in an interview.
In the United States, the denial rate for H-1B petitions for continuing employment (primarily for existing employees) is 12% under the Trump administration, four times higher than the denial rate of 3% in FY 2015. For new employees on H-1B petitions the denial rate was 24% through the first three quarters of FY 2019, compared to 6% in FY 2015.
Due to the low number of employment-based immigrant visas (green cards) and the per-country limit, an Indian-born professional might need to wait decades before obtaining permanent residence in the United States.
Many U.S. and Indian technology companies have opened affiliate offices in Canada. The Canadian government, for its part, has streamlined its work permit process for tech workers and provides a clear path to permanent residence, notes Rekai.
“Indian nationals are ideally suited to Canada’s points-based selection system, which places a high value on youth, post-secondary education, and high-skilled foreign and (especially Canadian) work experience,” said Rekai. High-level English language skills are required to qualify for permanent residence under Canada’s Express Entry points system, which may be one reason the number of immigrants from China has remained relatively flat in the past few years. Chinese nationals who do not garner enough points through Express Entry could still gain permanent residence under programs run by Canadian provinces, which focus on skills needed by local employers and place less importance on language ability.
Another factor in the rise of Indian immigrants in Canada is the ability of Canadian universities to attract international students at record levels. In 2017, the number of international students in Canada increased by 20%. In 2018, international student enrollment at Canadian universities rose again, by 16%.
At the same time, at U.S. universities new enrollment of international students declined by more than 10% between the 2015-16 and 2018-2019 academic years.
Canada makes it easy for an international student to transition to work after graduation, which creates a path to permanent residence. However, the Trump administration has announced plans to restrict or eliminate Optional Practical Training (OPT), including in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields. Optional Practical Training allows international students to work after graduation in the U.S. for 12 months or an additional 24 months in a STEM-related job. The administration has also put forward other restrictions that would make an education in America less appealing to international students. (See here.)
The rise in Indian students coming to Canadian universities is likely a significant reason that Indian immigration has surged. The number of Indian international students studying at Canadian universities rose from 76,075 in 2016 to 172,625 in 2018, an increase of 127%, according to the Canadian Bureau for International Education. In contrast, at U.S. universities, the number of international students from India enrolled in graduate-level programs in computer science and engineering fell by 21% (18,590 fewer graduate students) from 2016 to 2017.
Canada plans to increase legal immigration. “To further ease the challenges of a shrinking labor force and an aging population, our new multi-year immigration levels plan sets out the highest levels of permanent residents that Canada will welcome in recent history,” declared Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Ahmed Hussen in 2018. By 2021, Canada is expected to increase legal immigration to 350,000 a year, a rise of 63,490, or 22%, from the 2017 level of 286,510.
In the United States, legal immigration fell by 7% between 2016 and 2018, one of the first concrete signs of the impact of the Trump presidency on legal immigration. Due to Trump administration policies, and without any changes in the law by Congress, the annual number of new legal immigrants to the U.S. could decline by as much as 30%, or up to 350,000 a year, from the 2016 U.S. immigration level of 1,183,5050, according to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis.
The implementation of the administration’s public charge rule, the travel ban and diminished refugee admissions are the key factors that will more precisely determine the new, lower level. Reducing legal immigration and thereby slowing labor force growth means lower long-term economic growth may become Donald Trump’s most lasting legacy.
The points system in Canada mostly works because it is flexible and responds to employer needs, and that part of the system is likely impossible to implement in the United States because of America’s different governmental structures. Peter Rekai has noted that it could be dangerous to import the Canadian points system wholesale into the United States. “Putting broad immigration decision-making into the hands of a strong executive can lead to ‘be careful what you wish for’ outcomes,” according to Rekai. “An ideologue in an empowered U.S. executive branch (e.g., White House aide Stephen Miller) could significantly change the focus of U.S. immigration through executive order or action.”
More important to attracting employers and skilled workers to Canada is how much easier it is in Toronto and other Canadian cities to employ professionals comparable to H-1B visa holders. Under the Canadian government’s Global Skills Strategy, the country’s adjudicators approve many applications for high-skilled workers within two weeks and, in contrast to the U.S., the number of applications denied is low.
New restrictions on H-1B visas and international students, combined with long waits for employment-based green cards, make America a less attractive destination than Canada for many high-skilled immigrants and their employers. Based on current trends, the situation is likely to grow worse for U.S. companies seeking to attract talent to America.
Among advocates of immigration restriction, it’s almost an article of faith that newcomers from rich countries are more desirable than those from poor countries. In early 2018, President Donald Trump reportedly expressed a desire for more immigrants from Norway and fewer from countries such as Haiti, labeling the latter with an expletive. Writing in 1896, restrictionist Francis Walker made a similar argument, calling East European immigrants “beaten men from beaten races.”
This view comes partly from racial bigotry and negative stereotypes. But it also stems from two misconceptions about U.S. immigration: Restrictionists ignore the importance of institutions, and they underestimate how effective the U.S. is at selecting the talented, the hard-working and the ambitious.
First, the caricatures offered up by Trump and Walker don’t come close to describing reality. Immigrants tend to be poor when they arrive on American shores, but they and their children rapidly move up. Native-born children of immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador who were born to families near the poverty line tend to earn about the median income:
Getting Ahead
Income percentile of sons of low-income immigrants*
Source: Leah Boustan
* Father’s birthplace for sons at 25th income percentile, sons’ average income percentile (1997-2015)
The children of immigrants from India and Pakistan are even more upwardly mobile.
So why do immigrants born in poor countries — and their children — succeed in the U.S.?
One big reason is that U.S. institutions are more effective at generating economic prosperity than institutions in developing nations. The U.S. has a reasonably functional and responsive government, property rights and the rule of law, a fairly efficient corporate culture and a large stock of accumulated knowledge and expertise. When immigrants and their children adapt to the American way of doing things, their natural potential is put to much better use than in their home countries.
There’s another powerful reason immigrants from poor countries do well in the U.S.: selectivity. The U.S. doesn’t just let in people randomly; in most cases, it carefully chooses those who are most likely to succeed.
For one thing, the system selects for education. About 12% of U.S. immigrants come via employment-based green cards, often after spending some time in the H-1B visa program. These individuals tend to be highly educated. And so do their families; 66% of U.S. immigration is done via various family reunification programs. As unauthorized immigration to the U.S. has dried up and gone into reverse, the average education level of new immigrants has soared:
The amount of selectivity is different for different countries. In a recent paper, economist Ed Lazear used a simple model to show how the education levels of a particular ancestry group in the U.S. — say Algerian-Americans — depends not just on the average education levels of the source country, but also on the size of its population and its degree of access to the U.S.
Lazear suggested that larger countries that send relatively small numbers of immigrants to the U.S. will tend to send their best and brightest. This explains why India, with 1.3 billion people and low average education levels, is the source of what is arguably the most elite group of immigrants in the U.S.
Looking at the data, Lazear found that just knowing three things — a country’s population, the number of immigrants it sends to the U.S. and the average education level in that country — allows one to make a highly accurate prediction of how educated the immigrants from that country will be. Selectivity ends up being the most important factor, by a considerable margin. Importantly, Lazear also finds that selectivity strongly predicts income, showing that the system isn’t just picking immigrants with useless paper degrees.
Of course, education isn’t the only kind of skill that the system selects for. The simple act of coming to a strange new country and starting a whole new life, often without even speaking the language, requires an uncommon amount of courage, ambition and grit. That’s probably why immigrants from Mexico, for whom selectivity is the lowest because of the big porous land border, are still very upwardly mobile. Because of low average education levels and racial discrimination, Mexican-Americans don’t tend to reach parity with the native-born, but they do close much of the gap.
So the evidence shows that the U.S. system is actually very good at selecting talented go-getters from abroad. Restrictionists who believe that immigrants from poor countries will make the U.S. a poorer place are simply wrong.
The U.S. State Department plans to issue new guidance that could make it more difficult for some pregnant women to obtain visas to visit the United States, a department official and a congressional aide said Wednesday.
The forthcoming regulations are aimed at cracking down on what the Trump administration calls “birth tourism,” the latest in a series of government efforts to restrict foreign travelers from reaching U.S. soil.
Most people who are born in the United States are entitled to U.S. citizenship, even if their parents are not citizens. It is unclear how many people travel to the United States to give birth each year with the intention of obtaining citizenship for their children; the U.S. government does not publish statistics on “birth tourism.”
Officials with the Department of Homeland Security declined to comment Wednesday, referring questions to the State Department.
The new rule, first reported by BuzzFeed, is expected to appear “shortly” in the Federal Register, according to the State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the rule before it is issued. A congressional aide briefed by the department also confirmed the new rule.
The guidelines, which the State Department will circulate to U.S. consular officers, will affect B1 and B2 nonimmigrant visas, otherwise known as temporary visas for business, tourism or medical treatment. The U.S. government issued 5.7 million B1 and B2 visas in fiscal year 2018.
The official said the new guidelines will not prohibit pregnant women from obtaining visas but will extend discretion to consular officers, who will have to determine whether a woman is planning a visit to the United States solely for the purpose of giving birth. It is unclear how they would make that determination or whether they will try to verify pregnancies.
A congressional staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a regulation that has not yet been published, said the State Department had a conference call Wednesday to tell lawmakers the broad strokes of the policy. The Trump administration is concerned that pregnant women are coming to the United States to give birth and instantly claim U.S. citizenship for their children. Consular officers would use their judgment when screening cases, the staffer said, and would not ask every woman applying for a visa – some of which are valid for years – whether they are pregnant.
Consular officers already interview visa applicants about their reasons for travel and are expected to determine that their stay in the United States will be limited in duration before issuing visas.
The Center for Immigration Studies, a right-wing think tank that advocates for lower immigration levels, estimated that there are about 33,000 births per year to women who arrived in the United States on tourist visas and then left the country. The organization said its estimate was “based on a combined analysis of birth certificate records and data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. Both estimates represent a rough approximation, based on limited data, of the possible number of births to women who came to America specifically to have a child and then left once the child was born.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 3.8 million live births in the United States in 2018.
India and the US are close to concluding a trade package that would provide enhanced market access to both countries, Outgoing Indian Ambassador to the United States and the newly appointed India’s Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla, who will leave Washington later this month, has said.
Shringla made the comments while addressing a group of Indian-American entrepreneurs during a farewell lunch on Friday last week organized for him by TiE DC, a regional chapter of the global non-profit membership and mentoring organization for entrepreneurs. “We are close to concluding a trade package that would provide enhanced market access to both countries,” Shringla said during the event.
Shringla, who is scheduled to leave for India later this month, said that the India- US bilateral trade has increased significantly in the last one decade and it is expected to be over USD160 billion by 2019. Noting that there are a lot of complementarities between the Indian and the US economy, the Ambassador said that Indian-American entrepreneurs and in particular organizations like TiE DC play an important part in strengthening these bilateral ties, not only people to people but also economic and strategic relationship.
Ravi Puli, an entrepreneur from TiE DC, said that in just about a year, Shringla has made a great impact on India-US relationship. “As an ambassador, he has taken the US- India relations to a level that all of us are feeling very proud and we are looking forward to take it even further with his leadership as a foreign secretary of India,” he said. The event was attended by eminent Indian-American entrepreneurs from in and around Washington DC and leaders of other chapters from various parts of the country.
Ambassador Shringala was accorded a spate of farewells, including by the Trump administration, the Congressional leadership and America Inc., and a reception hosted by Shringla himself, where spiritual guru Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, offered blessings to the departing envoy.
The Jan. 10 reception at the ambassador’s residence, now known as India House, was attended by nearly 500 members of the Indian American community from across the country, senior administration officials, Congressional staffers and leading policy wonks from all of DC’s think tanks.
At the reception, Sadhguru after reciting a shloka, predicted that the U.S.-India ties would mature with Shringla at the helm of diplomacy as India’s next foreign secretary, declaring that this relationship is imperative to benefit the whole world.
“This relationship between the two most resilient democracies on the planet is not just important for these two nations,” he said, adding, “How we build this relationship will determine many things globally.”
Shringla, in his brief remarks, at the outset, said among much laughter that “there was an ambassador friend of mine, who was very fond of the saying that all good things have to come to an end, and so they must and this is where we are.”
He said, “The year 2019, has been a great year. We’ve had some ups and we’ve had some downs, but on the whole, we can welcome 2020 with the fullest satisfaction that the (U.S.-India) relationship that was extremely close, extremely cooperative, which had all the resonance of a very, very strong friendship has started 2020 with an even better, closer, and warmer relationship.” Shringla told the guests that he looked forward to “seeing you in Delhi,” and to more laughter, added, “With all the direct flights we started, it’s not too much of an effort.”
Thus, he said, “We look forward to seeing members of Congress, the administration, the media, businesses, those who are from the Indian community, and of course, all of our other friends who might not belong to these categories, are all welcome.”
“We look forward to staying in touch, staying connected and this is one thing I’ve said everywhere I’ve gone, that as I leave, I take with me the distinct feeling that we really have one of our most important relationships right here in the United States,” he said. “It is a relationship that will continue to be important for us in time to come, and you can be sure that out of Delhi, we will see how we can take this relationship forward in every way possible.” And Shringla reiterated, “Your help in that is absolutely indispensable.”
The outgoing Ambassador, who would take up his new assignment as India’s next foreign secretary later this month, however, did not give an exact date for the inking of the much anticipated trade deal. The trade deal was first announced by US President Donald Trump when he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New York in September on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
At a reception accorded him by the State Department and held at the historic Blair House, which sits opposite the White House, the Trump administration’s point person for the subcontinent, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Alice Wells, predicted that Shringla would be “the captain” of the U.S.-India relationship. “It has been extraordinary, what you have been able to achieve,” she said. Wells, who was headed to India later that week to attend the Raisina Dialogue, pointed out that Washington and New Delhi have been working for the last two decades to realize the goal of becoming “a natural partner,” referring to a term that was first coined by former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee during his visit to the U.S.
Earlier on Jan. 7, at a farewell for him hosted by the US-India Strategic and Partnership Forum (USISPF) — a breakaway group from the USIBC, which is headed by Mukesh Aghi, who earlier was president of the USIBC, Shringla said, “What we are really looking for is to provide the basis for an exclusive partnership in trade between our two countries that can give US companies preferential market access to India and Indian companies the preferential market access to the United States.”
Shringla made the comments while addressing a group of Indian-American entrepreneurs during a farewell lunch on Friday organised for him by TiE DC, a regional chapter of the global non-profit membership and mentoring organization for entrepreneurs.
India and the US are close to concluding a trade package that would provide enhanced market access to both countries, India’s outgoing Ambassador to the US Harsh Vardhan Shringla has said. Shringla made the comments while addressing a group of Indian-American entrepreneurs during a farewell lunch on Friday organized for him by TiE DC, a regional chapter of the global non-profit membership and mentoring organization for entrepreneurs. “We are close to concluding a trade package that would provide enhanced market access to both countries,” Shringla said during the event.
Ever the quintessential diplomat, outgoing ambassador and India’s next foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla has said the hiring of a second lobbying firm, is to engage a changed U.S. Congress, although it was apparently prompted by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives’ India-bashing over the humanitarian crisis and communications blockade in the aftermath of the Indian government’s repeal of Article 370 that provided special status to this only Muslim-majority state in the country.
Shringla acknowledged that the few U.S. lawmakers who continue to be critical of the Indian government’s actions and “are pushing on his issue, perhaps because they don’t have a full understanding of the situation or they don’t want to have that, but as I’ve said, we have fully engaged with Congress and will continue to do that.”
He said he had instructed “all my colleagues that this is the highest priority — not the other things you are doing — and whatever you have, you drop that and you go and meet people, meet Congressmen, meet staffers, but get our point of view across, so that they can take into account,” the efforts of the government of India to alleviate the situation in Kashmir.
“And, it’s not a one-off thing. You have to constantly go and update them on the situation,” Shringla said. But he said, “There are some like Rep. Pramila Jayapal and Rashida Tlaib (D.-Mich.), and Ilhan Omar that are pushing a certain line that seems to be rigid. We’ve tried to engage them, we’ve tried to explain to them the situation, but despite that, the formulation they’ve come up with, as to how they would like Congress to look at it, is counter-productive, besides being factually incorrect and not reflective of the current situation.” Shringla argued, “If you are not open-minded, if you are not objective on this issue, there is not much anyone can do.
Last month, the Indian government hired Cornerstone Government Affairs for an initial period of three months through end February to represent it in Washington for a contract worth $40,000 a month, for which Cornerstone — in a filing with the Department of Justice — said it would provide its client with “strategic counsel, tactical planning and government relations assistance on policy matters before the U.S. Government, the U.S. Congress, and select state governments, as well as academic institutions and think-tanks.”
GOPIO International officials, Life Members and chapter officials from the New York area were invited to an interactive meeting at the Indian Consulate in New York on Jan. 13th. This was a new initiative from the Indian Consulate, ‘Chalo Consulate’ where community representatives could interact with Consulate officials and discuss issues of the community and find solutions to them. Indian Consulate was represented by Consul General Sandeep Chakravorty and all other Consulate officials including Consul for Trade Devi Prasad Misra, Consul Vipul Mesariya Political & Press, Information and Culture), Consul Murugesan Ramaswamy (Consular, Passport, Visa & OCI), Consul for Community Affairs A.K. Vijayakrishnan and Head of the Chancery Jaideep Chola.
GOPIO was represented by its Chairman Dr. Thomas Abraham, International Coordinators Lal Motwani and Harbachan Singh, GOPIO-New York Vice President Inderjit Singh, GOPIO-CT President Ashok Nichani, GOPIO-Central New York President Patsy Leopald, GOPIO North Jersey Vice President Dhnanjay Desai and many other Life Members and chapter officials. GOPIO also invited a few other community representatives to this meeting including South Asian Council for Social Services (SACSS) and The Kerala Center.
The Indian Consulate in New York has launched PRAMIT program through its website where most of the consular and other information can be channeled in a very effective way.
Consul General Chakravorty said, “To strengthen response management system of Consulate, we have focused on e-Governance solutions and designed in house a web application named PRAMIT (Pravasi Mitra). Within few months of its launch it has become very popular among the users. PRAMIT web application has dashboard based centralized monitoring and response system for calls as well as messages form users. At present through PRAMIT we are able to monitor as well as reply every Call/Queries within one business day. It is very simple and user-friendly web application.”
According to CG Chakravorty, on an average the Consulate handles 800- 1000 applications/applicants per day. In last one year through PRAMIT and has handled around 16000+ message queries as well as processed around 4000+ misc services applications (Aug-Dec 2019) and answered/replied around 32,000+ calls (April-Dec 2019). PRAMIT has been proven to be an effective e-Governance tool to handle various issues related to Indian Community.
“Most importantly, we never missed a single call/message after PRAMIT was launched and our website has been visited by around 2.7 million people in the 13 months,” added CG Chakravorty.
GOPIO Chairman Dr. Thomas Abraham said that GOPIO works very closely with all Indian missions worldwide for the benefit of the Indian Diaspora community. Participants at the meeting could also bring out general community issues at this meeting.
At the end of the meeting, GOPIO officials presented Ambassador Chakravorty two First Day Covers released by the US Postal Service at the First Convention of People of Indian Origin in New York in 1989. Dinner and networking followed. “It was a highly productive meeting,” said GOPIO Chairman Dr. Thomas Abraham.
Net international migration added 595,000 to the U.S. population between 2018 and 2019, the lowest level this decade. This is a notable drop from this decade’s high of 1,047,000 between 2015 and 2016.
The U.S. Census Bureau’s Vintage 2019 population estimates released show that international migration added about 7.9 million people to the nation’s population since the last census in 2010. Annual growth in net international migration slowed between 2015 and 2016 and has been declining since.
Migration patterns measured since 2015 primarily reflect three major trends: declining immigration of the foreign born, increasing foreign-born emigration, and changes in Puerto Rican migration following Hurricane Maria in September 2017.
China replaced Mexico to become the largest sending country of foreign-born immigrants to the United States as of 2018.
The population estimates show that net migration from Puerto Rico to the 50 states and the District of Columbia, which rose after Hurricane Maria, reversed between 2018 and 2019. More people are moving to than away from Puerto Rico.
Foreign-born immigration is the largest contributor to net international migration and is measured based on the American Community Survey (ACS) estimate of the foreign born whose residence one year ago was outside the United States, Puerto Rico and U.S. Island Areas.
Foreign-born immigration this decade peaked at 1.46 million in 2016 and declined by 250,000 to 1.21 million in 2018, according to the ACS.
China replaced Mexico to become the largest sending country of foreign-born immigrants to the United States as of 2018. At the beginning of the decade, Mexico was the largest, but immigration from Mexico has dropped significantly since the recession at the end of the last decade.
Since 2010, immigration from China and India has either approached or surpassed Mexican immigration levels while immigration from Canada has remained relatively unchanged.
More People Moving to Than Leaving Puerto Rico
Estimates of net Puerto Rico migration are based on residence one year ago from the ACS and Puerto Rican Community Survey (PRCS).
The estimates also incorporate flight passenger data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics to account for recent movement following Hurricane Maria.
Net migration from Puerto Rico to the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia increased from 78,000 during the 2017 period (July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017) to 123,000 during the 2018 period (July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018), which covers the month Hurricane Maria made landfall.
However, it reversed during the 2019 period (July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2019), resulting in net in-migration of 8,000 people to Puerto Rico.
State Estimates
Florida, California, Texas, New York and Massachusetts typically gain the most migrants from abroad and comprise about half of net international migration for the nation most years.
Mid-decade estimates showed large increases in net international migration in Florida, California and Texas, but modest increases for New York and Massachusetts. Texas doubled from 59,000 to 118,000 between 2010 and 2015, which surpassed New York’s mid-decade estimate of 84,000 to become the third largest net migration state. Several states approached or dipped below 2010 levels this year.
Between the last census in 2010 and July 1, 2019, international migration added 1,107,000 people to Florida; 1,022,000 to California; 819,000 to Texas; 698,000 to New York; and 362,000 to Massachusetts.
What Does Migration Measure?
Migration occurs when a person changes their usual residence across a geographic boundary, regardless of citizenship or legal status, according to the Census Bureau.
International migration is the movement between the 50 states and the District of Columbia and abroad.
This excludes commuters, tourists and business visitors, but does include immigrants, temporary migrants and the native born moving between the United States and foreign countries, movers between the United States and Puerto Rico and deployed U.S. military personnel.
What Is “Net” Migration?
Net migration measures in-migration minus out-migration. It is positive when more people move into than leave a geographic area and negative when more people move out than move in.
Net international migration is a more complete measure than immigration for estimating population change since it accounts for people leaving the United States.
Who Are the Foreign Born?
The Census Bureau defines the foreign born as people who are not U.S. citizens at birth. The foreign born include naturalized citizens and non-citizens but not people born in a foreign country to U.S. citizens.
Net international migration in 2019 is a projection and is subject to revision as more recent data on foreign-born migration become available. In addition, previous years in the time series may be revised to include more recent data on people who leave the United States.
See the Vintage 2019 methodology statement for a description of input data and methods, as well as other migration components not highlighted in this story.
Vintage 2019 Population Estimates for metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas and counties will be released in the spring of 2020. Demographic characteristics will be released in the summer of 2020.
Anil Srivatsa, All Geared Up To Set Records With Drive The World: The Worlds Longst On-Road Expedition To Spread Awareness About Organ Donation
North Brunswick, NJ. January 04, 2020: the Million Donor Project will hit the road in the fifth series of the Gift of Life Adventure (GOLA). This time, the road to organ donation awareness will take Anil Srivatsa to every nook and corner of North and South America (over 55,000 kilometres over the span of three months).
The route covers not only major cities, but also takes team GOLA through back roads into the heart of 15 nations in the two continents.
The Journey of a Kidney Donor, Anil Srivatsa who went through emotional upheavals and the subsequent making of a champion for the cause of Organ Donation. He donated his kidney 5 years ago and is now driving around the world in his own car to tell his story on how he became an accomplished athlete after donating his kidney as a world record holder in the World Transplant Games 2019 held in Newcastle, UK
He will address the following points during the course of telling his story:
– How he dealt with all the fears associated with organ donation
– His journey through the legal and procedural issues that plagues Organ Donation around the world
– Speaking about concerns that only first-hand interactions with a live donor can help address.
– what it takes to truly become an organ donor by throwing light on what happens after you sign up.
– He deals with religious and superstitious myths that surround Organ Donation and busting them would help save lives.
– Life saving and life giving Information that no one has told you about.
He has a wealth of stories as he accumulates and shares his experiences having driven through 43 countries. Driven over 100K kms taking over 400 days of being on the road and sharing his story with over 74000 people through over 250 plus talks in schools, colleges, Rotary Clubs, Community centres and companies.
He is currently driving from New Jersey to Alaska across Canada to Argentina and back to New York adding another 55000 kms over the next 150 days. He is passing by our community and we would love for you to interact with Anil. He is a great story teller and you don’t want to miss it.
A fully crowd funded effort the Gift of Life Adventure Foundation’s drive around the world is literally fuelled and fed by tax deductable contributions made via facebook, GoFund me and other means of charitable contributions including venmo, paypal and more.
TeamGOLA consists of Anil Srivatsa and his wife Deepali Srivatsa, both American’s living in North Brunswick NJ where they are now working to grow their 501 (c) (3) Non Profit Organization Gift of Life Adventure Foundation Inc.
GOLA 1: A week long cycling expedition in Spain 6 months post surgery to show that an organ donor and recipient can lead an active and healthy lifestyle
GOLA 2: A cross continental on-road expedition from India to Scotland to spread awareness about organ donation
GOLA 3: Drive from Italy to Oman to help the kick start the Million Donor Project
GOLA 4: Drive around India for 5 months spanning 27000 kms
The Gift of Life Foundation
The Gift of Life Foundation is a registered NGO/NPO in USA and India that was founded in June 2017 by Anil Srivatsa. The GOLA Foundation serves in the field of medical, health, education and allied activities; identifying life changing events in the lives of qualified individuals (predominantly women and children) or communities and fund the various interventions to ensure long term and short term positive outcomes for them. The events that fall in the realm of the said Trust include Organ transplants, Lifesaving Medical procedures, Education, Mental health, Civic health and housing, Disaster and refugee relief, Domestic violence rehab, Women and Child sexual abuse intervention and rehab, Long term medical care, Govt. Policy advocacy, public education and awareness
THE BACK STORY
Sept 5 2014 changed my life when I donated my kidney to my brother. I realized the value of this donation and how this changed his life where he now in turn saves lives every day as a doctor. I found that people were afraid to donate. This fear came from ignorance. As a member of the journalist/media fraternity, I made it my mission to tackle this ignorance so more people would come out and give the valuable gift of an organ after their life time if not during it.
I had to become an example to other donors and inspire them to explore the idea of gifting a life. I had to pick an activity that attracted the attention of the people I pass and the media, who would give me the exposure and platform to spread my message. I picked overland driving as this was the most effective way of touching peoples lives and them mine. Thus the gift of life adventure was born.
I undertook my first adventure when I took my brother on a 7 day cycling adventure in the hills of Spain just 6 months after the transplant to show that life can be back to ordinary if not extraordinary. The press showed up and helped. The awareness was beginning. I was becoming a part of the voice that was growing louder together.
I got drawn into my mission even deeper when I decided to drive with my family (Organ donation is a family decision and mine played an inspiring part in my decision) on a road trip from Bangalore India, to Scotland UK. A 74 day journey where along the way we met and spoke to may organizations and people about the mission. I used my personal funds by selling off the one apartment I had so I can earn the trust of all and their support. This journey gave me a sense that awareness has to translate to action and after a pivotal meeting with an organization we met in Norway the Million Donor Project was born.
The million donor project is all about the family. Traditionally in India and many parts of the world, organ donors would register with an organization and did not speak to their families about it and when time came, the families did not make good the donation from lack of knowing. I decided to address this part of the process and designed an app that captures the intent and communicates it to the family via an SMS thereby starting a conversation at home. It is considered bad luck to speak about death in most homes. If the family knows, there is no need for signing up with ANY organization and the donation rate would be higher with the family behind it. The app is found at http://www.giftoflifeadventure.com/signup
To promote the Million Donor project, I drove again from Italy to Dubai which took 2 months across 20 nations, with speaking engagements at various rotary clubs for their support within their communities.
How the Foundation was Born
3 months ago I was approached by an acquaintance I met during the road trip to Scotland and sought my help to help his 17 year of Brother-in-Law navigate the Organ transplant process in India so he can have his kidney transplant. Malik and his brothers flew in from a small impoverished town in Afghanistan and in the watchful care of the Gift of Life Adventure Foundation (an NGO, non -profit) that I set up post the ordeal I went through for them only . I realized the laws in India need to be more user friendly and I could not do so as an individual. If the Afghan Brothers went through this, every India goes through this. Something had to change. I have rallied the support of the media, the hospitals and the now appointed lawyer to help me move the needle on the law and for this I need more funding than I can personally afford. This is a major project that is being built bit by bit until the bigger funding agencies can kick in. I want your help in getting me there for this module. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVl5zxhuukI&…
Dr. Suresh Reddy, President of AAPI, who led AAPI’s Expedition to Antarctica
Several years of meticulous planning, discussions, and organization, came to fruition as 190 delegates of American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) Families and Friends from across the United States and India embarked on the Ocean Atlantic Ship operated by Albatros Expeditions on November 30th, 2019 from Ushuaia, the southernmost town on Earth in Argentina on a voyage to Antarctica, the seventh Continent, known as the Last Horizon on Earth.
The voyagers were welcomed on board by AAPI’s young and dynamic President, Dr. Suresh Reddy, who has been along with Dr. Vandana Agarwal, Chair of AAPI’ Cruise to Antarctica, working very hard, coordinating the efforts with Vinod Gupta from the Travel Agency, ATG Tours, the crew and leadership of the Cruise and the AAPI leaders and members with varied interests and ages ranging from 10 to 90, who had flown in from around the world for this once in a lifetime memorable and historic voyage to the White Continent.
The Ship carrying the sailors began its journey on November 30th, 2019 from the Ushuaia Sea Port with a prayer song to Lord Ganesh, chanted by Dr. Aarti Pandya from Atlanta, GA. Later in the evening, the voyagers sat down for a sit down dinner at the elegantly laid tables at the Restaurant with delicious Indian Cuisine, prepared by Herbert Baretto, a Chef from Goa, India, specially flown in to meet the diverse needs of the Indians who are now the exclusive Voyagers on Ocean Atlantic.
As the sun was still shining beyond midnight, members of the voyage were seen posing and taking pictures on board the ship with the background of the mighty ocean and the scenic mountains of Argentina at the background.
On December 1st morning, AAPI members were alerted to be mindful of the most turbulent Drake Passage, where the Pacific and the Atlantic Ocean merge, through which our ship was now sailing with winds gusting through over 50 kms an hour from the south west. The rough with fast moving sea currents contributing to a turbulent weather, several voyagers took shelter in anti-nausea meds.
Throughout the day, there were special safety classes periodically, helping the voyagers on ways to navigate the zodiacs, the kayaks, the walks on the ice and snow once we reach our final destination. They were lectures on different aspects of wildlife on Antarctica, the species, especially the varieties of penguins, the mammals and the birds that inhabit the Continent. The participants were educated on the Antarctic Treaty, Climate Change and Impact, Whale Hunting, and many more relevant topics with scientific data by the Expedition Crew.
The evening was special for the voyagers as the Captain of the ship welcomed the delegates to the Ship and to the Expedition to Antarctica. He introduced his crew leaders to the loud applause from the delegates, as he toasted champagne for a safe and enjoyable journey to Antarctica.
On December 2nd morning, we woke up to milder weather and calmer ocean with the winds subsiding to about 20 kms an hour and ship sailing smoother with the temperatures below 7 degree Celsius. The crew on the ship described the sail to be the smoothest and the weather and wind conditions to be one of the calmest they have ever witnessed. However, the entire day was cloudy with the sun hiding behind the thick clouds upon the ocean.
After sailing across the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans and through the turbulent Drake Passage, and the South Ocean, finally, the day arrived for the Voyagers. The one they had been eagerly waiting for. On December 3rd, our ship, the Ocean Atlantic anchored on Danco Island, off the coast of the 7th Continent, Antarctica, officially discovered in 1820, although there is some controversy as to who sighted it first
The excitement of the voyagers had no bounds as they dressed up in their waterproof trousers, navy blue jackets, with hats and glosses and mufflers. They set out in groups marching off the Ship into the Zodiacs in tens in each Zodiac.
The wind and the ocean were calmer. The sun continued to hide behind the thick clouds. We headed off in Zodiacs to view icebergs, the glaciers, the land on a beach studded with penguins, as the Expedition Crew from the ship drove the AAPI delegates to the shore on the Danco Island, off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, for the first time.
The glaciers, mighty mountains covered with pristine and shiny snow, the icebergs in multi-shapes and colors, floating on the Bay, made the Zodiac ride to the shore a memorable experience for each one.
As the voyagers walked to the shore on a narrow path on the soft snow surface, leading up to the snowcapped mountains, it was a dream come true for all. The fresh water melting from the glaciers and the ice and snow on the one side and on the other little rocks and mountains filled with snow, the Danco Island was picture perfect.
Penguins in small colonies of their own seemed unaffected by the voyagers landing onto the Penguin land. Hearing their unique and enchanting voices for the first time, as most of them sat steady, while a few walked from one end to the other, it was a scene everyone long dreamt to be part of, as it was another memorable experience in the life of everyone.
Penguin behavior is endlessly fascinating. We learnt that, in the Antarctic spring, hundreds of gentoo penguins as paraded before us, reestablishing their bonds, mating, staking their claims, and thievishly stealing stones from one another for their nests.
In the afternoon, after lunch and a lecture on the history of Antarctica, the Ocean Atlantic ship, travelling about 25 nautical miles, for the first time ever, landed on the Antarctic Continent as she reached the shores of Paradise Bay, a beautiful island, where the famous Brown Center, the Argentinian Research Station was located.
Trekking up the Hill on the snow and ice filled terrains, even as the serene and picturesque glaciers in vivid shapes and texture, it was mesmerizing and the Bay on either side, was breathtaking.
The following morning, the voyagers got onto the Zodiacs and sailed to Port Lockroy, a sheltered harbor with a secure anchorage on the Antarctic Peninsula since its discovery in 1904. The Port also is home to a Museum and a British Post Office, where the early visitors to the Continent lived and explored the wildlife of the last Horizon. The Museum has preserved the antiques used by the early voyagers, who are an important part in the history of Antarctica.
Bright sun light flashing on the Lamoy Point on our way south towards the northern peninsula of the White Continent greeted us all this morning on December 5th. The announcement over the microphone at 6.15 woke us all up, letting us know of the mild weather conditions with 7 degrees Celsius and 27 km s wind speed with bright sunny day was a welcome change from yesterday.
The wind made the waters of the Bay mildly rough as we set out from the ship. For the first time during the voyage, to the much delight of the AAPI delegates, the sun chose to come out from behind the clouds and shone brightly on the voyagers, making the snow shining and glowing with the rays of the sun filling the surface of the earth. It was delightful to see the Penguins close to the AAPI delegates, some of them walking beside them crossing their pathway.
Upon landing on the shore across from the tallest mountain on the Peninsula, Mount Frances with the height of 2,300 meters high, our zodiacs elegantly cruised through the calmer waters to the mountain range called the Princes and the Seven Dwarfs. We were fortunate to find penguins resting on ice floes, and sometimes had the opportunity to approach closely in Zodiacs for excellent photo ops.
The stunning views of the glaciers and the mountains, and the soft and shiny snow spread across the shore, led us all to the snowy hills, as we trekked to the top.
The opportunity of a lifetime for bird lovers, as we watched the blue eyed Antarctic terns, beautiful black-browed albatross, and other pelagic birds, including fulmars and petrels, nesting, resting, flying above us and trying to reach the bright blue skies. The wandering albatross, with the largest wingspan of any bird, is one of the many wildlife spectacles South Georgia affords.
We found ourselves at the top of the spectacular colony of penguins, and black-browed albatross. Brown Skuas flew over the colony while penguins, albatross, and shags took care of their eggs. We spend a good bit of time photographing the birds and generally taking in such wonderful experience and close views of the wildlife.
Colonies of penguins greeted us with their enchanting voices. We watched in awe as some of the tiny penguins walking up, from the bottom of the hill to the top, flapping their feathers occasionally.
Many of us waited patiently to have an opportunity to view the eggs upon which the Penguins were sitting to hatch their eggs. Some were lucky to photograph a few couples mating while we were trying to figure out the male from female.
Leaving the breath taking landscapes was not an easy choice as we were soon called to embark on the zodiac cruises and return to Ocean Atlantic, our ship, as she was patiently waiting to take us to the next destination of our expedition to the Last Horizon.
After a lunch Barbeque on Deck Seven of the Ship, the Ocean Atlantic took us through the beautiful Lemaire Channel on the Continent. Braving the cold and gusty winds, the voyagers got together for a group picture of the entire voyager group on Deck Eight of the ship, as they were awed by the beautiful glaciers, the mighty snow-caped mountains, and the floating ice bergs.
After journeying about five hours, we reached in the evening at the Melchiors Island, as the bright sun continued to shine upon us. During lunch and on way to the Island, the voyagers were thrilled to spot whales showing up their heads periodically.
The journey through the Bay was another memorable experience with the stunning landscape all along the route especially as the sun continued shine brightly on the snow peaked mountains turning the waters closer to the glaciers from blue to green. We had over an hour of Zodiac cruise exploring the sea life on the Antarctic’s South Ocean.
We climbed up to the top deck of the ship to have yet another amazing experience as the Ocean Atlantic Ship sailed through the Bay filled with Ice Sheet Rocks that are nearly a meter thick, slowly and steadily, slicing the Snow Ice, marching forward towards the Plenau Bay.
It was here at Plenau Bay, 39 brave AAPI members had the unique experience of taking “Polar Plunge” in the Atlantic Continent, which was 0.7 degree Celsius, while the rest of the AAPI delegates watched the brave men and women, taking a memorable dip and swim back to the ship, in the freezing cold waters of the White Continent.
We woke up this morning on Friday December 6th to a bright and sunny day, calmer ocean with 9 kms of wind speed. A picture perfect day for expedition. We went on zodiacs, cruising through the blue waters of the Half Moon Island, a cluster of snowy mountains shaped as a half moon.
Searching for wild life in the ocean with the voyagers looking out eagerly for any seals or whales did not seem to result in success as the sea animals and those on the shore seemed to hide in their resting places. Members of a Zodiac cruise reported of spotting a Leopard Seal swimming not too far from the Zodiac.
Finally, the zodiac captains took us to the shore where for the first time we landed on dark stony surface full of rocks, stones and pebbles. Our expedition crew leader reported that the shore was completely covered with ice and snow in the beginning of the season, barely a month ago.
At the backdrop of the glaciers and the imposing mighty mountains around us, we hiked up the hill intruding sometimes into the Penguin Highways, where we saw colonies of penguins resting under the bright sun. It was delightful to watch a few hopping on tiny rocks from one to another, unnerved by the visitors from the Other Continents on earth.
For the first time we were delighted to watch different kinds of Penguins, Gentoo, Adelie, Chinstraps, in the thousands sitting on a single rock glazing at the ocean waters. The photo ops for the voyagers were simply incredible. And while penguins are delightful in films and nature documentaries, watching the penguin life being lived around you is simultaneously uplifting and humbling.
We spotted a few huge Weddell and Crabeater seals, as well as Antarctic fur seals, whose populations have rebounded since the 1959 Antarctic Treaty and the 1972 Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals. They were resting on the rocks unmoved by the voyagers in several zodiacs watching them in awe. The bright sun and the gentle breeze embracing the voyagers, it was a perfect day to cruise and explore the White Continent.
In the afternoon while back on the ship, we were invited to climb up to the Decks 8 and 9 of the ship to view the entrance/passage to the famous Deception Island. And the ship sailed through this narrow path into the Island with majestic dark mountains on our right side, while on the left were the snowcapped mountains overlooking the Bay. As the gusty winds made us shiver, the voyagers standing on the top deck of the South Ocean, posed for pictures. We were lost in the stunning beauty created by the Mother Nature, for all of us to enjoy and cherish forever.
The final landing on the Last Horizon on Friday December 6th afternoon was at the Deception Island for the AAPI Voyagers. An unusually bright shining sky with gentle winds welcomed us to the shore of the black soft sand with little stones spread all along the 36 kms wide island.
The volcanic eruption here over 50 years ago, which reportedly continues to be active event today, has turned the island and the mountains into dark colored. Saw a huge seal on the shore resting with birds and few penguins of the Continent enjoying the mild weather, the voyagers trekked up the hill on the dark sand while the panoramic and breathtaking views on the snowy mountains beyond the Bay hovering over the blue waters of the Last Horizon.
On the Ship, immediately after settling down in each one’s cabin, the voyagers were invited to learn about safety on the ship and participated in a safety drill. Shelli Ogilvy, the Veteran Expedition Leader introduced the 22 Expedition Members with extensive maritime experiences from around the world, and over 60 other crew members to the voyagers.
Nine hours of Continuing Medical Educations (CMEs) were a major highlight of the Cruise to Antarctica. Led and organized by Dr. Krishan Kumar the informative and interactive sessions by experts was much appreciated by the voyagers. AAPI provided a hands on CPR Training on board to the crew of the ship, Ocean Atlantic, educating them on ways to help passengers in case of emergencies.
Each evening at cocktail hour the entire expedition community gathers in the lounge for a ritual, we call Recap. As you enjoy cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, various naturalists gave talks, showed videos, and our expedition leader would outline the following day’s schedule.
The evenings were fun filled with members spending time together with their select friends and families, singing, playing cards games, discussing politics to medicine to healthcare and sharing jokes and snippets with one another in smaller groups. The cultural events included live music sung by Dr. Radhika from Chicago, Dr. Aarti Pandya, Dr. Dharmija, and Dr. Madnani, in addition to several local talents of AAPI’s own, leading and vying to win the Anthakshri contest.
On December 7th evening, the voyagers had Black Tie Nite with many of them learning and playing Pokers until the early hours of the morning. As the ship began its return journey back to the shores, Dr. Aarti Pandya led the voyagers in a prayer song dedicated to Lord Hanuman, God of the Winds for a safe and smooth sailing.
After toasting Champagne with the Captain of the ship, the finale on December 8th was a colorful Indian Dress Segment, where the adorable AAPI women and men walked the aisle in elegantly dressed in Indian ethnic wear depicting different states of India.
Earlier, the AAPI delegates had toured the beautiful and serene National Park in Ushuaia, on the world famous Route 3 that runs from Alaska to the southern tip of the world in Argentina. At the Park, Dr. Reddy led the AAPI delegates carrying the AAPI banner, spreading the message of Obesity Awareness, which is a major objective of Dr. Reddy’s Presidency, taking the message of Obesity Awareness Around the World.
Dr. Suresh Reddy thanked Dr. Vandana Agarwal Chair of the AAPI Cruise Committee, Dr. Ravi Kolli, Secretary of AAPI, Dr. Ranga Redy and Dr. Ravi Jahagirdar, both past President of AAPI, Dr. Krishan Kumar, and several Regional Chapter Presidents for their hard work and dedication for making the Expedition memorable for all.
Memories of relaxing and rejuvenating morning walk across the island with breath taking views in abundance of Mother Nature, will last a life time for everyone who has been part of the historic expedition to the Seventh Continent. For more details on AAPI and its next voyage to Antarctica in January 2020, please visit; www.aapiusa.org
Ajay Ghosh, who was part of the AAPI Family and Friends Expedition 2019 to Antarctica
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will publish in March a proposed rule to strip work authorization from spouses of H-1B visa holders, the agency said Wednesday in the latest federal government rule-making agenda.
While the announcement in the Unified Agenda should be taken with a grain of salt — the agency has several times missed its own deadlines for proposing the rule — a March date fits with a Department of Justice memo that said the planned rule could be published as early as spring 2020.
However, the Justice Department, which submitted its memo in September to a federal appeals court in a lawsuit seeking an employment prohibition for H-1B spouses on the H-4 visa, called the spring timeframe “aspirational.”
In that lawsuit, IT workers argue that they were replaced by H-1B visa holders and now must compete against H-4 holders in the job market. Earlier this month, the workers scored a victory when a three-judge appeals panel in the Washington, D.C. circuit ruled the workers had proven that H-1B holders compete against them for jobs, and that letting H-4 spouses work increases competition because if they couldn’t work, some H-1B holders would leave. The judges kicked the case back down to federal district court to continue.
The H-1B, intended for jobs requiring specialized skills, has become a target of the administration of President Donald Trump. Under his Buy American and Hire American executive order, federal authorities have dramatically boosted H-1B denial rates, with outsourcing companies hit especially hard. While major Silicon Valley technology firms rely heavily on the H-1B to acquire talent, and push for an expansion to the annual 85,000 cap on new visas, critics point to reported abuses by outsourcers and argue that those companies, and major tech firms employing H-1B contract labor, use the visa to supplant U.S. workers and drive down wages.
A report released earlier this month by a group supporting an expanded H-1B program said that from fiscal years 2015 to 2019, outsourcers and staffing companies both foreign and domestic were getting hammered with H-1B denials, but that Big Tech saw little to no increase in rejections. Federal government data show that the steepest increase in H-1B denials has come under the Trump administration.
Spouses of H-1B workers on track for green cards have since 2015 been allowed to work. Estimates of the number of H-4 visa holders with work authorization range from 90,000 to 100,000. University of Tennessee researchers concluded that the vast majority are women from India. Many are employed in the Bay Area.
Homeland Security in 2017 first promised to end the H-4 work authorization, saying in the semiannual Unified Agenda that it would in February 2018 propose a rule to scrap the authorization.
The agency — named as the defendant in the “Save Jobs USA” case by the IT workers because it promulgated the work authorization under the administration of former President Barack Obama — has several times gotten the appeals court to put the legal proceedings on hold while it works on the H-4 work-ban rule. Howard University professor Ron Hira, who studies the H-1B, believes the holdup with the H-4 rule results from lobbying by groups in favor of letting the spouses work. Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Publication of the proposed rule is expected to trigger a public comment period. Comment periods for new federal rules typically last 30 to 60 days, but can extend to 180 days or more. Immigration law firm Fragomen has said termination of the H-4 work authorization “could come within months of the release of the proposal.”
H-1B Spouses Face Uncertainty with New H-4 EAD Decision
The fate of H-4 EAD, which allows the spouses of H-1B visa holders to work, is still up in the air after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit kicked a decision over the program’s cancelation back to a lower court.
Save Jobs USA, the tech-workers advocacy group that filed the lawsuit at the core of the case, suggests that the H-4 EAD could result in employment for 180,000 spouses of H-1B holders, resulting in increased (and unfair) competition for tech jobs. The lawsuit argues that the federal government overstepped its bounds in establishing H-4 EAD.
The court’s ruling seemed to agree with the lawsuit’s position, stating: “The rule will increase competition for jobs.” However, those who possess the H-4 EAD can continue to work, at least for now. A new court ruling, or the introduction of new government regulation, could still kill the program.
H-4 EAD, H-1B Both Squeezed
Earlier this year, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) suggested that ending H-4 EAD would prove “economically significant,” and ultimately benefit American workers:
“Some U.S. workers would benefit from this proposed rule by having a better chance at obtaining jobs that some of the population of the H-4 workers currently hold, as the proposed rule would no longer allow H-4 workers to enter the labor market early.”
However, the federal government is still reviewing its plans to potentially terminate H-4 EAD (the original deadline for a decision was Spring 2019, which passed). In the meantime, it has made the application process far more challenging: as of February 2019, anyone applying for the H-4 EAD needs to undergo biometric screening.
Meanwhile, the H-1B itself has been the focus of tightening government policy. Through the third quarter of fiscal 2019, denial rates for H-1B petitions have skyrocketed to 24 percent, according to a new analysis of USCIS data by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP).
“In the first three quarters of FY 2019, USCIS adjudicators denied 24 percent of H-1B petitions for ‘initial’ employment and 12 percent of H-1B petitions for ‘continuing’ employment,” read the NFAP report (PDF). “The 12 percent denial rate for continuing employment is also historically high—4 times higher than the denial rate of only 3 percent for H-1B petitions for continuing employment as recently as FY 2015.” (A brief note on definitions: ‘initial employment’ means H-1B petitions for new employment, whereas ‘continuing employment’ is typically an extension for an existing employee.)
But that hasn’t stopped some of the country’s biggest tech companies from petitioning for H-1B visas—and subcontracting H-1B workers from services firms. Earlier this year, we analyzed a massive dataset from the U.S. Department of Labor on H-1B data for fiscal year 2019. Here’s what we found: ‘primary’ denotes direct H-1B petitioning, while ‘secondary’ represents subcontracting:
Despite occasionally expressing support for legal immigration, the Trump administration is imposing restrictions on it, denying and delaying more applicants for H-1B skilled-work visas and proposing to raise costs for people seeking asylum, citizenship and green cards.
Costs: The Department of Homeland Security wants to increase fees by a weighted average of 21%, according to a Federal Register notice it published last week. The public has 30 days to comment.
“This proposed adjustment in fees would ensure more applicants cover the true cost of their applications and minimizes subsidies from an already overextended system,” immigration hard-liner Ken Cuccinelli said in a statement. Cuccinelli was acting director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service when the statement was issued this month; last week he was named acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, according to BuzzFeed News.
It’s very clear that a policy objective of this is to erect significant new barriers for asylum seekers, green card applicants and citizenship applicants,” said Doug Rand, who worked on immigration policy in the Obama White House as assistant director for entrepreneurship, and is now the co-founder of Boundless Immigration, a Seattle technology company that helps immigrants obtain green cards and citizenship. He called the move “a weaponization of government fees.”
Fee increases could also apply to permit renewals for some 660,000 people who were brought to the U.S. without official permission as minors — if Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program allowing them to stay here, survives the Trump administration’s current attempt at the U.S. Supreme Court to have it repealed.
The change would particularly affect vulnerable immigrants — those who are low-income or asylum seekers, Rand said. It would mark the first time the U.S. requires people fleeing persecution to pay fees. Iran, Fiji and Australia are the only other nations that do so.
FOMAA has initiated in highlighting, advocating and educating the Indian American community members on the perspectives & challenges licit, legit & documented Employment Based (EB) immigrants are faced with insane Green Card backlog of 150+ years of wait time due to the Country Cap birth origin nationality quota system.
FOMAA together in partnership with IL immigration Forum (IIF) and Chicago Cosmopolitan Club has made a very bold statement enabling brotherhood to the otherwise unorganized orphans/strangers the deserving immigrant “Aliens” in the apathy of the insane Employment Based (EB) GC backlog.
This bipartisan initiative was well attended by elected officials of both Rep. & Dem parties, is of much significance.
Republican State Chief Mr. Tim Schneider, Honorable Representative Tom Morrison of District 54 together with Mr. Nimesh Jani, City Council member attended the convention. Honorable Congressman Mr. Raja Krishnamoorthy, Mr. Matt Flamm, together with Ms. Laddi Singh, area leaders represented the Democratic Party at the event.
Dr. Sam Pitroda, the absolute icon of immigrant success in America was the chief guest and enlightened the participants with his eloquent thoughts. It was double sweetened for attendees that a surprise birthday celebration was organized by FOMAA as it was Dr. Sam Pitroda’s birthday.
Dr. Pitroda, assertively reminded the audience how India historically hosted the Mughals, the British, the Portuguese, the Iranian Zoroastrians while they were fleeing persecution, the Polish when they escaped Nazi persecution, currently the Tibetans & the Bangla Rohingiyas making the First Nation in the world be a true “Melting pot”. The diversity that India is blessed with is the true factor that helped India to produce the best educated talent pool the global economic powerhouses could tap into. Dr. Pitroda encouraged everyone to involve actively in the political process that, unless without participation no changes can be expected in our favor; however desperate & genuine be our cause!
Hon. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthy, as well stressed upon the fact that a community that participate/vote, only will be counted & reckoned. This was in a way an appeal to the community from the Hon. Congressman urging all community members the importance of exercising their votes during the upcoming elections.
State Republican Chief Mr. Tom Schneider, highlighted Pr. Trump’s policies favoring licit & legit immigration. Rep. Morrison, being an educator by profession underlined the alarming shortage of skilled STEM professionals in USA & promised to represent our cause to the party higher ups.
The convention was well attended by citizens of Indian diaspora from across the Nation. FOMAA oficials Mr. Jose Abraham, on his welcome note narrated the vision & commitment to persuade favoring this genuine cause. This well organized event was chaired by Mr. Subash George Chemanthara, and coordinated by Mr. Vishak Cherian of —— State.
This exceptional, much needy stem put forward by FOMAA is greatly appreciated and will be a benchmark initiative to be followed by all other community organizations in social relevance. For more information please visit: www.fomaa.org
The U.S. is still a land of opportunity for immigrants. That is the implication of a new research paper by economists Ran Abramitzky, Leah Platt Boustan, Elisa Jácome and Santiago Pérez.
Using historical Census data to compare the incomes of immigrant fathers and their native-born sons, the economists found that the second generation has been just as capable of moving up the economic ladder in recent decades as they were a century ago. Looking at second-generation American men whose immigrant fathers were at the 25th percentile of income — in other words, fairly poor — they found that they tend to climb higher than their poor counterparts whose fathers were born in the U.S. And for most countries the researchers could measure, immigrant upward mobility is greater now than it was a century ago.
Almost all children of recent immigrants tend to be more upwardly mobile than people whose parents were born in the U.S. That isn’t surprising, since immigrants often have limited English skills and lack personal networks in the country; their children, who don’t suffer these disadvantages, naturally tend to move up to an income level more commensurate with their ambition and abilities. Furthermore, immigrants tend to move to places where upward mobility is easier, like big cities and college towns.
The average second-generation Indian- or Chinese-American who grew up on the edge of poverty will tend to reach the upper-middle class. That level of upward mobility is simply amazing. For Indian-Americans, the phenomenon is particularly surprising, since most Indian immigrants already speak English when they arrive, and hence have less of a handicap relative to their native-born kids.
Why do Indian and Chinese immigrants do so well? Some will no doubt attribute their outperformance to cultural values of education and hard work. In reality, it’s probably more about the type of immigrants who come from those countries. Indian and Chinese people tend to come to the U.S. not as refugees or unauthorized low-wage laborers, but as high-skilled workers or the close relatives of skilled workers. That means even poor Indian and Chinese immigrants tend to have prosperous friends and relatives, and to come from families that value education and ambition. And India and China have by far the biggest pools of population from which to select such driven and talented individuals.
This is especially true for India. Indians are the highest-earning group by ancestry in the U.S., with a median household income of more than $110,000 in 2016 (the difference isn’t due to larger households, since Indian-Americans also come out on top in terms of per capita income). But it’s not just scientific and technical fields in which Indian-Americans excel. They are increasingly a force in politics and law.
A growing number of politicians, top political staffers and judges are of Indian descent. In business, too, Indians are rocketing to the top — two of the U.S.’s five biggest companies, Alphabet Inc. and Microsoft Corp., have Indian-born chief executive officers. Though historical comparisons are hard, Indians seem on track to be the most accomplished minority group in U.S. history.
This is not to say that all Indian-Americans are successful; some are poor. Nor should Indian achievement be used as a reason to denigrate other lower-skilled immigrant groups. The point, rather, is that the U.S. could benefit by letting in more Indian immigrants.
Employer-sponsored permanent residence permits, or green cards, are parceled out by country. There are about 150,00 available each year; officially, only 7% of these green cards can be given to immigrants from any one country in a given year, though some countries’ unused spots can be given to other countries. This system is deeply biased against big countries like India and China. In 2018, more than half of employment-based green card requests were for Indians, but Indians received only 13% of the total.
One solution is to simply remove the country cap. Congress has been trying to do this, with a bill called the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, but the legislation is being blocked by a handful of powerful senators.
Eliminating the country cap would be fair to large countries and would improve the flow of talent into the U.S., but it would only be a marginal improvement. A better idea is to simply increase the number of employment-sponsored green cards, and make the extra cards not subject to country caps. The U.S. now simply admits too few skill-based immigrants:
One of These Is Different. The world’s biggest countries are offering the U.S. some of their most talented people. We should do more to help them live and work in America.
New York-based author and journalist Aatish Taseer’s Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) card has been revoked as he had “concealed” the fact that his late father was of Pakistani origin, the Indian government said last week. An OCI card allows a foreign citizen of Indian origin to live and work in India for an indefinite duration of time.
However, the author has said in a reply that his estranged father was a British passport holder and that his parents had never been legally wed. His mother, columnist and writer Tavleen Singh, is his sole legal guardian, he said.
Aatish is a well-known critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Ahead of the 2019 General Elections, he had written a scathing article in Time magazine, critiquing the failures of the Modi government. The article was titled ‘India’s Divider In Chief’ and had explored the question of whether the world’s largest democracy could endure another five years of a Modi government.
Aatish Taseer is the son of senior journalist Tavleen Singh, an Indian, and late Salman Taseer, a Pakistani businessman and politician. Salman Taseer was assassinated in the year 2011 while he was serving as the Governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province.
“Mr. Aatish Ali Taseer, while submitting his PIO application, concealed the fact that his late father was of Pakistani origin,” the Union Home Ministry spokesperson tweeted.
“Mr. Taseer was given the opportunity to submit his reply/objections regarding his PIO/OCI cards, but he failed to dispute the notice,” the spokesperson said in another tweet.
“Thus, Aatish Ali Taseer becomes ineligible to hold an OCI card as per the Citizenship Act, 1955. He has clearly not complied with very basic requirements and hidden information,” it added.
Aatish tweeted that he had been given just 24 hours to reply, as opposed to the usual 21 days. Attaching a screenshot of the acknowledgement he received, the journalist also showed that he had, in fact, replied to the government, raising objections to the move. “This is untrue. Here is the Consul General’s acknowledgment of my reply. I was given not the full 21 days, but rather 24 hours to reply. I’ve heard nothing from the ministry since.” (sic) he wrote.
Committee to Protect journalists criticized the government of India. “Targeting a journalist’s immigration status after the publication of a critical article shows that the @BJP4India is intolerant of criticism and freedom of the press.”
The Department of Homeland Security will publish a notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register to adjust the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Immigration Examinations Fee Account fee schedule.
Fees collected and deposited into the IEFA fund nearly 96% of USCIS’ budget. Unlike most government agencies, USCIS is fee-funded. Federal law requires USCIS to conduct biennial fee reviews and recommend necessary fee adjustments to ensure recovery of the full cost of administering the nation’s immigration laws, adjudicating applications and petitions, and providing the necessary infrastructure to support those activities.
“USCIS is required to examine incoming and outgoing expenditures, just like a business, and make adjustments based on that analysis. This proposed adjustment in fees would ensure more applicants cover the true cost of their applications and minimizes subsidies from an already over-extended system,” said Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of USCIS. “Furthermore, the adjudication of immigration applications and petitions requires in-depth screening, incurring costs that must be covered by the agency, and this proposal accounts for our operational needs and better aligns our fee schedule with the costs of processing each request.”
The rule proposes adjusting USCIS IEFA fee schedules by a weighted average increase of 21% to ensure full cost recovery. Current fees would leave the agency underfunded by approximately $1.3 billion per year.
The proposed fee rule accounts for increased costs to adjudicate immigration benefit requests, detect and deter immigration fraud, and thoroughly vet applicants, petitioners, and beneficiaries.
USCIS last updated its fee structure in FY 2017, by a weighted average increase of 21%.
For more information on USCIS and its programs, please visit uscis.gov or follow us on Twitter (@uscis), Instagram (/uscis), YouTube (/uscis), Facebook (/uscis), and LinkedIn (/uscis).
If you fly often, you may have noticed that the flight times on your two-way tickets are different. This is because flights that are headed west simply take longer than flights that are headed east. Let’s take a brief look at why this is, how airlines utilize this fact, and how it affects your travel plans.
The reason why it is faster to fly east is because of jet streams. Jet streams are high altitude wind currents that move at hundreds of miles per hours from west to east. By finding these streams and placing their plane right in the center of them, pilots can lessen the duration of a flight significantly.
Jet streams are a vital part of air travel and are so advantageous that flights often will take routes that seem far out of their way in order to utilize them. Jet streams can not only reduce the overall travel time – they are also one of the best ways for airlines to use less fuel.
Airlines began taking advantage of jet streams in 1952 when a Pan American pilot named Logan Scott flew the first nonstop trip from Tokyo to Honolulu. To fly from Japan to Hawaii, the standard practice was for pilots to refuel at Wake Island on their way over the Pacific. The time spent landing, refueling, and taking off again was understood to lengthen the overall trip, but both Pan Am and Captain Scott were surprised to find that skipping the refueling saved a total of seven hours on the overall trip.
The reason why Captain Scott was able to decrease the overall time spent crossing the ocean was because he was able to keep his plane in the jet stream almost the entire time. The lowered fuel requirements that resulted from the use of the jet stream made the refueling stop an unnecessary diversion.
Jet streams are created in the tropopause layer of the Earth’s atmosphere, which begins about six miles above the Earth’s surface. The tropopause is the second lowest layer of the atmosphere, and is directly above the troposphere, which is the layer of the atmosphere where most weather events, such as clouds and storms, occur.
In the tropopause, the air temperature drops significantly. The interaction of this cold air and the warmer air of the troposhpere creates high speed winds, which can reach up to 250 miles per hour during the winter when the temperature difference is the greatest.
Where Are Jet Streams?
While jet streams encircle the globe, they are only a couple hundred miles across and can be found only in specific places on Earth. The most important and most active jet streams are the polar jet streams, which form around both the Arctic Circle and Antarctica, and the subtropical jet streams that can be found near the equator.
In addition to being found only in specific places, jet streams also do not flow in a straight line. Instead, they form giant waves that wrap around the planet. For this reason, the fastest way to fly to a distant location is not necessarily by flying straight toward it. Instead, pilots opt to follow the jet stream as efficiently as they can, even if that results in some unexpected zigzagging on the way.
These streams are so important that airlines measure them every day and adjust flight paths to be able to use them. So, the next time you are watching your flight path on the onscreen monitor, keep in mind that the unusual route your pilot is taking may help you get home a few minutes sooner.
Mexico has deported over 300 Indian nationals to New Delhi, the National Migration Institute (INM) said late on Wednesday, in what it described as an unprecedented transatlantic deportation.
The 310 men and one woman that INM said were in Mexico illegally were sent on a chartered flight, accompanied by federal immigration agents and Mexico’s National Guard.
The people had been scattered in eight states around the country, INM said, including in southern Mexico where many Indian migrants enter the country, hoping to transit to the U.S. border.
“It is unprecedented in INM’s history – in either form or the number of people – for a transatlantic air transport like the one carried out on this day,” INM said in a statement.
The Mexican government in June struck a deal with the United States, vowing to significantly curb U.S.-bound migration in exchange for averting U.S. tariffs on Mexican exports.
Caitlyn Yates, a research coordinator at IBI Consultants who has studied increasing numbers of U.S.-bound Asian and African migrants arriving in Mexico, said the backlog of migrants in southern Mexico has grown as officials have stopped issuing permits for them to cross the country. “This type of deportation in Mexico is the first of its kind but likely to continue,” Yates said.
Tens of thousands of Americans apply to U.S. medical schools each year. Only a fraction gain admission. The University of Arizona, for instance, posted a 1.9 percent acceptance rate in 2018. UCLA, Florida State University, and Wake Forest accepted fewer than 3 percent of applicants.
Many U.S. medical schools are proud of their microscopic admission rates. But they have negative ramifications for the nation’s healthcare system.
The United States will need up to 121,900 more physicians by 2032 to care for its aging population. U.S. medical schools aren’t producing enough graduates to meet that demand — and don’t have the capacity to expand anywhere close to that degree.
International medical schools are America’s best hope for addressing its physician workforce needs. They’re a crucial alternative for the thousands of qualified students who find themselves on the wrong end of a med school admissions decision as a result of the mismatch between qualified applicants and available seats.
Applying to med school has become a numbers game. In the 2018-2019 cycle, U.S. medical schools received over 850,000 applications from nearly 53,000 students. The average student applies to 16 schools.
Many students who would make terrific doctors fall through the cracks. In a recent interview with U.S. News and World Report, Dr. Robert Hasty, the founding dean and chief academic offer of the Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine, said, “We hear from high-quality applicants every day . . . and these are people with really high MCAT scores and GPAs, that this is their second year, third year or even fourth year applying to medical schools. And years ago, they would have gotten accepted the first time through, but the demand is just incredible.”
In other words, the status quo is failing thousands of qualified applicants — and the U.S. healthcare system, which needs more doctors.
U.S. medical schools don’t appear capable of growing to address this problem. Enrollment is up only 7 percent over the past five years. That kind of modest growth won’t get us anywhere close to narrowing our nation’s projected shortage of physicians.
International medical schools can address these issues, providing opportunity to talented students and supplying the physicians America needs.
Many international schools provide an education every bit as good as those offered by U.S. schools. For example, 96 percent of first-time test takers from St. George’s University in Grenada — the school I lead — passed Step 1 of the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam in 2018. That’s the same rate as graduates of U.S. medical schools.
Research confirms that international schools produce high-caliber doctors. According to one study published by the BMJ, a leading medical journal, patients treated by doctors trained overseas had lower mortality rates than those treated by U.S.-educated doctors.
Internationally trained doctors also practice where the U.S. healthcare system needs them most. In areas where per-capita income is below $15,000 annually, more than four in ten doctors received their degrees abroad.
Americans are increasingly turning to international schools. More than 60 percent of licensed medical graduates of international schools in the Caribbean are U.S. citizens. Three-quarters of the medical students at St. George’s are U.S. citizens.
The odds of gaining admission to U.S. medical schools are growing longer. But bright young Americans don’t have to give up their dreams of becoming doctors. They can turn to top-notch international medical schools. Their future patients will surely thank them.
(Dr. Richard Liebowitz is vice chancellor of St. George’s University (www.sgu.edu). He previously served as president of New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital.)
India was the leading country of origin of international migrants in 2019 with a 17.5 million strong diaspora, according to new estimates released by the United Nations, which said the number of migrants globally reached an estimated 272 million.
The International Migrant Stock 2019, a dataset released by the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) today, provides the latest estimates of the number of international migrants by age, sex and origin for all countries and areas of the world.
The estimates are based on official national statistics on the foreign-born or the foreign population obtained from population censuses, population registers or nationally representative surveys.
The report said that the top 10 countries of origin account for one-third of all international migrants. In 2019, with 17.5 million persons living abroad, India was the leading country of origin of international migrants.
Migrants from Mexico constituted the second largest diaspora (11.8 million), followed by China (10.7 million), Russia (10.5 million), Syria (8.2 million), Bangladesh (7.8 million), Pakistan (6.3 million), Ukraine (5.9 million), the Philippines (5.4 million) and Afghanistan (5.1 million).
India hosted 5.1 million international migrants in 2019, less than the 5.2 million in 2015. International migrants as a share of total population in India was steady at 0.4 per cent from 2010 to 2019.
The country hosted 207,000 refugees, the report said adding that refugees as a share of international migrants in the country was four per cent.
Among the international migrants in the country, the female population was 48.8 per cent and the median age of international migrants was 47.1 years. In India, the highest number of international migrants came from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal.
In 2019, regionally, Europe hosted the largest number of international migrants (82 million), followed by Northern America (59 million) and Northern Africa and Western Asia (49 million).
At the country level, about half of all international migrants reside in just 10 countries, with the United States of America hosting the largest number of international migrants (51 million), equal to about 19 per cent of the world’s total.
Germany and Saudi Arabia host the second and third largest numbers of migrants (13 million each), followed by Russia (12 million), the United Kingdom (10 million), the United Arab Emirates (9 million), France, Canada and Australia (around 8 million each) and Italy (6 million).
The share of international migrants in total population varies considerably across geographic regions with the highest proportions recorded in Oceania (including Australia and New Zealand) (21.2 per cent) and Northern America (16.0 per cent) and the lowest in Latin America and the Caribbean (1.8 per cent), Central and Southern Asia (1.0 per cent) and Eastern and South-Eastern Asia (0.8 per cent).
A majority of international migrants in sub-Saharan Africa (89 per cent), Eastern and South-Eastern Asia (83 per cent), Latin America and the Caribbean (73 per cent), and Central and Southern Asia (63 per cent) originated from the region in which they reside.
By contrast, most of the international migrants that lived in Northern America (98 per cent), Oceania (88 per cent) and Northern Africa and Western Asia (59 per cent) were born outside their region of residence.
UN Under-Secretary-General for DESA Liu Zhenmin said that These data are critical for understanding the important role of migrants and migration in the development of both countries of origin and destination.
Facilitating orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people will contribute much to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
The report added that forced displacements across international borders continues to rise. Between 2010 and 2017, the global number of refugees and asylum seekers increased by about 13 million, accounting for close to a quarter of the increase in the number of all international migrants.
Northern Africa and Western Asia hosted around 46 per cent of the global number of refugees and asylum seekers, followed by sub-Saharan Africa (21 per cent).
Turning to the gender composition, women comprise slightly less than half of all international migrants in 2019. The share of women and girls in the global number of international migrants fell slightly, from 49 per cent in 2000 to 48 per cent in 2019.
The share of migrant women was highest in Northern America (52 per cent) and Europe (51 per cent), and lowest in sub-Saharan Africa (47 per cent) and Northern Africa and Western Asia (36 per cent).
In terms of age, one out of every seven international migrants is below the age of 20 years.
The Overseas Citizen of India, or OCI, application process in the United States is being simplified with effect from September 20, 2019, Indian Embassy said in a statement.
Instead of a two-step application process, the applicant will now submit the OCI application form and upload related documents directly at the Government of India website (https://ociservices.gov.in/welcome).
Beginning September 20, 2019, there will also be no restriction of Consular Jurisdiction for OCI applicants. The applicant will be free to apply at Indian Embassy Washington DC or any of the Consulates General of India (CGI) in Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, New York or San Francisco. While submitting the application on the Government of India website, the applicant will need to select the location where he/she wants the OCI application to be processed.
On completion of online application process, the applicant should print the form, related documents and affidavits and submit them at the Outsourcing Partner, Cox & Kings Global Services (CKGS) office in the selected location.
Details regarding the form filling process, requirement of documents and payment of fees, can be checked at the CKGS website (https://www.in.ckgs.us/oci/how-to-apply).
President Donald Trump offered a dramatic, if legally dubious, promise in a new interview to unilaterally end birthright citizenship, ratcheting up his hardline immigration rhetoric with a week to go before critical midterm elections.
Trump’s vow to end the right to citizenship for the children of non-citizens and unauthorized immigrants born on US soil came in an interview with Axios released Tuesday. Such a step would be regarded as an affront to the US Constitution, which was amended 150 years ago to include the words: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
Trump did not say when he would sign the order, and some of his past promises to use executive action have gone unfulfilled. But whether the President follows through on his threat or not, the issue joins a string of actions intended to thrust the matter of immigration into the front of voters’ minds as they head to polls next week.
“We’re looking at that very seriously,” Trump told reporters when leaving the White House for the US state of Kentucky, the Xinhua news agency reported.
“Birthright citizenship, where you have a baby on our land – walk over the border, have a baby, congratulations, the baby’s now a US citizen,” said the President. “It’s, frankly, ridiculous.”
Trump promised ending the birthright citizenship during his 2016 presidential campaign and once revived the idea last year, according to a report of The Hill.
Earlier Wednesday, acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan unveiled new policies which will allow the government to detain families crossing the US-Mexico border longer than before. If the new rule survives court challenges, the policy change could permit authorities to detain families through the duration of their immigration proceedings.
The US federal government has sought various ways to curb illegal and legal immigration since Trump was sworn in January 2017. (IANS)
Australian flag carrier Qantas Airways is planning to begin test runs of non-stop flights between Sydney and New York and between Sydney and London later this year. The estimated duration of the flight: 19 hours. The test flights on Boeing 787-9s will only include crew and employees, and no tickets will be sold to the public. One of the objectives is to find out if people can really endure such long hours in a plane.
Qantas isn’t new to long haul aviation. Last year it launched a non-stop service between Perth and London that takes about 17 hours and 20 minutes. Its Sydney-Dallas non-stop flight takes about 17 hours and 15 minutes. In fact, folks in Sydney have endured long flights outside of Qantas — a United Airlines flight between the Australian city and Houston takes 17 hours and 20 minutes.
But that isn’t the longest flight by duration. Poor folks who board the Singapore Airlines non-stop flight from Singapore to New York have to spend 18 hours and 25 minutes pretending to read or endure inane conversations. The Qatar Airways flight between Auckland and Doha is not far behind with a duration of 17 hours and 40 minutes. But at least Qatar Airways and Singapore Airlines are the world’s best two airlines, according to Skytrax. Qantas? Ranked 8. The consolation. If one could endure 17 hours or so on a United flight (ranked 68, 10 places behind Indigo), then 19 hours in Qantas should be a breeze, right?
New Delhi: Air India’s Delhi-San Francisco non-stop service on August 15, India’s 73rd Independence Day, created history at 12.27 am — it became the first Indian commercial flight to fly over the Polar region, according to a newsitem in The Hindu BusinessLine.
The flight did its bit to save the environment and also ensured that the journey between the two cities becomes shorter. Air India flight 173 flew with a full complement of passengers.
“Planning for the flight was a challenge. A number of issues had to be addressed, including solar activity in the polar region and magnetic interference in communication, to name just two,” says Amitabh Singh, Director-Operations, Air India, who was involved in planning the flight.
All passengers flying on AI 173 on the August 15 flight were given a certificate that recorded the feat — that the passengers travelled on board the Boeing 777-200 Long Range aircraft marking the commencement of Air India’s commercial flights over the North Pole.
Asked why the Polar route is so important, Capt Digvijay Singh, who operated the August 15 departure, says the time saved will range from five minutes to 75 minutes. “We have taken an average of 20 minutes for every Polar flight which, on the Boeing 777, means about 2,500 kg of fuel saving and about 7,500 kg of carbon emission reduction. Passengers benefit because the flight time is shorter. The airline benefits because the fuel cost is lower and the environment benefits because carbon emissions come down,” adds Singh. Currently the flight covers the distance in 15 hours and 45 minutes.
Passengers following the flight path on their television screens could see the aircraft flying close to the North. The cabin crew also made an announcement on the public address system.
The opening of the Polar route will help Air India’s operations to all the five cities in the US that it flies to — New York, Newark, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington DC.
Potentially, the opening of the Polar route could lead to Air India no longer operating the ‘around the world’ flight that it currently plies to reach San Francisco. The Delhi-San Francisco route was launched in 2015.
President Donald Trump said last week he believes he has influence to rally Republicans around stronger federal background check laws as Congress and the White House work on a response to last weekend’s mass shootings in Texas and Ohio.
At the same time, Trump said he had assured the National Rifle Association that its gun-rights views would be “fully represented and respected.” He said he was hopeful the NRA would not be an obstacle to strengthening the nation’s gun laws.
Trump has promised to lead on tougher gun control measures before, including after the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school shooting, but little has come of it. His comments in the wake of the twin massacres marked his most optimistic and supportive words in favor of more stringent gun laws, though he left the details vague and it remained to be seen how much political capital Trump would throw behind marshaling Republicans on the issue.
He said Friday he now is looking for “very meaningful background checks” but is not considering a resurrection of an assault weapons ban. He said he also believes lawmakers will support “red flag” laws that allow guns to be removed from those who may be a danger to themselves and others.
“I see a better feeling right now toward getting something meaningful done,” Trump told reporters when asked why the political environment was different now. “I have a greater influence now over the Senate and the House,” he said at the White House.
“The Republicans are going to be great and lead the charge along with the Democrats,” he declared, saying he’d spoken with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell whom he proclaimed to be “totally onboard.”
But McConnell, thus far, has only committed to a discussion of the issue. Republicans have long opposed expanding background checks — a bill passed by the Democratic-led House is stalled in McConnell’s Senate — but they face new pressure after the shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, that left 31 people dead.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted in response Friday that McConnell must bring up the House-passed legislation, which Trump had previously threatened to veto. “To get anything meaningful done to address gun violence, we need his commitment to hold a Senate vote on the House-passed background checks legislation,” Schumer said.
As for the NRA, which has contributed millions to help Trump and other Republicans, the gun lobby’s chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, said this week that some federal gun control proposals “would make millions of law-abiding Americans less safe and less able to defend themselves and their loved ones.”
The Trump administration is cracking down on green cards for immigrants who’ve spent more than a year on food stamps, Medicaid or other public benefits designated for low-income residents.
Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said Monday that beginning Oct. 15 any ‘individual who receives one or more designated public benefits for more than 12 months in the aggregate within any 36 month period’ will not be eligible for a green card.
Individuals who take two public benefits will see that time cut in half, he explained during a briefing at the White House.
‘Our rule generally prevents aliens who are likely to become a public charge from coming to the United States or remaining here and getting a green card,’ he stated. Public benefits are defined in the rule as state, local and federal income-based assistance and some non-cash benefits. That includes Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), and most forms of Medicaid.
It does not include benefits for children and pregnant women like the National School Lunch Program or The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Cuccinelli said.
Medical assistance, disaster relief, homeless shelters and Head Start are not part of the rule.
The rule will take effect on Oct. 15 and Cuccinelli said that career officials processing forms will not consider certain non-cash benefits that migrants received prior to that date.
Age, health, family status, assets, resources, financial status, education and skills will all be assessed in the application process, he said.
‘No one factor alone will decide an applicant’s case,’ he said of the green cards.
Additionally, migrants that do not meet the qualifications will have the option to adjust their status to that of a Legal Permanent Resident (LPR) through the purchase of a public charge bond that the government plans to sell for a minimum of $8,100 a person, and possibly more, depending on the individual’s circumstances.
Cuccinelli insisted that the new rule will ‘help promote immigrant success’ and ‘self-sufficiency’ of immigrants seeking to become Americans.
It’s that same ‘hard-working spirit’ that’s made the U.S. a beacon, he claimed.
Refugees and asylums seekers will not not be affected, nor will human and sex trafficking victims. An exemption for members of the military and their spouses will also be made.
The administration first signaled that it would seek to adjust the legal definition of a ‘public charge’ in September 2018 to make the standards for citizenship more rigorous than they had been.
‘Congress has never defined the charge public charge in the law,’ Cuccinelli said Monday. ‘Well that is what changes today with this rule.’
He announced, ‘Through the public charge rule, President Trump’s administration is reinforcing the ideals of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility. Ensuring that immigrants are able to support themselves and becoming successful in America.’
Essentially, U.S. officials are seeking to isolate immigrants they suspect will be a burden to taxpayers by taking citizenship and the legal rights that come with it off the table for needy migrants.
Cuccinelli said that the rule update will merely ensure that existing law is ‘meaningfully enforced’ and puts into effect the authority that Congress has already given the administration.
A White House fact sheet revealed that the administration also plans to use the new rule to keep migrants from ever stepping foot in the country, if the administration decides they’re too risky, based on the updated guidance.
‘Aliens will be barred from entering the United States if they are found likely to become public charges,’ it says.
‘Aliens in the United States who are found likely to become public charges will also be barred from adjusting their immigration status.’
It claimed that non-citizens are abusing welfare benefits intended for poor Americans and taking advantage of the nation’s generosity.
The White House said that that 58 percent of all households that fall into this category are using at least one welfare program and half have at least one person on Medicaid.
Donald Trump has long sought to recast the number of migrants who are allowed to enter country through familial ties via a process called chain migration, where one family member living in America sponsors another, and another, and another.
The process creating a chain of people who might not have the kinds of workplace skills that a growing and industrialized economy warrants.
He also wants to do away with the diversity visa lottery system, that picks applicants for approval at random.
They’re heavily vetted by the State Department before they’re approved for residency. The president has claimed for years, incorrectly, that countries are sending over degenerates.
‘The people that are sent to our country are not the people that we want,’ Trump said earlier this year. ‘They come in through the lottery, they come in through chain migration.’
The country-wide cap on Green Card approval for people who have applied in the US for Permanent Residentship has rendered hundreds of thousands of qualified Indian Techies and other qualified professionals, including Physicians, waiting for decades with uncertainty.
Citizens of Indian and Chinese origin working in the U.S., many of whom are on the H-1B visa intended for highly-skilled workers, face the longest green card waits.
The US House of Representatives passed a bill to help Indian American physicians and technology professionals enabling them to obtain permanent residentship sooner by cutting short the decade-long wait. However, the Bill passed overwhelmingly with 140 Republican members of Congress joining 224 Democrats on Wednesday last week, is facing an unexpected roadblock in the Senate.
If it becomes a law, it will help many of the 300,000 Indian H1-B temporary work visa holders now in the US and in various stages of the green card process.
The “Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act,” introduced in February by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), would throw out the annual 7 percent cap on green cards for citizens of any one country. The change would be phased in over three years if the measure passes the Senate and is signed into law by President Donald Trump.
The bill sponsored by 311 Representatives from both parties was adopted on Wednesday and it will remove the limits on the number of permanent residencies or green cards that can be given in a year to citizens of each country in a bid to remove the huge backlog faced by highly qualified applicants from mainly India and China.
“In order for American industries to remain competitive and create more jobs, they must be able to recruit and retain the best talent in the world,” Lofgren said in a news release. She added in an interview after the vote, “If you’ve got your application approved based on merit, the color of your skin or the place of birth should not be the determinant.”
Under Lofgren’s bill, during the first year of implementation, a maximum 85 percent of green cards could be allocated to Indian or Chinese citizens. In the second and third years, that would rise to 90 percent.
David North, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which lobbies for reduced immigration, said in a blog post that big winners under the bill would be wealthy Chinese on the EB-5 investor visa, along with many Indians on the H-1B visa, plus major tech firms employing large numbers of Indian citizens on the H-1B. American workers, North said, would be among the biggest losers, competing for jobs against foreign nationals.
Under the current system, the maximum number of green cards that can be granted to people from any country, whether it is as large as India and China or as small as Maldives and Luxembourg, is 7 per cent of the total, which is about 26,000 annually.
This quota affects Indian technology professionals and other highly qualified people leading to a wait of 10 years during which those already here on temporary H1-B work visas face uncertainty about their and their families’ future prospects.
The bill, officially known as Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019, seeks to eliminate the cap and allow up to 85 per cent of the green cards to be given to Indians and Chinese in the first two years and 90 per cent in the third year in order to clear the backlog. After that, the backlogs are likely to build up unless there is a comprehensive immigration reform.
The bill has been opposed by both the extreme left and the right. Two important leftist members, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, were among the eight Democrats who voted against it. On the Republican side, 57 voted against it.
If a similar bill introduced by Indian-American Democrat Senator Kamala Harris and Republican Senator Mike Lee is adopted after overcoming last minute obstacles, it is likely to get President Donald Trump’s approval as it meshes in with his immigration reform proposal to do away with country quotas and give priority to highly qualified immigrants.
The legislation would come at a time when India has complained about the increased scrutiny and higher rates of denial of H1-B applications for Indian. And this has become a point of contention between the two countries. It is also possible that Trump may hold it up as negotiating ploy in the trade dispute.
Democrat Representative Zoe Lofgren, who was the main mover behind the legislation, said American industries needed it to remain competitive as they were finding it “increasingly difficult when workers from high-population countries must compete for the same limited number of visas as workers from low population countries”.
Republican Representative John Curtis, put it more succinctly saying, the bill “will create a first-come, first-serve system providing certainty to workers and families and enabling US companies to flourish and compete in a global economy as they hire the brightest people to create products, services, and jobs – regardless of where they were born”.
It was welcomed by technology companies, many of which lobbied for it. Amazon tweeted: “Thank you to @RepZoeLofgren and the 311 House cosponsors for supporting the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act.”
But it has run into problems in the Senate. Senator Rand Paul had held up the Senate version from coming to vote demanding that it include a quota for nurses as they may be swamped by technology professionals.
A medical doctor, Paul is nominally a Republican but ideologically a libertarian who defies party lines. It was a sudden turn around for him because in previous years he had even co-sponsored similar versions of the bill, which failed to make headway.
Although for a different reason, he finds himself on the same side as some Democrats who oppose it because it does not increase the yearly total number of green cards, which is around a million now, and others including hardline right-wingers who say the immigrating technology professionals will undercut American workers and also because Indian and Chinese people will overwhelm the immigration system.
Lee had earlier overcome the objections of another Republican Senator Charles Grassley by agreeing to insert provisions for better enforcement of H1-B regulations. This is not in the House bill and a compromise would have to be worked out it passes the Senate before going to Trump for his signature.
Trump administration’s increased scrutiny of the H-1B visa program has forced Indian citizens to prefer Canada over the United States for permanent residency. There is growing uncertainty in the United States over the future of Indian techies because of the Trump administration’s focus on giving preference to locals for jobs. In fact, the current administration wants to replace the existing Green Cards system with the proposed Build America visa.
In 2018, more than 39,500 Indians opted for permanent residency in Canada. The country’s express entry program has been quite a success in attracting highly skilled foreign workers, especially India’s IT professionals.
Newly released statistics highlight that Canada granted permanent residency to over 92,000 new residents in 2018. In the previous year, Canada had only 65,500 permanent residents, out of which 26,300 were from India. The number of Indian citizens to be awarded permanent residency has increased by 51% from 2017. China secured the second rank in 2017 but slipped to the third in 2018. Meanwhile, Nigeria holds the second rank in acquiring permanent residency in 2018.
The Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada report states, “The top countries of citizenship based on the people admitted to Canada generally mirrors those of invited candidates. Nearly half of all people admitted in 2018 had Indian citizenship.” The Justin Trudeau-led government has created ample amount of opportunities for permanent entry residents.
Canada’s express entry program is similar to the US’s green card system. With the increasing scrutiny in obtaining the H-1B visa, skilled workers are moving towards Canada. The US visa system is suffering through delays, denials of visa extensions, green card backlogs and the proposed plan to revoke the work authorisation of H-1B spouses.
The Global Talent Stream (GTS) has helped Canada become a preferred destination for Indian techies. GTS is a merit-based work visa process. Canadian companies are increasingly using GTS to bring expats with STEM background within two weeks. The program has helped in increasing the flow of Indian employees to Canada.
The express entry program draws are held periodically. The most recent one was conducted on June 21. Canada’s multi-year immigration plan has a target to welcome 3.30 lakh immigrants in 2019, and 3.40 lakh in 2020.
There are 630,000 undocumented Indians in the United States, according to a study by the South Asian Americans Leading Together, known as SAALT. The report also said that South Asian population in the United States has grown by 40 percent since 2010.
“By 2065, Asian Americans are on track to be the largest immigrant population in the U.S. The South Asian population in the U.S. grew a staggering 40% in seven years, from 3.5 million in 2010 to 5.4 million in 2017,” SAALT said in a statement.
Here are some other findings: The Nepali community grew by 206.6% since 2010, followed by Indian (38%), Bhutanese (38%), Pakistani (33%), Bangladeshi (26%), and Sri Lankan populations (15%).
There are at least 630,000 Indians who are undocumented, a 72% increase since 2010. There are currently at least 4,300 active South Asian DACA recipients.
Income inequality has been reported to be the greatest among Asian Americans. Nearly 10% of the approximately five million South Asians in the U.S. live in poverty.
There has been a rise in the number of South Asians seeking asylum in the U.S. over the last 10 years. ICE has detained 3,013 South Asians since 2017. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol arrested 17,119 South Asians between October 2014 and April 2018 through border and interior enforcement.
The South Asian community in the United States includes individuals who trace their ancestry to Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The community also includes members of the South Asian diaspora – past generations of South Asians who originally settled in other parts of the world, including the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, Canada and the Middle East, and other parts of Asia and the Pacific Islands. South Asian Americans include citizens, legal permanent residents, students, H-1B and H-4 visa holders, DACA recipients, and undocumented immigrants.
“As we witness this unprecedented growth in our communities, it is more important than ever that the needs of the most vulnerable South Asian populations are met. South Asians are impacted by the full spectrum of federal immigration policies – from detention and deportation to H-4 visa work authorization and denaturalization to the assault on public benefits,” said SAALT’s Interim Co-Executive Director Lakshmi Sridaran. “An accurate Census 2020 population count is essential to distributing critical federal funding to our communities. A citizenship question on the census would chill thousands of community members, resulting in a severe undercount, with at least 600,000 South Asians in the country not being counted and thousands more deterred. And, this means even fewer resources to the communities who need it the most.”
SAALT’s demographic snapshot is based primarily on Census 2010 and the 2017 American Community Survey.
Earlier this month, reports had suggested that the US was looking to curb the number of H-1B visa recipients from India as a tit-for-tat response for the country’s data localisation efforts, which were hurting North American tech giants like Visa and MasterCard.
However, during his ongoing three-day visit to the country, US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and the Indian government confirmed that there were no such plans, India Today reported on June 26.
“The United States’ global leadership in technology has been made possible, in part, by its ability to attract the most talented workers from around the world,” India’s IT trade association Nasscom said in a statement on June 20, when the headlines about restricting H-1B visa allocations first floated. “If US policy makes it more difficult to hire advanced tech workers, it will only weaken the US companies that depend on them to help fill their skills gaps, put jobs at risk, creating pressure to send technology services abroad.”
Filling the skills gap
The US bureau of labor statistics predicts that in 2020 there will be 1.4 million more software development jobs in the country than applicants who can fill them.
By 2030, the US could lose out on $162 billion-worth (Rs 11 lakh crore) of revenues annually in the tech sector alone unless it finds more high-tech workers, a 2018 study by management consulting firm Korn Ferry found. Meanwhile, India could become the next tech leader since the country is poised to have a surplus of over a million high-skilled tech workers by 2030.
The US government has informed India that it is considering capping H-1B visas to countries that force foreign firms to store data locally, Reuters reported on Wednesday night.
The proposal is expected to further worsen economic ties between Washington and New Delhi, which have been affected by a recent row over trade tariffs. The news also comes days ahead of a visit by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to New Delhi on June 24. Pompeo will be the first senior US official to visit India after the Narendra Modi dispensation returned to power after elections.
The H-1B visa programme allows companies to bring skilled personnel from overseas to work in their facilities in the US under an yearly quota. Approximately 85,000 H-1B visas are granted each year, on which there is no country-specific limit; as many as 70 per cent of these visas are issued to Indians.
The Reuters report claimed two “senior” Indian government officials were briefed a week ago about the US plan to cap the number of H-1B visas issued to Indians “at between 10 per cent and 15 per cent” of the annual quota.
The US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) reported last week that about 9,000 Indians were caught entering the US illegally last year, a dramatic increase from the 3,162 in 2017.
The CBP’s statement comes after a 7 yr old girl’s body was discovered near the Lukeville and Quitobaquito Springs in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument biosphere reserve, a forbidding landscape in the dry and arid Arizona state.
The discovery of the body of a seven-year-old Indian girl in a treacherous desert area in the state of Arizona has put the spotlight on rising illegal immigrants from India trying to cross into the US through Mexico.
The CBP said the girl died while she and four others, including an Indian woman and her eight-year-old daughter, were dropped off near the Mexico-US border by “human smugglers who ordered the group to cross (into the US) in the dangerous and austere location”.
A temperature of 42 degrees Celsius was recorded on Thursday in that area. The CBP said that on Thursday its agents had encountered two Indian women who told them that three others in the group had become separated from them and a search was started for them. The body was found during the search and recovered by the local sheriff’s department.
Later that day, the agents found footprints indicating the other two, the mother and daughter, had crossed back into Mexico and authorities there began to look for them. However, the two returned to the US side of the border and surrendered to CPB agents and were hospitalized.
Meanwhile, the Indian Consulate General in San Francisco is trying to help the victim’s family. A consul, Sumati Rao, told IANS in an e-mailed statement on Friday: “The Consulate is deeply distressed with the sad loss of a young life. We are in touch with the CBP officials on the situation. We have also reached out to the family and offered assistance.”
None of them has been identified and officials did not disclose if the dead child was related to any of the others in the group. In 2018, about 260 people reportedly died while crossing illegally from Mexico, most of them due to the harsh environment with long stretches of desert along the border.
President Donald Trump’s administration has been trying to contain an upsurge of illegal immigration mostly by Central Americans on the Mexican border. Last month, the CPB detained 144,200 illegal immigrants, the most for a single month in 13 years.
In a growing trend, many of those trying to illegally enter the US are bringing along children in hopes that they would get lenient treatment and early release from detention while their case – usually an appeal for asylum – is processed.
Human smugglers, known locally as “coyotes”, often leave illegal immigrants in desert or other inhospitable environments or keep them hostages to demand more payments or traffic them. Vowing to fight the coyotes, Trump said in February: “My administration has made the fight against human trafficking one of our highest priorities.”
Four spouses of H-1B visa holding workers who are facing undue delays in getting their H-4 visa extension and work authorisation applications renewed have sued the Trump administration. A petition filed on June 6 in a US district court points out that the intentional processing delay by the United States and Citizenship Immigration Services (USCIS), which adjudicates visa applications and extensions, has placed the plaintiffs (who filed the petition) and numerous other H-4 and H-4 EAD applicants in danger of losing their jobs, medical insurance (provided by the employer), and driver’s licences. The delay has strained the finances of the applicants and their families, and adversely impacted their employers, says the petition, demanding timely disposal of these applications.
Spouses of H-1B visa holders who are working in the US get a dependent (H-4) visa, the duration of which is coterminus with the tenure granted to the principal visa holder. The H-4 visa itself does not enable the spouse to work or be self-employed. Only those spouses where the principal H-1B worker is on track for a green card (permanent residency) can obtain an employment authorization document (EAD), which is the work permit.
USCIS taking up to 8.5 months to process H-4 visa applications
The EAD also enables the spouse to obtain a social security number and thus operate a bank account or obtain a driver’s license. Emily Neumann, partner at immigration law firm Reddy & Neumann (the firm representing the plaintiffs), told TOI: “We have argued that it takes USCIS adjudicators an average of merely 24 minutes to process Form I-539 (application to extend non-immigration status) and 12 minutes to process Form I-765 (application for employment authorization), yet it takes USCIS up to 8.5 months to adjudicate these applications according to current processing times.”
Both the H-4 extension and H-4 EAD are immigrant benefits that the US Congress expects the USCIS to complete within 30 days. The petition filed in the court (a copy of which is with TOI) explains that unlike H-1B, which allows the visa holder to work for a certain grace period while the extension is pending approval, no such rule exists for H-4 EAD holders. This creates a significant need for the applications to be dealt with in a timely and expeditious manner.
An H-4 EAD application cannot be approved without a valid H-4. As of May 2019, USCIS processing times for an H-4 application were as long as eight and a half months. Processing times for H-4 EAD is approximately 5 months currently, the petition adds.
“In many cases, while the H-1B extensions have been granted, the H-4 spouses continue to wait, losing out on jobs, medical insurance, and driver’s licences because they did not receive their EADs in time,” adds Neumann.
“The Trump administration has expressed its intention to revoke the EAD program. Meanwhile, it appears that the administration is building invisible blocks by delaying processing of our applications,” says an individual who is currently waiting for her H-4 extension and EAD renewal.
It is reminding me of camel who sought permission for small portion in tent to protect its neck from outside cold and ultimately kicked off the owner of tent from tent all together.Revocations of H-1B Visas Rise in New Front Against Immigration Comtrix Solutions Inc., a Virginia-based health care staffing company, got approval to bring in skilled foreign workers on H-1B visas for several clients in October 2018, six months after it applied.
But by that time, the original clients had moved on because they couldn’t wait that long for workers whose appearance wasn’t even guaranteed. When the government caught wind of the change, it accused Comtrix of lying about where the workers would be placed and revoked the H-1B petitions on the grounds of fraud.
Immigration attorneys say such revocations, along with denying extensions of H-1Bs that used to be granted routinely, are the latest in a series of steps by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to crack down on the specialty occupation visa heavily used by tech companies. In April, employers submitted 201,011 petitions for 85,000 H-1B visas available starting in October.
“There’s no question that there are cases, H-1B petitions, that have been approvable for the last 20 years that aren’t approvable today,” said H. Ronald Klasko of Klasko Immigration Law Partners in Philadelphia. “The law hasn’t changed, just their standards.”
There are no publicly available records on how often H-1Bs are revoked. But “revocations are now starting to be as common as denials,” which shot up to a total of 15.5% of all petitions decided in fiscal year 2018 from 7.4 percent the prior year, said Bradley Banias of Barnwell Whaley Patterson & Helms in Charleston, S.C.
The USCIS’ implementation of President Donald Trump‘s Buy American and Hire American executive order, released in April 2017, has resulted in a high level of H-1B scrutiny, with longer processing times and more denials for businesses, especially the information technology consulting industry. The industry has been flagged in the past for displacing U.S.-born tech workers.
Jonathan Wasden of Economic Immigration Support Services in Reston, Va., who’s filed a lawsuit on Comtrix’s behalf, accused USCIS of targeting staffing companies.
“They’re trying to prohibit the consulting industry from using the H-1B,” said Wasden, who recently joined the immigration firm Reddy & Newman as counsel for litigation. “It’s no accident that the delays” in H-1B processing last year “were really targeted toward the consulting industry,” he said.
The authority to revoke H-1B petitions comes from the Department of Homeland Security regulations, agency spokesman Philip Smith said.
He said the USCIS may send a notice of intent to revoke if the worker is no longer working for the petitioning employer in the capacity listed in the original petition; there was fraud, misrepresentation, or the facts originally presented weren’t true; the employer violated the terms and conditions of the approved petition or the law; or the approval violated the regulations or “involved gross error.”
Separately, the agency said it “does not believe that recent policy changes have led to a purported increase in H-1B revocations.”
“H-1B revocations are based on 8 CFR 214.2(h)(11), and that regulatory provision, including the interpretation of that provision, remains unchanged,” an agency official said. “There are no pending policy changes for H-1B revocations.”
Immigration lawyers, however, point to two causes of the crackdown: an October 2017 USCIS memo overturning a George W. Bush administration policy that said adjudicators deciding H-1B extension applications generally should defer to decisions on the prior applications; and a February 2018 policy requiring employers that place their H-1B workers at third-party sites to provide additional documentation over and above what other employers must submit.
The 2018 policy requires employers to list every contract and work site the H-1B worker will be working on for the duration of the visa, a requirement that Banias and Wasden are suing over.
“They get away with it if no one challenges it in court,” Klasko said of the revocations. A challenge to the practice, as opposed to a lawsuit over a one-time revocation, “could be a good case to litigate,” he said.
Klasko, who heads an American Immigration Lawyers Association task force devoted to litigating business immigration issues, said he and others on the task force are considering whether to file such a broad challenge.
“They can’t just revoke” an H-1B because the current administration wouldn’t have approved a petition approved by a prior administration, he said. Rather, revocation requires that there was “clear error” in the original approval, he said.
Revocation creates an additional headache over and above delays and denials: the need to “get that person out of the country quickly” to avoid penalties for being in the U.S. unlawfully, Banias said. H-1B workers have 30 days to exit the U.S. after receiving a revocation notice.
It also means that, rather than simply reapplying for another H-1B visa, the worker’s application has to go through the H-1B lottery a second time, and may not get selected, he said.
Two Congresswomen from California have re-introduced legislation May 29, to protect the much-treasured work authorization for spouses on H-4 Visas, which affect mostly women from India. But even as the Trump administration has warned it is moving toward revoking the privilege, a leading attorney who was behind drafting the Obama-era rule, says the right to work is not going anywhere fast.
Representatives Anna G. Eshoo and Zoe Lofgren, both Democrats, reintroduced the “H-4 Employment Protection Act,” in a renewed bid to prevent the Trump Administration from revoking an Obama-era rule that extends work authorization to certain spouses of H-1B visa holders, including thousands of immigrants in Silicon Valley. Indian spouses, mostly women, were the largest beneficiaries of the H-4EAD.
Currently, the H-4 EAD removal proposal is with the Office of Management and Budget which is reviewing it, and during which time stakeholders are allowed to meet with OMB. The publi comment period will begin after the proposal has been approved by OMB, and published in the Federal Register.
The introduction of such a legislation comes days after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that it would publish this month the long-promised regulation that would prevent the work authorisation to spouses on H-4 visas. H-4 visas are issued to the spouses of H-1B visa holders, a significantly large number of whom are high-skilled professionals from India.
This week, the Trump administration announced plans to overturn current the DHS regulations that allow certain H-4 dependent spouses of H-1B visa holders who are stuck in green card backlogs to obtain employment authorisation, pursue their own professional goals and contribute to the US economy, said the lawmakers Anna G Eshoo and Zoe Lofgren.
Many H-4 visa holders are highly skilled professionals, and the DHS previously extended eligibility for employment authorisation to them recognising the economic burdens of families of many H-1B workers, particularly those who live in high cost areas like Silicon Valley on a single income as they await green card approvals, they said.
Since the rule was implemented, over 100,000 workers, mainly women, have received employment authorization, and the H-4 Employment Protection Act prohibits the Trump administration from revoking this important rule. “H-4 visa holders deserve a chance to contribute to their local economies and provide for their families,” Eshoo said.
“This is a matter of economic fairness and this legislation ensures it will continue,” she added. H-4 visa holders had obtained work permits under a special order issued by the previous Obama administration. Indian-Americans were a major beneficiary of this provision.
More than one lakh H-4 visa holders have been beneficiary of this rule. “While the Trump administration sits on its hands and does nothing, American citizens in-waiting are stuck in line for their number to come up,” Lofgren said.
“Nobody benefits from this system, least of all the American economy, when H-1B dependent spouses are prohibited from working. Many of these are accomplished and qualified individuals whose skills we’ll lose to other countries unless the Administration finds a more sensible approach to immigration,” she said.
Since the work authorization rule was implemented in 2015, according to various estimates, around 70,000 to 100,000 workers, mainly high-skilled women from India, have received employment authorization.
According to Doug Rand, founder of boundless.com, an firm that says its mission is to help immigrants “navigate the immigration system more confidently, rapidly, and affordably”, the demise of H4-EAD, is not on the near horizon. Rand was Assistant Director for Entrepreneurship, in the Obama White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, and played a key role in drafting the H-4EAD rule.
Doug Rand, co-founder and president of Boundless Immigration, and former Assistant Director for Entrepreneurship in President Obama’s White House Office of Science & Technology Policy. (Photo: LinkedIn)
“It’s important to understand that the administration hasn’t even officially started the process of eliminating work permits for H-4 visa holders,” Rand told News India Times in an email response to a query. Rand was one of the principal drafters of the Obama-era rule that created the EAD.
“The first step, a “proposed rule,” is expected within the next few months, typically followed by a two-month period for public comments,” Rand said. “Then USCIS must process all of these comments (which will probably number in the tens of thousands), formulate a response, and publish a “final rule.” Only then will H-4 work permit applications and extensions be prohibited going forward.”
According to Rand, “This whole process, start to finish, will probably take 6 months at the very least, and usually takes over 12 months.” He predicts there will “almost certainly” be lawsuits seeking to freeze the USCIS final rule while the litigation makes its way through the courts.
“Therefore it’s safe to conclude that (a) nobody with a current work permit is going to lose it until it expires, (b) any prohibition of new H-4 work permit applications and extensions is probably at least 6 months away, and (c) there’s a reasonable chance that the courts will preserve H-4 EADs in the long run.”
The H.R. 1044, Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, if passed, would cut the decades of wait times for skilled immigrants who are stuck in the green card backlog by eliminating the caps.
Bill 1044, which has 297 co-sponsors as of now and has been referred to the Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, increases the per-country cap on family-based immigrant visas from 7% of the total number of such visas available that year to 15%, and eliminates the 7% cap for employment-based immigrant visas, apart from other stipulations.
Meanwhile, on the H-4EAD protection bill, Eshoo and Lofgren pointed to the rationale for the work authorization, noting that it recognized the economic burdens that families of many H-1B workers, particularly those who live in high cost areas like Silicon Valley on a single income, while in the green-card pipeline.
“H-4 visa holders deserve a chance to contribute to their local economies and provide for their families,” Rep. Eshoo is quoted saying in a May 29 press release. “This is a matter of economic fairness and this legislation ensures it will continue.”
After a series of delays, the federal government is now saying it will this month publish a long-promised rule to strip spouses of H-1B visa holders of their right to work. The news came via an update to the federal government’s “unified agenda.” The page dedicated to the planned work-ban has been changed to provide a new time-frame for the draft rule to be published, saying it will happen this month.
The prohibition would affect wives and husbands of H-1B visa holders on track for a green card. University of Tennessee researchers have estimated that 93 percent of the approximately 100,000 spouses, who are on the H-4 visa, are women from India.
In February, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security pushed the rule into its final stages, sending it to the Office of Management and Budget for review. Under the rule-making process, the budget office can recommend changes, before kicking the proposed rule back to Homeland Security.
However, reports suggest the rule is still awaiting approval from the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which is part of the budget office, said Migration Policy Institute analyst Sarah Pierce.
Get breaking H-1B and other news and alerts with our free mobile app. Get it from the Apple app store or the Google Play store. According to the law, the information and regulatory affairs office has until June 20 to review the rule, Pierce said.
“Should it approve it, the rule could be published shortly thereafter,” Pierce said. “Assuming it gets approved, I do think we will see the published proposed rule this summer, but it does seem unlikely that we’ll see it in May, as the unified agenda seems to imply.”
Publication of the draft rule in the federal register is expected to trigger a public-comment period. Public comment periods for new federal rules typically last 30 to 60 days, but can extend to 180 days or more.
Under certain circumstances, rules can be finalized without a comment period, but Citizenship and Immigration director L. Francis Cissna said in a Sept. 6 letter to the Internet Association — which represents major tech firms such as Facebook and Google — that “the public will be given an opportunity to provide feedback during a notice and comment period on any revisions to regulations that DHS determines are appropriate, including revisions relating to the H-4 Rule.”
Homeland Security, on the unified agenda page dedicated to the work-ban plan, has said that some U.S. workers would benefit from the prohibition “by having a better chance at obtaining jobs that some of the population of the H-4 workers currently hold.”
A number of Bay Area residents on the H-4 have told this news organization that if they can’t work, they will likely leave the U.S. with their families.
Lawsuits seeking to block implementation of the rule are expected, according to Doug Rand, co-founder of Boundless Immigration — a technology company helping families with immigration — and a former White House official under Obama who helped implement the H-4 work authorization.
The administration of President Donald Trump, under his “Buy American and Hire American” executive order, has taken aim at the controversial H-1B visa, increasing the rate of visa denials and demands for more evidence that workers and jobs qualify for the visa. Silicon Valley tech firms rely heavily on the H-1B, and push for an increase to the annual 85,000 cap on new visas, arguing that they use the visa program to secure the world’s top talent. Critics point to reported abuses by outsourcing companies, and contend that the H-1B is used to supplant American workers with cheaper foreign labor.
After five years sitting pretty at the top, Germany has been knocked off its most-powerful-passport-in-the-world perch: A new “live index” shows that Japan is now number one, offering their citizens visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 190 destinations, having recently obtained visa-free access to Myanmar. Singapore and South Korea come in second, with visa-free access to just (sigh, just) 189 countries, while Germany and France round out the top three, offering visa-free access to 188 countries.
The index, created by London-based consulting firm Henley & Partners with the International Air Transport Association (which has the world’s largest database of travel information), judges the top passports in the world by how much visa-free travel they allow. Generally, visa requirements are indicative of a country’s relationship with another—reciprocity, as illustrated by the contentious battle over U.S. travelers’ visa-free access to Europe, is often an expectation. In the past, this was an annual list, released every January. Now, “the site is updated in real-time as visa-policy changes come into effect,” says a spokesperson for Henley & Partners, which is why the list changes every few months.
The United Kingdom and the U.S. have slid down one spot since last year—from fifth to sixth—with access to 185 destinations, largely because neither of them have gotten any new visa-free access since 2018. And though the countries once jointly held the top spot in 2015, their ascendance to number one yet again seems unlikely, in large part because “Asian high-performers such as Japan, Singapore, and South Korea” continue to open up (and in turn, receive) visa access to more and more countries.
The passport to watch? The United Arab Emirates, which has climbed from 62nd place in 2006 to its current rank of 22nd. On the lower end of the list are Iraq and Afghanistan, which sit at the bottom of the index and each have visa-free access to just 30 destinations worldwide. Here, a look at the top 27 countries.
1. Japan 190 countries can be visited without a visa =2. Singapore, South Korea 189 =3. Germany, France 188 =4. Denmark, Finland, Italy, Sweden 187 =5. Luxembourg, Spain 186 =6. Austria, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland, U.K., U.S. 185 =7. Belgium, Canada, Greece, Ireland 184 8. Czech Republic 183 9. Malta 182 =10. Australia, Iceland, New Zealand 181
Asian Americans are the fastest-growing major racial or ethnic group in the United States. More than 20 million Asians live in the U.S., and almost all trace their roots to 19 origin groups from East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.
Significant differences exist by income, education and other characteristics among the nation’s largest 19 Asian origin groups. These differences have been central to debates about how much data governments, colleges and other groups should collect about Asian origin groups, and whether it should be used to shape policies.
Here are some key differences between Asian origin groups in the U.S. and how they compare with Asian Americans overall.
1Six origin groups – Chinese, Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese – accounted for 85% of all Asian Americans as of 2015. These groups together largely shape the overall demographic characteristics of Asian Americans. The remaining 13 origin groups each made up 2% or less of the nation’s Asian population. These groups have a variety of characteristics that can differ greatly from the largest groups.
2About half of Asians in the U.S. ages 25 and older had a bachelor’s degree or more in 2015, a higher share than other races and ethnicities, but this share varies greatly by origin group. Those of Indian, Malaysian or Mongolian origin, for example, were more likely than other Asian origin groups to have at least a bachelor’s degree. By comparison, fewer than 20% of Cambodians, Hmong, Laotians and Bhutanese had a bachelor’s degree or more. Roughly a third of all Americans ages 25 and older had a bachelor’s degree or more.
The differences in educational attainment among origin groups in part reflect the levels of education immigrants bring to the U.S. For example, 72% of U.S. Indians had a bachelor’s degree or higher in 2015. Many of them already had a bachelor’s degree when they arrived in the U.S. with a visa for high-skilled workers, such as an H-1B visa. Half of H-1B visas, which require a bachelor’s degree or equivalent, have gone to Indians since 2001.
3Seven-in-ten U.S. Asians ages 5 and older speak English proficiently. Large majorities of Japanese (84%), Filipinos (82%) and Indians (80%) spoke English proficiently in 2015. By contrast, Bhutanese (27%) and Burmese (28%) had some of the lowest rates of English proficiency.
4Income inequality is rising more rapidly among Asian Americans than other racial or ethnic groups, reflecting wide disparities in income among Asian origin groups. Asian households in the U.S. had a median annual income of $73,060 in 2015, higher than the $53,600 among all U.S. households. Only four Asian origin groups had household incomes that exceeded the national median for Asian Americans overall: Indians ($100,000), Filipinos ($80,000) and Sri Lankans and Japanese (both $74,000). By contrast, most of the other 15 origin groups were well below the national median for Asian Americans, including the two with the lowest median household incomes – Nepalese ($43,500) and Burmese ($36,000).
5As with education and income, poverty rates vary widely among Asians in the U.S. Asians overall had a poverty rate of 12.1% in 2015, 3 percentage points lower than the U.S. poverty rate (15.1%). Bhutanese (33.3%) and Burmese (35.0%) had the highest poverty rates among all Asian origin groups – more than twice the national average and more than four times the poverty rates among Filipinos and Indians (both 7.5%).
6Immigrants make up a higher share of some Asian origin groups than others. Among all Asians in the U.S., nearly six-in-ten were foreign born in 2015, significantly larger than the immigrant share among Americans overall (13%) and other racial and ethnic groups that same year.
Some Asian groups arrived as immigrants more recently than others. For instance, 85% of Burmese in the U.S. are foreign born, and many of them arrived as refugees starting in 2007. Eight-in-ten Burmese immigrants (81%) have been in the country for 10 years or less.
But not all U.S. Asian groups have high foreign-born shares. For instance, the first Japanese immigrants came to the U.S. in the 19th century as plantation workers in what is now the state of Hawaii. More recently, fewer Japanese immigrants have arrived to the U.S. compared with other Asian origin groups. This history is reflected in the low share of Japanese Americans who are immigrants (27%). Additionally, among Japanese immigrants, two-thirds (64%) have been in the country for more than 10 years.
7Among Asian immigrants, 58% have become U.S. citizens, though naturalization rates vary widely. Nearly eight-in-ten Hmong and Vietnamese immigrants are U.S. citizens (77% and 75%), the highest shares among U.S. Asian groups. Differences in naturalization rates reflect how long immigrants have lived in the U.S. Large numbers of Vietnamese and Hmong arrived in the U.S. as refugees starting in the 1970s and have had more time to naturalize. By contrast, many Bhutanese have arrived in the U.S. as refugees starting in 2008 (98% of Bhutanese immigrants have been in the U.S. for 10 years or less) and only 6% have naturalized, the lowest share of any group.
For more information on Asians in the U.S., see Pew Research Center’s detailed fact sheets for each national origin group and the methodology for the analysis.
US President Donald Trump has unveiled a plan to reform the nation’s immigration system, intended to favor high-skilled immigrants and restrict family-based migration. President Trump unveiled an outline for reshaping how immigrants are admitted into the country — seeking to promote a more comprehensive approach to immigration ahead of a reelection campaign in which Democrats plan to portray his hard-line approach at the border as racist.
The new proposal, an effort led primarily by his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, appears destined for the congressional dustbin, with no clear strategy from the White House to turn it into law and essentially no support from Democrats who control half of Capitol Hill.
Currently, about two-thirds of the 1.1 million people allowed to migrate to the nation each year are given green cards granting permanent residency because of family ties. Trump’s plan, which does not add protections to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival recipients, is expected to draw little support from Democrats who have railed against the administration’s lack of support for so-called “Dreamers,” who were brought to the United States as children by undocumented parents.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slammed the proposal as “condescending,” signaling that Democrats would not support legislation that does not include a pathway to citizenship. “They say family is without merit — are they saying most of the people that come to the US in the history of our country are without merit, because they don’t have an engineering degree,” Pelosi asked at her weekly press conference on Thursday.
But the White House and its allies on Capitol Hill have emphasized that the plan — few details of which have been publicly released — is primarily to showcase the kind of immigration that Trump and Republicans can support ahead of next year’s elections.
“We are proposing an immigration plan that puts the jobs, wages and safety of American workers first,” Trump said from the White House Rose Garden in front of an audience of Cabinet officials and GOP lawmakers. “Our proposal is pro-American, pro-immigrant and pro-worker. It’s just common sense.”
The president’s bid to sketch out a vision that could appeal beyond his conservative base represented a potentially risky shift at a time when he is eyeing a tough reelection campaign in which he believes immigration will play a major role.
Speaking at the White House, Trump on Thursday said that his plan aims to create a “fair, modern and lawful system of immigration for the US”, Xinhua news agency reported.
“The biggest change we make is to increase the proportion of highly skilled immigration from 12 per cent to 57 per cent, and we’d like to even see if we can go higher,” Trump said. “This will bring us in line with other countries and make us globally competitive.”
“We cherish the open door that we want to create for our country. But a big proportion of those immigrants must come in through merit and skill,” said the president, noting that immigrants, under the plan, will also be “required to learn English and to pass a civics exam prior to admission.”
According to the White House, the proposal would tighten family-based migration to focus on allowing nuclear families who migrate to the US, rather than extended family members.
The effort, championed by Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, also focuses on beefing up border security. Trump has claimed that the nation is being overrun by migrants and asylum seekers and sought to build a wall along the southern border with Mexico by declaring a national emergency so as to bypass Congress and unlock billions of US dollars in funding.
The new White House proposal does not change the net level of green cards allocated each year, but rather prioritizes high-skilled workers over those with family members who are U.S. citizens. It would allow applicants to rack up eligibility based on factors such as age, ability to speak English, job offers and educational background under what Trump called a new “Build America” visa.
But the proposal also sidesteps some major components of the nation’s immigration system that can be far more complex and controversial to resolve, such as the fate of the estimated 11 million immigrants without legal status and visas for temporary, low-skilled workers — issues that have divided the Republican Party and pit the business community against labor unions.
In response to US President Donald Trump announced his “merit based” immigration proposal, Democrat Senator Kamala Harris invoked her unique background as a presidential candidate — being the daughter of an Indian immigrant.
“I found the announcement today to be shortsighted,” CNN quoted Harris as saying on Thursday before an Asian American audience in Las Vegas.
On the plan’s intention to award immigrants certain points based on education or skills, Harris said: “We cannot allow people to start parsing and pointing fingers and creating hierarchies among immigrants.
“The beauty of the tradition of our country has been to say, when you walk through the door, you are equal. We spoke those words in 1776, ‘we are all equal’ and should be treated that way. Not, oh well, if you come from this place, you might only have a certain number of points, and if you come from that place you might have a different number of points.”
Asians have historically immigrated as family units, Harris added.
“It is, and has always been, about family. And that was completely overlooked, and I would suggest, denied, in the way the policy was outlined today.”
At the event hosted by an Asian American group, One APIA Nevada, Harris dove into her barrier-breaking election to the US Senate as the first South Asian to serve in the body’s history. She acknowledged her presidential run as a biracial woman helping to shatter notions about being black, Asian and a woman.
In her campaign stump speech, Harris always includes stories about how her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, impacted every aspect of her life. And while she has spoken about visits to India during her book tour, Harris on the trail has leaned far more into the African American identity her mother raised her to embrace.
An audience member asked Harris if she would consider wearing a traditional Indian saree to her inauguration.
“Let’s first win,” Harris responded. “My mother raised us with a very strong appreciation for our cultural background and pride. Celebrations that we all participate in regardless of how our last name is spelled. It’s the beauty of who we are as a nation.” (IANS)
National carrier Air India, which had commenced direct services from Mumbai to New York’s John F Kennedy airport in December 2018, has decided to discontinue the flights, reportedly owing to poor demand.
AI officials said the Mumbai-New York flight operation was causing losses to the airline. However, the airline will continue to operate direct flights from Mumbai to Newark.
An AI spokesperson said the Mumbai-New York flight, operated thrice a week, was temporarily suspended in February owing to the Pakistan airspace closure and was expected to resume in June.
“However, we won’t be resuming the services. The flight has been discontinued owing to poor load factor or low seat occupancy,” the spokesperson said.
The official said AI has not included the flight in their winter schedule, which usually commences from third week of October up to second week of March in the next year.
Other AI flight operations to the US from Delhi have been witnessing up to 80% seat occupancy.
AI operates Boeing B777-ER aircraft to operate flights to Newark, Washington, Chicago (from Hyderabad via Delhi), San Francisco and New York from Delhi.
The national carrier had planned to commence the direct flight from Mumbai to New York, thrice a week, from October 2018.
However, it had to delay the operations to December owing to fleet crunch.
Meanwhile, the flying time of US-bound flights from Delhi has seen an increase by three hours as they are being re-routed via Mumbai or Ahmedabad. This has led to heavy losses for the airline, said AI officers.
Air India has 16 Boeing B777-ER planes, of which four were grounded because of unavailability of spare parts in October. However, according to AI chairman and managing director (CMD), Ashwani Lohani, all the planes are operational now.
In October, AI had re- launched its other direct Mumbai-Frankfurt flight, which was suspended in 2010.
The blockade on Qatar and withdrawal of 28 weekly between Doha and cities of New Delhi and Mumbai has increased the pressure on available seat capacity in Qatar-India routes, the airline said Thursday.
Qatar Airways, which has sought additional seat capacity on temporary basis for its flights from Indian cities to Doha, has said it will “seriously” consider any proposal for partnership from Indian carriers.
The blockade on Qatar and withdrawal of 28 weekly between Doha and cities of New Delhi and Mumbai has increased the pressure on available seat capacity in Qatar-India routes, the airline said Thursday.
Jet Airways shut down operations temporarily on April 17 after it ran out of cash.
“Qatar Airways is always open for partnership with other airlines, including Indian carriers. We will seriously consider any proposal for partnership from Indian carriers,” the airline said in a statement to PTI.
The Gulf carrier has submitted a formal request to the Indian authorities for an additional capacity on a temporary operating permit basis to meet the air traffic demand in Qatar-India routes.
The airline asked the civil aviation ministry to favourably consider its request for additional seat capacity “to help evacuate the stranded Indian passengers in Doha”.
Airfares have already significantly increased due to the unexpected unavailability of restricted capacity during this summer peak season, it added.
The allocated seat capacity in the Qatar-India aviation market has not been increased since 2009. Bilateral air traffic rights are negotiated between the two countries.
According to the airline, the “illegal blockade” imposed on Qatar in June 2017 by the UAE, Saudi, Bahrain, and Egypt has restricted the movement of not only Qataris but also Indian expats living in Qatar.
People do not have the flexibility of travelling to nearby airports in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, and Manama, for their travel to India. This has reduced their options for air connectivity and further increased the pressure on the available seat capacity in Qatar-India routes, the statement said.
“Salt in the wound – Jet Airways’ sudden, unexpected, unplanned, and immediate withdrawal of 28 weekly passenger flights during summer peak season between Doha and two Indian cities: New Delhi and Mumbai.
“All these have resulted not only in lesser available seat capacity but also significantly higher air ticket fares, which is set to continue for at least another three months,” the airline said. Qatar Airways flies to 13 Indian cities. It has 14 weekly flights to the national capital and 11 weekly flights to Kochi, among other cities.
A Silicon Valley-based IT company has filed a lawsuit against the US government for denying the most sought-after H-1B visa to a highly qualified Indian professional, terming the renunciation “arbitrary” and a “clear abuse of discretion”.
Xterra Solutions alleged in its lawsuit that the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) improperly denied H-1B visa to Praharsh Chandra Sai Venkata Anisetty, 28, whom it had hired as a Business System Analyst.
The company’s H-1B petition on behalf of Mr Anisetty was denied on the sole ground that the job offered to him did not qualify as an H-1B specialty occupation, the lawsuit said. “The denial is not supported by substantial evidence in the record, is contrary to established legal precedent, and is arbitrary, capricious and constitutes a clear abuse of discretion,” the company alleged and urged the Northern District of California US District Court to set aside the USCIS order.
The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. The technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.
The most sought-after visa has an annual numerical limit cap of 65,000 visas each fiscal year as mandated by the US Congress. The first 20,000 petitions filed on behalf of beneficiaries with a US masters degree or higher are exempt from the cap.
Mr Anisetty holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering (Electronics and Communication Engineering) as well as a Master’s of Science degree in Information Technology and Management from the University of Texas at Dallas. He currently holds valid H-4 dependent status through his wife, the principal beneficiary of an H-1B application.
The Indian embassy in Washington issued an advisory urging students hoping to study in the United States to go beyond the usual checks to ensure they were not applying to “fake” universities that law enforcement agencies here have set up in the past to “trap” immigration frauds suspects.
The Indian embassy in Washington issued an advisory Wednesday urging students hoping to study in the United States to go beyond the usual checks to ensure they were not applying to “fake” universities that law enforcement agencies here have set up in the past to “trap” immigration frauds suspects.
“In order to ensure that Indian students do not fall into such “traps”, it is advised that due diligence be exercised while seeking admission in US Universities,” said the embassy advisory.
“The fact that a University is duly accredited by relevant US authorities such as its inclusion in the Student and Exchange Visitor Programme (SEVIS), is not an assurance in itself about the bonafides of a University”.
The alert comes in the wake of, and the the advisory mentions them, US authorities apprehending hundred of Indian students enrolled at Farmington University in Michigan, a “fake” university set up by immigration enforcement agencies to ensnare recruiters and students in what was described as a “pay-to-stay” scheme. People enroll only to either stay in the US or extend their stay without any intention of studying, US enforcement agencies have alleged.
The other such institution was University of Northern New Jersey, which was used for the same purpose.
Indian students enrolled in these universities were apprehended and many were deported. They later claimed that they had taken these universities for real, paid their fees and had every intention to study.
“In order to ensure that Indian students do not fall into such “traps”, it is advised that due diligence be exercised while seeking admission in US Universities,” the embassy said.
The mission issued a checklist of steps students could take to ensure they were not duped.
Check if the university function from a campus or merely maintains a website and has administrative premises only? Does it have a faculty and regular instructors/educators? Does it have a a proper curriculum, hold regular classes and actively implement academic or educational activity?
Jet Airways, facing its worst existential crisis in its over 25-year-old history, Friday extended suspension of its international operations till next Monday due to severe liquidity issues.
Incidentally, the stake sale bid invited by the SBI-led consortium of bankers, which manages the day-to-day operations of the airline, also closes by the end of the day Friday, after being extended by two days.
Airline founder Naresh Goyal, the UAE carrier Etihad Airways, Air Canada and the country’s national investment fund among others are reported to have submitted bids, according to media reports.
On Thursday, the airline had announced temporary grounding of its international operations – Jet was the largest international airline from the country till the financial crisis – when it had also suspended operations to the entire Eastern and Northeastern markets as Jet was forced to ground 10 more aircraft following default of lease rentals.
This has left Jet with no large aircraft while it had just 14 planes for domestic operations as of late Thursday. “Jet has decided to extend suspension of its international operations till Monday, due to severe cash crunch,” airline sources told PTI Friday.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) called an urgent meeting to discuss the crisis that Jet Airways, which is facing acute financial woes, is undergoing, news agency PTI reported.
Saying that the airline was working to minimise guest inconvenience, a Jet Airways spokesperson said, “…The airline’s management and its key stakeholders including its consortium of lenders, continue to work closely towards resolving the current situation.”
Jet was the largest domestic carrier operating in the international sector with a hub in Amsterdam, where a cargo agent had taken possession of an aircraft this on Tuesday demanding bill payment. This led to the cancellation of the Amsterdam-Mumbai flight that day.
Thursday Jet flights to London, Amsterdam and Paris from Mumbai, New Delhi and Bengaluru scheduled were cancelled for operational reasons,” Je had said, adding it had also cancelled the Bengaluru-Amsterdam-Bengaluru flight Friday.
On the domestic front, all Jet operations to and from the Eastern and Northeastern states were suspended till further notice. Following this, there would no Jet flights to and from Kolkata, Patna, Guwahati and other airports in the region, travel industry source had told PTI.
Jet had also said its Mumbai-Kolkata, Kolkata-Guwahati and Dehradun-Guwahati-Kolkata flights stood cancelled till further notice due to “operational reasons.”As of Thursday, the airline had just 14 planes–way down from 123 planes in operations till a few months back.
Of the 14 aircraft that it operated till Thursday evening, eight were wide-body B777s (seven) and an A330– generally used for long-haul international operations.
The remaining six planes were, three B737s, which are largely used for flying on domestic routes besides on short- haul international destinations and the rest three are regional ATRs.
With just 14 aircraft left for operations, aviation secretary Pradeep Singh Kharola had told PTI that the ministry was awaiting a report from the DGCA to decide whether Jet can continue to fly on international routes.
The government rules stipulate an airline must have at least 20 planes for operating international operations. The developments came as banks refused to release the promised additional loan of ₹1,500 crore and original promoter Naresh Goyal pledged 26% of his holding in Jet Airways with Punjab National Bank. This is to borrow money from the bank to continue operations of the airline.
It could not be immediately ascertained how much money was sanctioned against the share pledge. Jet Airways on Thursday informed stock exchanges about the pledge.
The airline cancelled three domestic flights for Friday. These include Mumbai-Kolkata, Kolkata-Guwahati and Dehradun-Kolkata via Guwahati. “Guests have been informed and refunds are being processed,” an airline spokesperson said.
The NYC “Defense of Democracy” rally brought together the rich diversity of the Indian Diaspora in the United States – scientists and engineers, service workers and computer professionals, artists and doctors, Hindus, Sikhs, Dalits and Muslims, policymakers, activists, left and liberal intellectuals and community leaders.
Commenting on the lynchings and targeted attacks on Muslims and Dalits that have increased exponentially since the coming to power of Narendra Modi in 2014, Sarah Anderson-Rajarigam of Dalit Solidarity Forum, one of the co-sponsors of the rally said, “Dalit Solidarity Forum deplores the heavy targeting of Dalits and other marginalized communities. We unite our voices with Dalits and other minorities in their fight for freedom and support them in their efforts to uphold the constitution”. Out of all the mob-lynching incidents by so-called ‘cow-protection’ mobs since 2010, 97% have taken place between 2014 and 2018.
Coalition for the Defense of the Constitution and Democracy (CDCD) have in their press release have stated that the BJP government has responsible for systematic erosion and weakening of democratic values and institutions. It has been attacking and weakening constitutional bodies such as the Election Commission, Supreme Court, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
The CBI and Income Tax department have also been used to intimidate media organizations critical of the BJP government.
Sunita Viswanath of Sadhana: Coalition of Progressive Hindus, said, “We are Americans of Hindu faith, many of us Indian, who stand opposed to the ideology of Hindutva and the atrocities against minorities and dissenters being committed in the name of Hinduism. We stand with all the people of India who are calling for an end to this regime that threatens democracy, disregards the dignity and safety of minorities, and has declared war on the poor.”
The BJP has significantly increased corruption and corporate plunder. To distract people from its record of failed governance, the BJP has increased war mongering and is busy dividing the people along communal lines. When Muslims, Dalits, and the Left have resisted or spoken up against the injustice, they have either been imprisoned using draconian laws such as Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Adivasi (indigenous) people and landless laborers, who have been fighting for land and forest rights, have been arrested and harassed. Workers, who have been struggling against the government’s increased privatization and casualization of work, have been fired or put in prison. With the emboldening of patriarchal forces, in many instances, the attacks on women’s rights and safety have been led by BJP ministers and leaders.
Mohammad Jawad, National General Secretary of Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), speaking on why IAMC has joined the rally said, “The people of India will eventually recognize the divisive and hatred the current BJP/RSS government is spreading and will unite to preserve our constitution and defeat this government.”
The protestors at the Defense of Democracy rally held placards and shouted slogans such as:
· Ensure Free and Fair Elections! Election Commission must guarantee election free of violence, intimidation, and rigging
· Stop the witch-hunt! Release all UAPA arrestees and drop all charges
· Stop the lynchings of Dalits and Muslims! Arrest and prosecute the perpetrators
· Stop culture of fear! End the attacks and intimidation of activists, artists, workers and women
The demonstration was held in front of the Indian consulate, New York.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) today announced additional guidance regarding the adjudication of spousal petitions involving minors, following up on the agency’s February update to its policy.
The guidance, published as an update to the USCIS Adjudicator’s Field Manual (AFM), instructs officers to conduct an additional interview for certain I-130 spousal petitions involving a minor. Generally, the bona fides of the spousal relationship are assessed in person by USCIS when the alien spouse applies to adjust status, or by the Department of State when the alien spouse applies for an immigrant visa. However, I-130 spousal petitions involving a minor party warrant special consideration due to the vulnerabilities associated with marriage involving a minor. As such, USCIS is modifying its policy to require in-person interviews at this earlier stage for certain I-130 petitions involving minor spouses.
“As part of our continued efforts to strengthen guidance for spousal petitions involving minors, we have instructed USCIS officers to conduct an additional in-person interview earlier in the immigration process for certain petitions that warrant additional scrutiny,” said USCIS Director L. Francis Cissna. “While USCIS has taken action to the maximum extent possible to detect and closely examine spousal petitions involving a minor spouse, Congress should address this issue by providing more clarity under the law for USCIS officers.”
Interviewing earlier at the I-130 petition stage provides USCIS with an additional opportunity to verify information contained in the petition and assess the bona fides of the claimed spousal relationship. USCIS officers will now conduct interviews for the following I-130 spousal petitions as part of the adjudication of any I-130 spousal petition where:
The petitioner or the beneficiary is less than 16 years old; or
The petitioner or the beneficiary is 16 or 17 years old and there are 10 years or more difference between the ages of the spouses.
While there are no statutory age requirements to petition for a spouse or be sponsored as a spousal beneficiary, USCIS published guidance earlier this year detailing factors that officers should consider when evaluating I-130 spousal petitions involving a minor. USCIS considers whether the age of the beneficiary or petitioner at the time the marriage was celebrated violates the law of the place of celebration. Officers also consider whether the marriage is recognized as valid in the U.S. state where the couple currently resides or will presumably reside and does not violate the state’s public policy. In some U.S. states and in some foreign countries, marriage involving a minor might be permitted under certain circumstances, including where there is parental consent, a judicial order, emancipation of the minor, or pregnancy of the minor.
In addition, per regulation, USCIS may use its discretion to issue a request for evidence (RFE) where appropriate. As with any benefit, the burden is generally on the petitioner to demonstrate the validity of their petition and the bona fides of their spousal relationship.
These AFM updates are part of USCIS’ continuing efforts to ensure that our policies and processes remain current and are compliant with existing immigration law. USCIS also created a flagging system that sends an alert in an electronic system at the time of filing if a minor spouse or fiancé is detected. After the initial flag, the petition is sent to a special unit that verifies that the age and relationship listed are correct before the petition is accepted. If the age or classification on the petition is incorrect, the petition will be returned to the petitioner for correction.
For more information on USCIS and our programs, please visit uscis.gov or follow us on Twitter (@uscis), Instagram (/uscis), YouTube (/uscis), Facebook (/uscis), and Linkedin (/uscis).
The New York State Senate unanimously voted to pass Senate Bill 4037, which prohibits New York employers from discriminating against employees due to their religious attire, including grooming observations, last week.
Senate Bill 4037 makes it very clear that employers have an obligation to provide reasonable accommodations for religious attire and grooming practices, such as the Sikh turban and unshorn hair. This critical piece of legislation was inspired by the Sikh Coalition’s advocacy efforts in 2011 and successful multi-year settlement against the New York City Metro Transit Authority (MTA) for discriminating against Sikh employees who were previously denied the right to wear religious head coverings in full public view.
“New York has sent a clear message to their employers that respecting and protecting our religious rights in the workplace matters,” said Sikh Coalition Policy and Advocacy Manager, Nikki Singh. “We thank New York legislators for working with organizations like the Sikh Coalition to make sure this new law passed.”
In early April, the Sikh Coalition launched an online petition campaignacross New York to mobilize Sikh community members to write their elected officials in support of the bill. On April 8th, the Sikh Coalition also mobilized 14 New York gurdwaras (Sikh houses of worship) and 22 civil rights organizations to sign onto letters supporting the legislation. On April 9th, the Sikh Coalition joined a rally in Albany, New York in support of the legislation.
“No Sikh should ever have to make the unthinkable choice between their faith and career,” said Ms. Singh. “This legislation will have an immediate impact for Sikhs who have been turned away from employment in New York, and it further paves the way for every Sikh across the state to know that their faith should never impede the career they want to pursue.”
For over 17 years, the Sikh Coalition has been fighting to end employment discrimination in the United States. This work has included successfully litigating high-impact employment discrimination cases against local and federal government agencies, major Sikh-populated industries, Fortune 500 companies and the U.S. Army. If you or someone you know has experienced discrimination in the workplace, please contact the Sikh Coalition’s legal team for a free and confidential consultation. The Sikh Coalition continues to handle an average of over 200 free legal aid cases per year, including many employment discrimination cases.
Additionally, the Sikh Coalition has led grassroots efforts to pass landmark employment discrimination laws in California in 2012. In 2011, the Sikh Coalition also initiated and secured the passage of New York City’s “Workplace Religious Freedom Act,” which significantly enhanced religion-based protections for employees working in New York City.
“We thank every New York Sikh community member that has taken action in support of this legislation, including 14 New York gurdwaras,” said Ms. Singh. “When we mobilize, the Sikh voice has the power to create change that positively impacts the lives of millions.”
The Sikh Coalition also thanks New York State Senator John Liu (D-11th District), the eleven co-sponsors of Senate Bill 4037, along with the tireless efforts of New York State Representative, David Weprin (D-24th District) for bringing this legislation to fruition.
The US grants 65,000 cap-subjected H-1B work visas to foreign workers hired abroad every year and 20,000 to foreigners in US institutions of higher education.
The H-1B visa program for high-skilled foreigners, which has been subjected to prohibitive scrutiny by the Trump administration, has earned the US $4.9 billion in employer-paid fees since 1999, which paid for more than 90,000 college scholarships and training, according to a new study.
These collections are from the $1,500 processing fee that the government charges employers for every new H-1B or a renewal, the National Foundation for American Policy, a non-partisan think tank, says in the report, and adds that the total rises to $7 billion, by adding $500 in anti-fraud fees.
The US grants 65,000 cap-subjected H-1B work visas to foreign workers hired abroad every year and 20,000 to foreigners in US institutions of higher education. More than 70% of these visas have gone to Indians, hired by US companies such as Google and Facebook, and Indian firms such as TCS and Infosys.
The application process for 2020, which comes with changes, started on Monday and will typically end in a few days given the demand. More than 190,000 applications were received by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that runs the programme, in 2018 (for 2019), and 199,000 in 2017.
“Few people realize that fees for each new H-1B visa holder fund scholarships and job training for Americans,” said Stuart Anderson, a former immigration services official and executive director of the think tank that released its report on Monday.
The report argued that the role of employer-paid H-1B fees has received scant or no attention in the policy debate around immigration so far. “People on all sides of the immigration debate agree that it is beneficial to train and educate more Americans in STEM fields, yet policymakers rarely note that every company-sponsored H-1B petition provides money for training and STEM education,” it said.
This side of the H-1B visas has indeed received no attention. The focus has been on American workers displaced by outsourcing. And the Trump administration has initiated a series of measures to check abuse and fraud of the programme in line with its “Buy American, Hire American” policies.
Since 1999, H-1B fees paid by employers have been used to educate and train Americans in technology-related fields. And based on data obtained from the National Science Foundation, the US department of labour and the USCIS, the report said approximately 87,890 college students enrolled in mathematics, engineering and computer science courses were granted scholarships ranging from one to four years and of up $10,000 a year.
Money from the collections also funded training of more than 1.5 million school students and teachers in STEM-related fields, and an estimated $2.5 billion of the total collections was used by the department of labor to train US workers.
“The H-1B fees have benefited American students and encouraged through teaching and financial support many individuals to enter science and engineering fields,” said the report.
Penguin behavior
