As part of every Green Card (immigrant visa) petition foreign nationals must demonstrate they will be able to support themselves and not become “public charges.” Additionally, every time foreign nationals seek admission to the US, they must demonstrate that will not become “public charges.” A “public charge” is someone the United States believes is primarily dependent on the federal government to subsist. On September 22, 2018, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released an advance copy of the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) related to the public charge ground of inadmissibility.
Read moreBloomberg Businessweek: “Trump Booted Foreign Startup Founders. Other Countries Embraced Them”
As the Trump administration sought to end the International Entrepreneur Rule created by the Obama administration for immigrant entrepreneurs and has made obtaining H-1B visas more difficult, other countries have sought to attract tech talent and entrepreneurs. Although immigrants and children of immigrants have played critical roles in many of Silicon Valley’s top companies—including Google, Tesla, eBay, Stripe, Apple, Oracle, and Amazon—immigrants are now being drawn to visa programs with a range of perks in such countries as the UK, China, Japan, Israel, Germany, Estonia, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. “The fight over tech talent is not something that is coming in the future. It’s happening right now,” Kate Mitchell, founder of Scale Venture Partners in Foster City, California, tells Bloomberg. “And we are losing.”
Read moreIndigenous Communities
Trevi Fountain
The Trevi Fountain (Fontana di Trevi) is one of the most iconic sights in Rome. This fountain, a late Baroque masterpiece, was designed by Nicola Salvi and completed by Giuseppe Pannini in 1762. The fountain stands about eighty-five feet high and is approximately 160 feet wide. At the center is Pietro Bracci’s statue of Oceanus standing on a chariot pulled by sea horses and accompanied by tritons, similar to how I get around Rome (okay, I wish). While apparently splashing around in the fountain like Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita is frowned upon, visitors are allowed to toss coins in, since according to legend, those who toss coins into its waters will return to Rome. But don’t worry, at the end of each day the coins are collected and donated to charity.
The Essence of Patriotism
Somos 11 Millones/We Are 11 Million
Somos 11 Millones/We Are 11 Million by Andrea Bowers (with Movimiento Cosecha)
Los Angeles-based artist Andrea Bowers uses video, drawing, and installation pieces to combine art and activism in the struggle for social justice. For this piece on the High Line, Bowers collaborated with the immigrant rights activist group Movimiento Cosecha to write a slogan in support of DREAMers. The neon sign reading “Somos 11 Millones / We Are 11 Million” references the number of undocumented immigrants in the US. The piece is part of a group exhibition on the High Line that looks at the “power of art to change society, the role of art in public space, and whether art can be a form of protest.”
Bloomberg Law: “Proposal to Undo Guestworker Spouse Work Permits Coming Soon”
A proposed rule to reverse an Obama administration regulation granting employment authorization to the spouses of certain H-1B workers is expected to proceed within the next three months. The 2015 regulation provides work authorization to the spouses of certain H-1B workers who are seeking employment-based lawful permanent resident status. Bloomberg Law says that more than 90,000 work cards have been issued, the majority of them granted to women from India.
Read morePolitico: “The Man Behind Trump’s ‘Invisible Wall’”
Lee Francis Cissna is the multilingual son of a Peruvian immigrant and son-in-law of a refugee from Palestine. He is also the Director of US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS), and has overseen some of the Trump administration’s toughest immigration policy changes. Politico interviewed a selection of Cissna’s current and former co-workers, classmates, and friends, in order to obtain a better understanding of the man involved with many of the harsh Trump administration policy changes, including the recent “zero-tolerance” policy which resulted in thousands of family separations. “We’re pretty stunned that a guy who is compassionate, funny, proud of his immigrant mother from Latin America, that he would now be one of the key architects of the seemingly heartless policy of separating families,” Dan Manatt, a documentary filmmaker and former classmate of Cissna’s at Georgetown Law School, tells Politico.
Read moreInconsistent Government Action
Adorn Me
Tanda Francis, a Brooklyn-based artist who incorporates Victorian and colonial ornamentation into her work, is known for focusing on monumental African female heads and masks and ancient customs and rituals. Adorn Me, an impressive sculpture in Fort Greene Park, is inspired by African sculptural tradition, including Ife portraiture, and is meant to address the under-representation of positive images of and by people of African descent in public artworks and also “provide a healing message during a time of heated debate over monuments erected as symbols of oppression and control.” The sculpture will be in Fort Greene Park through August 17, 2019.