BuzzFeed: “Senators Propose Bipartisan Bill To Protect ‘DREAMers’”

A bipartisan bill to protect “DREAMers”—who were granted temporary protection against deportation under President Obama’s executive actions—was introduced this past Friday by Senators Lindsey Graham and Dick Durbin. The bill, called the BRIDGE Act, would effectively extend DACA protections for more than 740,000 young immigrants who have already taken advantage of the program by providing “provisional protected presence” for three years if applicants register with the government, pay the required processing fee, and pass a criminal background check. The senators introduced the bill in response to President-Elect Donald Trump’s campaign promise to end the DACA program, although after the election he has made conflicting comments about what actions, if any, he will take. 

In a post-election interview with Time, President-Elect Trump said regarding DREAMers: “We’re going to work something out that’s going to make people happy and proud…They got brought here at a very young age, they’ve worked here, they’ve gone to school here. Some were good students. Some have wonderful jobs. And they’re in never-never land because they don’t know what’s going to happen.” In statements on Twitter, Senator Graham calls the original DACA order enacted by President Obama “unconstitutional” and says that President-Elect Trump would be right to repeal it but that nevertheless Senator Graham says he does not "believe that we should pull the rug out and push these young men and women—who came out of the shadows and registered with the federal government—back into the darkness…These young people have much to offer the country and we stand to benefit from the many contributions they will make to America.” 

While the bill will need to be re-introduced next year to the new Congress, Senator Durbin tells reporters they didn’t want to wait. “There’s so much interest in this issue and so much anxiety over this situation,” he says. “We want to move to make this public. I can’t go anywhere without someone raising this issue.” Durbin says that they’re encouraged by Trump’s recent favorable comments on DACA and says that both Republican and Democratic legislators will support the BRIDGE Act. “Generally speaking most Republicans, even though they are reluctant to come to the floor and make a speech, feel it’s only fair…even if they have strong feelings against other parts of comprehensive immigration,” he tells BuzzFeed. “This is a very difficult group—once you meet them—to oppose.”

“Here’s what you’ve got to ask Republicans and Democrats: What do you do with these kids?” Senator Graham tells reporters. “Now, I’m not going to be part of a Republican Party that will take 700,000-plus young people who’ve done nothing on their own—they came here as small kids, they lived their life in America, they have no place else to go—and just ruin their lives.”

Many US mayors have also voiced support for DREAMers. In a letter signed by Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago, and mayors of other cities including New York, Los Angeles, and Houston, Trump was warned of the economic harm that would come from canceling DACA. “This program helps foster economic growth and enhances public safety and national security," the letter states, and claims that as much as $9.9 billion in tax revenue would be lost over four years and $433.4 billion in US gross domestic product would be wiped out over ten years if he cancels the DACA program.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) also praises the BRIDGE Act legislation, even though AILA notes it does not provide a solution for many undocumented families and other individuals who have lived and worked in the US for many years. “Keeping DACA going is not only the right thing to do, it is smart business,” AILA Executive Director Benjamin Johnson states. “The BRIDGE Act would offer protection to DREAMers for three years, during which time we hope that Congress will move forward on what is really necessary: smart, effective, and humane immigration reform.”

The Guardian: “Qatar wins approval to turn US embassy in London into hotel”

US Embassy London. Photo by CGP Grey.

US Embassy London. Photo by CGP Grey.

The US Embassy in London will be turned into a luxury hotel after the Qatari royal family’s property company has won approval from Westminster council. In 2009, the US State Department agreed to sell this historic building—topped by a gilded bald eagle with a wingspan of more than 36 feet and designed by the Finnish-American modernist Eero Saarinen—to Qatari Diar to fund the construction of the new US Embassy in Nine Elms south of the Thames. The current Embassy (soon-to-be-hotel) is located in pricey Grosvenor Square, which has housed the US Embassy since 1938, where during World War II the square was known as Little America as General Eisenhower’s headquarters and other US operations were based there. The nine floors (three underground) of the building—valued at £500m—will include up to 137 hotel rooms, shops, restaurants, and bars.

The Embassy’s move to the new location from Grosvenor Square is a relief to many neighbors and local residents who have protested against the current Embassy’s location because of safety and security concerns. The site historically has been a place for demonstrations and protests over the years, including famously in March 1968, when 10,000 demonstrators protested the Vietnam war, leading to 200 arrests and fifty people treated in the hospital, and, recently, protests against the election of Donald Trump.

The new Embassy, however, opening near Battersea power station in South London is facing construction delays. Originally scheduled to finish in late 2016 during President Obama’s term, the Embassy will not open until after Trump is inaugurated in January. Heightened security checks on workers and materials have delayed the eleven-story cube-shaped building, an anonymous source tells Bloomberg. A spokeswoman for the US Embassy tells Bloomberg via email that these are standard construction delays, and that the project budget includes such a contingency. The Embassy is now scheduled to be completed in the spring of 2017.

In other State Department news, a counterfeit US Embassy was shut down in Ghana after having operated for ten years. The Embassy, with an American flag and photograph of President Obama, was operated by figures in Ghanaian and Turkish organized crime rings as well as a local attorney. It allegedly issued visas, some of them were genuine, as well as false identification documents for a cost of $6,000. Embassy officials, together with Ghanaian police, seized 150 passports from ten countries, including legitimate and counterfeit visas from the US, the Schengen zone, India, and South Africa. A State Department official says that nobody was able to travel to the US on the fake visas.

Mobile Passport Control: All about CBP’s Smartphone App to Expedite Entry into the US

Pretty much everyone agrees that the most time-consuming and least enjoyable part of international travel is being processed through customs and immigration. (Okay, waiting for baggage isn’t much fun either.) In an effort to make the admission process into the US smoother and to manage the growing number of travelers, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has launched Mobile Passport Control (MPC), the first authorized app to expedite a traveler’s entry process into the US. The app is designed to streamline “the traveler inspection process and enables CBP officers to focus more on the inspection and less on administrative functions.” Although we’ve discussed it previously, we thought we’d answer some questions (with CPB’s help) about the app, especially since now we have even used it ourselves!

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Slate: “When Adoption Stories Don’t Have Happy Endings”

Adam Crapser was adopted at age three from South Korea. His first adoptive family in the US “fought viciously and punished the children frequently,” and when Adam was nine, his adoptive parents decided they no longer wanted the children. They placed him in a foster home, separating him from his sister, and Adam ended up in Oregon with new adoptive parents Thomas and Dolly Crapser, who also reportedly abused him. According to Adam, among many other horrific things, Dolly Crapser “slammed the children’s heads against door frames and once hit him in the back of the head with a two-by-four after he woke her up from a nap.”    

Adam was thrown out from the Crapsers’ house when he was sixteen. When he broke into the house to retrieve items he brought from South Korea—a Bible and rubber shoes—he was arrested and spent more than two years in jail. After he was released he got in more trouble, including misdemeanors, assault, and unlawful firearms possession, among others. After he served his time he began to turn his life around, holding down jobs, marrying, and having kids. “I made a lot of mistakes in my life, and I’m not proud of it,” Crapser tells the New York Times. “I’ve learned a lot of lessons the hard way.”

There was, however, a major problem. Crapser wasn’t a US citizen, since neither his adoptive parents nor the adoption agency that brokered his arrival in the US had ever filed for his US citizenship. Citizenship was not automatic for international adoptees until 2001, and then only applied to adoptees born after February 27, 1983. Crapser was finally able to get his adoption paperwork and applied for a Green Card but the case triggered a Department of Homeland Security background investigation, which turned up his old convictions and a criminal record that made him subject to deportation.

Which is why on November 8 this month after spending months in immigration detention he was put on a plane and flown back to South Korea, likely never to return to America. He left behind his wife, children, and friends. Crapser is not the first international adoptee to be deported. Adoptees from all over the world, including Brazil, India, Mexico, Germany, and elsewhere have been returned to their birth countries when it was discovered they were not US citizens and had issues relating to their Green Card applications. The Adoptee Rights Campaign estimates that some 35,000 international adoptees, adopted before 2001, are thought to be without citizenship.

Maureen McCauley Evans, a parent of international adoptees, writes in Slate:

It’s tempting to say that Adam and other adoptees in his situation brought deportation on themselves and their families by committing crimes—certainly many in Congress take that position. But it misses the point. International adoptees were brought to America with the permission and oversight of the United States government. The deal was that they would be welcomed here, to have a brighter future as Americans for the rest of their lives…If we believe adoptees to be genuine members of American families, they do not deserve deportation. If we don’t believe they are genuine family members, then adoption loses its meaning and integrity. What’s more, the US loses its honor and breaks its promise to these legal immigrants adopted by US citizens.

A bill, called the Adoptee Citizenship Act, is designed to provide retroactive citizenship to international adoptees, but it has made slow progress through Congress, and its outcome doesn’t look promising.

Crapser was reunited with his mother in South Korea. The last time she saw him was when she left her three children at an orphanage after her husband left her and she was unable to afford raising the kids. “I missed them, especially when it rained or snowed or when the sky was overcast,” she tells the New York Times. “But the belief they were having a better life somewhere sustained me.” Crapser says: “I was told to be American. And I tried to fit in. I learned every piece of slang. I studied everything I could about American history. I was told to stop crying about my mom, my sister, Korea. I was told to be happy because I was an American.”