▶ 0:17:06committee will come to order. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a recess at any time. I want to welcome everyone to today's hearing on the visa process. Uh we'll begin with opening statements. Uh and we'll begin with mine. Uh in many ways, the 2024 election was a referendum on the Democrats open border policies. For four years, they opened America's borders and deliberately trafficked at least 6 million illegal aliens directly into our communities.
▶ 0:17:35While the border patrol was overwhelmed, arranging lodging, transportation, food, healthcare, and legal services for this massive population, another two million gotaways entered our country as well. The result was devastating to our nation, and it produced one of the greatest political realignments in our nation's history. Americans suffered as their classrooms filled with non-English-speaking students, their hospitals were overwhelmed by illegals demanding care, their food pantries stripped bare, and homeless shelters filled to capacity.
▶ 0:18:06The cost of these services is estimated $160 billion a year, or about $1,250 from the taxes of an average American household annually. More ominously among this population were the most violent criminals, criminal gangs and cartels on the planet. Often shielded by Democrat sanctuary laws and leftist DAs and judges.
▶ 0:18:29The sad, senseless, and entirely preventable tragedies produced by these policies continue to unfold before us on a daily basis. For four years, the Democrats in this Congress and this committee told us this was for our own good. And besides, there wasn't anything we could be do about it anyway short of their demand for widespread amnesty. But the American people knew better. They knew, as President Trump put it, that we didn't need new laws. We needed a new president. And we got one.
▶ 0:18:59And within 30 days, illegal border crossings were cut 96% and traffic across the deadly Darian Gap dropped 99%, saving thousands of lives. Since taking office, roughly 150,000 illegal migrants, many with criminal convictions or charges, have been detained by the Trump administration, is required by law. And the largest illegal mass migration in history is now being redressed by the largest repatriation.
▶ 0:19:27Reportedly, roughly a million illegal migrants have already decided to voluntarily return to their own countries. As a result, we have a long way to go to restore the integrity of our immigration laws. Violent mobs in our cities have repeatedly attacked law enforcement officers carrying out these laws. And Democratic officials have said that the violence will stop once enforcement stops. In other words, if we uh enforce the law as the American people demanded, Democrats will burn our cities to the ground.
▶ 0:19:56Well, we're not going to allow such intimidation to prevail. In the coming months, we will report out of the Judiciary Committee a new version of HR2, which will assure that this deliberate and rampant illegality can never again threaten our nation, our communities, or our people.
▶ 0:20:13The purpose of today's hearing is to determine to what extent our legal immigration system has been exploited, abused, and defrauded, and to recommend measures to asssure that legal immigration to the United States is legitimate, honest, fully vetted, and above board, serving the interests of both the United States and those honest, and law-abiding immigrants who seek to come here legally. America has the most generous legal immigration system in the world.
▶ 0:20:42During fiscal year 2023, the US government issued more than 10.4 million non-immigrant visas, while nearly 1.2 million aliens became lawful permanent residents through the immigrant visa system. We will devote a future hearing to the deliberate subversion of the visa process by the Biden administration when the inspector general publishes one of his forthcoming reports.
▶ 0:21:05Suffice it to say for now that during those four years, the administration sacrificed integrity and security in the screening process and issuing visas, exploiting the discretion and the legal requirement for in-person interviews with a counselor officer. Integrity in the visa process is a matter of national security for our country. Take for instance the case of Muhammad Solomon who perpetrated a depraved anti-semitic terrorist attack in Boulder, Colorado earlier this month.
▶ 0:21:33Solomon had previously been denied a visa on at least one occasion, but was issued a visitor visa in 2022. One month after his arrival in the United States, Solomon filed an asylum application. Such action clearly showed that he never intended to leave the US once here as required by his tourist visa. Subsequent statements by his family members have validated that assertion.
▶ 0:21:56Cases like this demonstrate why it is imperative that State Department and Department of Homeland Security employees who adjudicate visas have as much information as possible about the applicants. Some of that information is supplied by the alien during the application process while other information is available through the US government inter agency screening and vetting process.
▶ 0:22:18But as we have heard in previous testimony about illegal alien border crossers, if an alien has no criminal or other security related record, it's uh like they're quote being vetted against a blank sheet of paper, as one witness to told this subcommittee last year. The same is true of aliens seeking visas. Uh and there can be no substitute for looking virtually every applicant in the eye and questioning their motives, intent, and plans.
▶ 0:22:46Once again, President Trump has taken decisive action to improve screening and vetting of visa applicants. On inauguration day, he directed relevant agencies to identify deficiencies in the visa process and the resources available to allow for maximum vetting of visa applicants. Pursuant to that executive order, the administration has identified 19 countries that were uncooperative or deficient in providing background information on applicants and the president accordingly restricted issuance of visas to their nationals.
▶ 0:23:17Non-immigrant visa categories that are rife with fraud and abuse include the student visa program where fake schools are set up for the sole purpose of facilitating fraudulent claims of student status. The U visa is offered to those who are victims or witnesses to crimes and offer a path to US citizenship. It should be no surprise that criminal rings have been uncovered that stage phony crimes and take advantage of this process.
▶ 0:23:43Fraud and lacks vetting and the visa process do not exist solely in the non-immigrant visa context. The immigrant visa process is also routinely abused and exploited. Take for example the diversity visa program known as the visa lottery. Not only do bad actors impersonate US government officials to try to get diversity uh applicants to pay them money, but fake documents and sham marriages have become commonplace.
▶ 0:24:10The special immigrant juvenile program is also susceptible to fraud and misuse, allowing 20-year-old foreign nationals to falsely claim abuse by a parent and be allowed to remain in the US nearly indefinitely. And the VAWA self-etition process conducted in secret without the knowledge of the US citizen spouse has also been subject to fraud as well.
▶ 0:24:32As this administration closes this dangerous chapter of outright illegal immigration under Biden, we must also protect our legal channels from fraud and abuse. That's the purpose of today's hearing, and we look to our witnesses for their guidance and suggestions on doing so. And with that, I now yield to the ranking member for her opening statement. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
▶ 0:24:53In my two and a half years as ranking member of the immigration subcommittee, I believe that this is the first hearing that the majority has held that is not focused on undocumented immigrants. I'm glad the majority realizes that there is an entire legal immigration system to discuss, a system that has not been updated in 35 years. We need a modernized system that meets our 21st century needs while also protecting American workers.
▶ 0:25:20Many of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle love to say that they support legal immigration and people coming in in quote the right way. Well, this is their chance. Unfortunately, just over 150 days into the second Trump administration, the Trump administration has been making it exceedingly clear that it opposes all immigration, including legal immigration.
▶ 0:25:42Across the country, we have seen students picked up by masked immigration agents in unmarked cars, taken to detention facilities with no warning, and given limited information as to why they are being deported.
▶ 0:25:56The administration has revoked thousands of student visas as a weapon to stifle political disscent, restrict due process, and enforce an exclusionary and nivist vision of America that runs counter to everything our institutions of higher learning stand for. And just last week, video of masked ICE agents violently beating the father of three US Marines has absolutely shocked the conscience of Americans across the political spectrum.
▶ 0:26:27The administration's actions to close off legal pathways will actually hurt America's ability to innovate and attract the talent we need. And make no mistake, they are not about national security. And we know this because just last month, Secretary of State Rubio announced plans to quote aggressively revoke student visas of Chinese students, all in the name of national security.
▶ 0:26:50And yet, just two weeks later, President Trump, in announcing a so-called trade deal with China, said Chinese students would still be able to attend universities in the United States, even noting, quote, "It has always been good with me." After a pause, the United States has resumed interviews for FJ and M visas, but added new screening of the applicants social media. These visas cover more than just students.
▶ 0:27:14They apply to physicians, university researchers, and alairs, many of whom come to work for military families and others. And then earlier this month, President Trump issued a proclamation restricting or limiting the entry of nationals from 19 countries. In total, the 19 countries subject to these discriminatory bans have a combined population of over 475 million people.
▶ 0:27:38According to State Department data, the proclamation has the potential to block at least 34,000 green cards from being issued and over non-immigrant visas from being issued every single year. Recent reporting also tells us that the Trump administration is considering adding an additional 36 countries to that list, 25 of which are from Africa.
▶ 0:28:02These countries may be subjected to partial or even full travel bans if they do not meet certain benchmarks over the next two months. And alarmingly, it appears that the Trump administration is attempting to coersse some of these countries into signing third-country removal agreements to keep themselves off the ban list. The Trump administration has also stripped hundreds of thousands of individuals of their lawful parole or temporary protected status.
▶ 0:28:30Many of these people came lawfully from Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba, and Venezuela or fled these cruel regimes. Now, the Trump administration is actually making them undocumented and trying to send them back to their home countries where they may be abused or tortured. Now, it's not just African, Asian, or Latin American countries.
▶ 0:28:51Every day, it seems we hear a new horror story of Customs and Border Protection stopping and detaining someone at an air or land port who is from Canada or Europe. And often they then wrongly send those people to ICE detention for weeks.
▶ 0:29:08This includes a German national on a fiance visa who spent over two weeks in an ICE detention center because he and uh his US citizen spouse simply took a day trip to Mexico or at the Canadian border. A backpacker from Wales spent nearly three weeks at a detention center over confusion related to her visa before being allowed to fly home at her own expense.
▶ 0:29:32A Canadian woman on a work visa detained at the Tijana border who spent 12 days in detention before finally being able to return home. And here's the kicker. A prime motivation of these detentions appears to be to overfill detention beds at private detention facilities that are run by for-profit corporations that bankroll Republican campaigns.
▶ 0:29:55These for-profit facilities are rife with abuse because they're actually incentivized to cut corners so that they can reap enormous profits all paid for by the American taxpayer. The path forward for America is a legal immigration system that is modernized, fair, and adequate to meet the needs of our families and our economy.
▶ 0:30:18Attacking legal immigration, student visas, workers with valid visas, even sweeping up US citizens, that's not just morally wrong, it makes absolutely no sense. Making America less welcoming as a nation is already having a real impact. The United States will lose out billion dollar in tourism alone this year.
▶ 0:30:42Students and top scientists and researchers don't want to come to a country that suppresses their free speech rights or discriminates against them for what their home repressive governments do. That should not be what America is. I look forward to hearing from all our witnesses today and I yield back. Gentle lady yields back. I now recognize the ranking member of the full committee, Mr. Raskin, for an opening statement. Mr. Chairman, thank you very kindly. Um, and thank you to all the witnesses for being with us today.
▶ 0:31:12There there is more to immigration than border enforcement, as the ranking member of the subcommittee just said, and it's a good thing that our friends are waking up to that. President Trump and Steven Miller's ambition to deport 12 million people from the country has been a terrible failure on its own terms. But even in its failure, it has turned our society upside down.
▶ 0:31:32It has terrorized both citizens and non-citizens, destabilized and divided our communities, wrecked small businesses who've lost their workers, and trashed our constitution for everybody. It's gotten so bad that Donald Trump even seems to have recognized that his policies don't fit reality.
▶ 0:31:50Two weeks ago, he gave the game away by acknowledging that hundreds of thousands of undocumented aliens working on the farms and in the fields are quote good longtime workers and that he'd been lobbied both by his agriculture secretary and by large agricultural interests to stop the ICE raids on farms as they are spreading panic in keeping a majority of the workforce from showing up at work.
▶ 0:32:15So he decided he would stop enforcing the mass drag net ice raids there and invoke the same logic for the restaurant sector also heavily dependent on undocumented people. Of course it would apply equally then to the construction se sector landscaping and gardening nursing you name it. The vast majority of immigrants, even those here illegally, are not rapists and criminals, but hardworking people essential to our economy just looking to make a better life for themselves.
▶ 0:32:45Think of the dreamers. So, it's good for us to be having the first immigration hearing in memory, not on enforcement tactics at the border or in our communities, but instead about visas. Alas, the president's record on visas is riddled with the same bursts of extremism and dogmatism and fanaticism that have made his enforcement measures so unpopular.
▶ 0:33:09He and his administration have tortured our laws and trampled our constitution to kick out permanent resident green card holders and students and target universities who voice opinions that he disapproves of. As part of its effort to undertake a hostile takeover of America's colleges and universities, the administration interrupted interviews for student and exchange visitor visas.
▶ 0:33:33The result, about 15% of foreign doctors slated to begin their work at American teaching hospitals around the country were unable to get their visas in time to start the medical year next month. All at a time when we have a serious doctor shortage in the country that threatens access to care and the monstrous reconciliation bill threatens to slash Medicaid funding on which rural hospitals rely.
▶ 0:33:59Administration has also recently implemented its xenophobic travel ban to unilaterally ban entrance to the country for all nationals of 19 different countries with minor exceptions. Categorically denying visas to nationals of these countries does not make us safer or freer or more prosperous. It cements us in the eyes of the world as a vindictive, isolationist, and increasingly undependable and authoritarian country.
▶ 0:34:25The travel ban will likely have significant economic consequences by restricting travel and migration from the targeted nations. In 2022, at least 298,000 non-citizens from countries affected by the new travel ban arrived in the US. Most of them came to the US temporarily, spending money as tourists or as students, fueling our economy.
▶ 0:34:47The following year, households with nationals from the targeted countries collectively earned $3.2 billion in income, paid 715 million in federal, state, and local taxes, and held $2.5 billion in spending power. Donald Trump also paused the refugee program, claiming the entry of these thoroughly vetted and revetted individuals would be detrimental to the United States.
▶ 0:35:09But then he allowed white Africaners to apply via a Google form and to undergo an expedited process to come to the US as refugees. And it should shock no one to learn that after they arrived, reporter reporters were able to dig up numerous anti-semitic posts from uh the refugees. uh one of them had never been subjected apparently to the new anti-semitism screen being used for other visa candidates.
▶ 0:35:37The title of this hearing is restoring integrity and security to the visa process. How does any of this restore integrity or security? These random pauses, arbitrary bans, ad hoc detentions do nothing to improve security or integrity in our process. President Trump has turned our visa system into a terrain of caprice and selective punishment he can wield against his chosen political enemies and use to demonize and scapegoat immigrants, including visa recipients.
▶ 0:36:06This war on immigrants is designed to distract us from the fact that they're trying to cut 14 million Americans off of Medicaid, destroying small businesses with chaotic and unlawful tariff policies, gutting federal agencies and programs charged with protecting Americans against scams and frauds and using the pardon power to transfer more than a billion dollars from the victims of crime to the perpetrators of crime. Sometimes the president's had his lucid moments on immigration.
▶ 0:36:35During his first term, while saying he wanted to build build a big beautiful wall, he said the wall would have a big very beautiful door signifying his support for legal immigration. Um, in brief lucid moments like these, I try to find hope that we can work together across the aisle to focus on a secure border, the removal of immigrants convicted of serious crimes and public safety threats, a pathway to citizenship for the law-abiding taxpaying undocumented immigrants who Trump recently called very good longtime
▶ 0:37:05workers, and a modernized immigration system that will make it easier to come here lawfully while protecting American workers. We've come very close to doing this in the past. We can do it again. Tom Payne, who arrived in the country in uh fell in love with America when he got here, said, "This land will become an asylum to humanity.
▶ 0:37:25Not an insane asylum, mind you, but a place of refuge for people seeking freedom from religious and political and economic persecution and discrimination from all over the world. So, uh, let's live up to the original vision of the founders. This is a nation made up of immigrants and the descendants of people who were enslaved and of the original Native Americans. But this is a land of immigration, a land of immigrants, and a land of laws. We can make it all fit together.
▶ 0:37:55And I hope we can work together on a bipartisan basis to make that happen. Yield back, Mr. Chairman. Uh, gentleman yields back. Without objection, all other opening statements will be included in the record. I will now introduce today's witnesses. Uh we have with us today uh Mrs. Jessica Vaughn who is the director of policy studies for the center for immigration studies. Prior to that Mrs. Vaughn was a state department foreign service officer serving in Belgium uh Trinidad and Tobago. Uh Mrs.
▶ 0:38:20Vaughn has a master's degree from Georgetown University and a bachelor's degree from Washington College in Maryland. Uh Simon Henkinson is a senior uh research fellow at the Heritage Foundation's uh border uh security and immigration center. From 1999 to 2022, he was a State Department foreign service officer serving in several capacities in countries that included Kenya, uh France, Fiji, and Ghana. Prior to entering the State Department, Mr.
▶ 0:38:48Heninson worked as a lawyer in London and a teacher in Miami. He holds a master's degree in modern history from St. Andrews, Scotland, a degree from the college of law in London and a master's degree in international security affairs from the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. Mr. Alex Norris uh is the vice president for economic and social policy studies at the Kato Institute. He's written on the economic impacts of immigration and the economy.
▶ 0:39:18Uh Mr. Noresta was uh received a BA in economics from George Mason University and an MS in economic history from the London School of Economics. And finally, Mr. Cody Brown is the managing attorney u uh of um Kodias Law, a firm that represents US citizens who are victims of immigration fraud.
▶ 0:39:40He's worked on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and his legislative council to a member of the House Homeland Security Committee uh among other jobs. Mr. Brown earned an LLM from Georgetown University Law Center, a JD from Hamlin uh University School of Law, and a BS from Northwestern College. I want to welcome all of our witnesses to thank them for appearing today, and we'll begin by swearing you in.
▶ 0:40:06Would you please rise and raise your right Uh, do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony you're about to give is true and correct to the best of your knowledge, information, and belief. So, help you God. Let the record reflect the witnesses have answered in the affirmative. Thank you. Please be seated. Uh, please know that your written testimony will be entered in the record in its entirety accordingly. We'd ask that you summarize your testimony in five minutes. And we'll begin with Mrs. Vaughn.
▶ 0:40:39Thank you. Uh, Americans are all too familiar with the details of the mass migration disaster we experienced during the four years of the Biden administration when about 9 million illegal border crossers and paroleles were allowed to enter the country. Our foreignb born population has spiked to the highest point in history at just over 53 million people and the highest percentage of our population ever, almost 16%. But not all of the newly arrived illegal aliens were caught and released at the border.
▶ 0:41:08Many arrived on visas obtained under more lenient rules put in place by the Biden administration. Under these policies, new temporary visa issuances went up by 25% to 11 million in 2024. New issuances of short-term B1 and B2 visitors visas, which is the largest and most oversteprone category, went up 40% to 9 million in 2024 alone.
▶ 0:41:35Our visa process is improved but still far from secure thanks to the more lenient policies which include in uh interview waiverss, stretching eligibility criteria and generally prioritizing swift approval over diligence in vetting. The visa programs have become much more vulnerable to frivolous and outright fraudulent applications.
▶ 0:42:00Not only does this often disadvantage qualified applicants who have to wait longer to receive visas, the fraud and abuse undermine public support and worst of allow bad actors who are public safety or national security threats to gain access to our country.
▶ 0:42:18these risks are not uh minor or unreliable and and frankly I think it's insensitive and irresponsible to um these incidents that have occurred as a result of visa vetting failures. It's insensitive uh to the victims and uh irresponsible for policymakers to do so.
▶ 0:42:40One new example of a visa vetting mistake is Beckad Nijad, an Iranian man who was given a student visa in 2016 to attend the University of Texas. His status was terminated soon after he was arrested for domestic violence, but it took another year for him to be ordered removed and ICE finally picked him up just this week in possession of a firearm on top of it.
▶ 0:43:03Then there's Abdullah Hassan who came on a visa in 2022 and settled in false church, attended George Mason, and was arrested last December for promoting violence against Jews online and planning a mass casualty attack on Jews in New York. Yes, it helps to have more interior enforcement, but the visa issuance process and the programs themselves need to be reformed to sift out more unqualified applicants before they get here.
▶ 0:43:31In 2023 alone, there were more than 18,000 entries of Iranian citizens on NIVs, including more than 10,000 on B1B2 visas, more than 5,000 entries on student visas, and more than 1,000 on exchange visas. This is just way too big a hay stack for ICE to have to sift through when there is a potential threat, as we have now.
▶ 0:43:53The problem is partly one of leadership to change the culture of travel facilitation at the State Department, but Congress needs to step in too by enacting statutory requirements for visa interviews which are critical to evaluating applicants and establishing consequences for overstaying both for the person and the sponsor and by providing resources for fraud protection. But it's not just a processing problem. We have to make sure that applicants are actually eligible for the visas they seek.
▶ 0:44:23And some of the visa categories, especially on the permanent visa side, are so conceptually flawed and have such inadequate statutory criteria that even when adjudicators are empowered to try to prevent fraud, they are almost powerless to do so. And among the most problematic and ripe for congressional action are two categories where state and local government entities are the gatekeepers to establishing eligibility. the U visa and the special immigrant juvenile category.
▶ 0:44:51The latter in particular needs urgent attention from Congress, especially in light of the hundreds of thousands of minors who've come in the last four years. We know we have a problem when applications spike as they have in the SIJ category with more than 50,000 a year now. And when this when the specialty law firms are advertising all over social media offering young illegal aliens who have no other path to stay here the option to claim that they were abused, neglected or abandoned by one parent even long ago.
▶ 0:45:20Claims that are nearly impossible to verify even if anyone tried. Criminal histories can be excused or may be unavailable to adjudicators if they were uh committed as a juvenile, making this the amnesty program of choice for MS-13 gang members, among others. And as with the U visa or some other programs, under Biden rules, the applicants get the work permit and protection from deportation long before the file is ever reviewed. Thanks again for the opportunity to discuss these issues.
▶ 0:45:51Thank you, Mrs. Vaughn. Mr. Henson, you may begin. Chairman Gil, Ranking Member Jipal, and members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to testify today. Well, first, what is a visa? Let's imagine America is a castle surrounded by a wall. Anyone wanting to visit the castle first has to go to the main gate in the wall. That's the US embassy. The guards will want to know who the visitor is, where he's from, what he does, and why he wants to enter the castle. They ask a lot of questions and do their best to verify the visitor's claims, but they're limited in what they can find out.
▶ 0:46:20If they're satisfied as to his identity and truthfulness, they give the visitor permission to go inside and knock on the castle door. And that permission is the visa. It gives the holder the likelihood, but not the right, of being led into the castle. When the visitor knocks on the castle door, the person at the door is a customs and border protection inspector. He sees that the visitor's gotten past the guards, but he'll still ask questions to make sure he's satisfied before letting the visitor inside. Visas have three main vulnerabilities: fraud, vetting, and overstays. Fraud is a fact of life in visa work.
▶ 0:46:49It varies by place and person, but applicants, particularly in poor and corrupt countries, lie to get visas. I've been lied to thousands of times. Consular officers are unable to see or to verify accurate records for most applicants. So, they have to use their professional judgment. Vetting means checking for criminal records or other ineligibilities. Consular officers again are limited to what the applicant presents and whatever exists in US government databases, which don't include criminal records for most countries.
▶ 0:47:16Some visa applicants lie about their intent in traveling to the US and they overstay and overstay rates by category of person and country of origin should be tied to refusal rates. For example, recent reports from consular posts have shown high overstay rates from students of English as a second language. So in response, USCIS should strip schools whose students overstay at high rates of the right to admit foreign students and the state department should limit issuing student visas in those countries of origin. A visa is a privilege and not a right.
▶ 0:47:44Just as the passing stranger has no right to get into the castle, no one has a right to enter any other country but his own. We are under no obligation to admit foreigners who come to the United States to incite anti-semitism or terrorism or to attack US foreign policy. And the law gives the president and the secretary of state wide discretion to keep undesirable foreigners out. And their use of this constitutional prerogative must not be obiated by judicial overreach. At the same time, the original scope of some visa categories has warped into something by Congress.
▶ 0:48:14I'll give just a few examples. Uh the purpose of student visas are for foreign nationals to study in the United States and then return home to build their own countries. Now, we can retain the very best, but it was never intended that every student visa automatically led to permanent residency. The optional practical training program, which facilitates this, is not statutory and should be terminated. The H-1B visa was created 30 years ago to fill a short-term need for skilled labor with a limit of 65,000 a year.
▶ 0:48:42Today, many H-1B workers are paid below the median wage for their occupations. H-1Bs disproportionately benefit large tech firms and foreign outsourcing companies at the expense of smaller employers and American workers. The H-1B has thus evolved from a temporary work visa into a de facto immigrant visa that disproportionately benefits one country, India. Today, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates is nearly 6%, which is twice the rate for all graduates. Up to 70% of science, technology, engineering, and math graduates don't even work in STEM fields.
▶ 0:49:12Yet, even as they lay off thousands of workers, major US companies continue to petition for thousands of H-1B workers, claiming they can't find qualified Americans. We need to return the H-1B program to its original scope and put our own children and workers first. There are almost 300,000 Chinese students in this country. Some of them spy against the US government, companies, and university research programs. And we do have visa screening to prevent this. But Chinese applicants can come on a tourist or other visa and then change status to student without triggering that vetting.
▶ 0:49:42We should not allow this. Visa holders seeking to change their status to student, researcher, or worker should go home first and apply to US embassy so they're properly scrutinized. The biggest vulnerability of temporary visas is that holders can claim asylum once in the US. And with lengthy process, appeals, and a massive backlog, it's too easy to use a fraudulent claim to remain indefinitely. Congress should restore integrity to our asylum laws and make it harder to claim on frivolous grounds. They should speed up the process, and we should all make sure that decisions are carried out.
▶ 0:50:11There are many other possible ways to increase efficiency and integrity of visas. For example, we could prioritize education and skills over family reunification. We could reduce the standard authorized stay to 90 days instead of 180. We could end the vague duration of status for foreign students and journalists. Consular officers could be encouraged to apply the public charge rule to prevent migration of probable indigence. Uh or we could let only accredited institutions with a good compliance record admit foreign students and cap the percentage of those students.
▶ 0:50:41Now, with our southern border no longer wide open and interior enforcement once again underway, we have the time to consider all of these ideas and more. Thank you, and I'm happy to take questions. Thank you, Mr. Mr. Henson, Mr. Norasa, you may begin. Chairman Mcccleintoch, ranking member Gyipol, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify.
▶ 0:51:03Over the decades, the KO Institute has produced original research on immigration, including the threat of foreignb born terrorism, immigrant criminality, and the vast economic contributions of immigrants and their descendants. Thus, it is a pleasure to be invited to speak on the topic of today's hearing, restoring integrity and security to the visa process. However, I must start with a criticism of the title of the hearing.
▶ 0:51:29The title, quote, restoring integrity and security to the visa process implies that integrity and security was somehow lost or missing from the visa process. Nothing could be further from the truth. The visa security system was rightly overhauled after the 9/11 attacks and has only gotten more thorough, more complex, and expanded to cover more categories of immigrants and non-immigrants since then.
▶ 0:51:55But the ultimate proof is not in the legal procedures or the number of government employees who do the checks. The proof is in the security results. Since the post 911 overhauls, 19 people have been murdered in attacks on US soil committed by foreign-b born terrorists who entered on non-immigrant visas. Now, every murder of course is a tragedy, but perspective also matters when deciding how to save the greatest number of lives.
▶ 0:52:22For instance, it's likely that more people have been killed in the US by shark attacks since 9/11 than by foreign born terrorists who entered on non-immigrant visas. Zero people were murdered by foreignb born terrorists on US soil during the Biden administration. The first administration with zero such murders for as far back as we have data. That's evidence of a visa system with the integrity and security that Americans deserve.
▶ 0:52:51ICE recently arrested 15 Iranian nationals as of last night. The justification was a supposed terrorist threat from phantom Iranian sleeper cells we've heard so much about over the decades. ICE knew about these Iranian nationals, many of whom were criminals before uh the administration decided to bomb Iran. If the threat were serious, why wait until now? ICE was likely too busy harassing noncriminals at Home Depot.
▶ 0:53:18The crime rates of immigrants, no matter what data sources you use, all show that immigrants and travelers have a low incarceration or crime rate, far lower than native born Americans. Even for our nationals from countries that don't cooperate and share crime data with the US have lower crime rates than native born Americans. There are always going to be bad actors, criminals, terrorists, spies, or others who will try to enter the United States. The visa security system isn't perfect.
▶ 0:53:47It's not and we cannot expect it to be. But it works pretty darn well. We know it works well because the proof is in the pudding. There is no integrity or security that we must restore to the visa process because it was never lost in the first place. However, increasing the security burden and banning immigration from country on flimsy security pretext is costly. Obviously, visa security and integrity are important.
▶ 0:54:15However, visa security theater is not a free lunch and that bill is paid by the United States in lost economic growth, lost opportunity, lower wages, and less government revenue. Immigrants are about twice as likely to start a business as native born Americans. From small corner shops to billion-dollar corporations, immigrants are more likely to be entrepreneurs or founders than native born Americans.
▶ 0:54:40Immigrant workers raise the wages of American workers by filling critical niches in the labor market. Immigrants are over represented in economic sectors and occupations from agriculture and construction to child care, engineering, and the sciences. Immigrants pay about $1.38 in taxes to the federal government for every dollar in benefits they receive. And the benefits to the United States go on.
▶ 0:55:06I want you to imagine what our country would look like today without immigrants from the past. The US population is approximately 340 million. If immigration was shut down in the year 1800, there would only be about a 100 million Americans here. Nobody in their right mind would think that those mere 100 million Americans in this alternative scenario would be richer or freer than the 340 million people living here today. So why do you imagine that our descendants would be richer if we closed the border today? The visa system has integrity.
▶ 0:55:37The visa system is secure. Don't be afraid of small threats, exaggerated hazards, or frightening rhetoric. Don't pile on more regulations, immigration restrictions that will reduce our security, and country bans that fix a non-existent problem. Don't impose that burden on Americans today or our descendants tomorrow. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Nasta. Mr. Brown, you may Mr. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, uh, my name is Cody Brown.
▶ 0:56:07I'm the managing attorney at Kodias Law, the nation's premier immigration law firm exclusively for US citizens who've been victimized by immigration fraud, which I note is a felony under federal law.
▶ 0:56:21For years, the border captured the nation's attention while masking a far more insidious scandal, the collapse of the lawful immigration system itself, where the law goes uninforced and anti-fraud safeguards are deliberately Why spend billions on border security if foreign threats can march through the front door? Immigration fraud is not a victimless crime.
▶ 0:56:48I know this because I walk with our clients through some of the darkest chapters of their lives. Half women, half men. They come from all walks of life. They span every demographic and political persuasion. From Trump supporters to super volunteers for Bernie Sanders. Our clients are falsely imprisoned. They're defamed. They are extorted. They are betrayed. They are sued for their life savings under the I864.
▶ 0:57:19Some lose custody of their children. C. For some female clients, their final childbearing years are stolen. All so a foreign national can get an immigration What many of my clients do not know until today is that I too have walked in their shoes.
▶ 0:57:41On September 19th, 2016, during a highly contentious presidential election cycle, I launched one of the earliest social platforms to combat big tech censorship. The launch was based in Austin, Texas, covered by Fox News, National Review, and Breitbart. Days later, an illegal alien whom I did not know I'd never met, accused me of stalking her.
▶ 0:58:07While walking to the grocery store with my wife, I was arrested by a fugitive task force at gunpoint, thrown into jail, subjected to a $75,000 bond without knowing who had accused me and even what the charge was. I learned the basic facts from the Austin American Statesman based on an arrest affidavit leaked while I was still in jail. I didn't even learn the accuser's identity until I was served with a protective order.
▶ 0:58:38Her statements were riddled with contradictions. There was no cooperating evidence whatsoever. The alleged incidents occurred in areas with numerous surveillance cameras, yet I appeared in none. She claimed we had conversations, but I don't speak Spanish, and she needed an interpreter in court. When asked to identify me in court, she could not.
▶ 0:59:04Seven months after my arrest, the police finally disclosed my forensic phone data, which proved I was not where anywhere she claimed. That is when we learned about the U visa. The same month that I was arrested, the US House and Senate Judiciary Committees opened a probe into the U visa program. They concluded it's being exploited by those wishing to defraud the system and avoid deportation.
▶ 0:59:32Yet, in my case, the judge prohibited my attorney from even asking about the accuser's immigration status. At no time during my prosecution was the U visa ever disclosed. When we raised the issue, the prosecutor abruptly dismissed the charge. A private investigator obtained a confession from the illegal alien that she was seeking a U visa. And when confronted with this evidence, the prosecutor in Travis County expuned the case.
▶ 1:00:02What I soon realized was there was another trial, one that I was never told about. It took place inside the walls of Congress has created several victim visa programs that empower federal bureaucrats to act as judge in jury over whether a US citizen committed a crime. These are secret trials. The US citizen is never notified.
▶ 1:00:32There is no hearing. There is no cross-examination. There's no opportunity to provide counter evidence. Defend yourself. And by a mere preponderance of the evidence, a bureaucrat can convict a US citizen of a crime so a foreign national can get an immigration benefit. There are now 400,000 of these U visas pending over at USCIS. And these secret trials are not limited to just U visas.
▶ 1:00:58They occur every day in marriage-based cases, VAWA self- petitions, I751 waiverss, both of which allow a foreign spouse to accuse their citizen spouse of a crime to fasttrack their green card. In fact, by volume, marriage-based fraud dominates the system, including one-sided marriage fraud, VAWAL petition fraud, and I751 fraud. Nearly a quarter of all new immigrants are spouses of US citizens, approximately 300,000 per year. I'm almost done.
▶ 1:01:27The incentives for immigration marriage fraud are irresistible. Exemption from visa caps, adjustment of status, expedited citizenship, and accelerated chain migration. And throughout the 20th century, Congress repeatedly amended the immigration laws. If there's one thing I want Congress to hear, we want an appeals process with the Board of Immigration Appeals to enable fraud victims to appeal these false allegations in front of the board. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you. Uh thank you, Mr. Brown. We appreciate that.
▶ 1:01:58Now, we're going to move on to uh five minutes of questioning, and I'll begin by recognizing uh myself. You know, for for decades, the United States has had a an existential problem with illegal immigration. Um this isn't something that's new. It wasn't something that was created under the Biden administration. We've had it for a long time.
▶ 1:02:23and Republicans in Congress and in the rest of the country outside of Washington DC demanded border security that Washington would actually do what we said we would do on the campaign trail and secure the border and stop the flow of illegal immigration. And what would happen in Washington is that Republicans would ask for border security. We would ask for a wall.
▶ 1:02:50We would ask for um things that we can fund that would stem this tide of illegal immigration. And in response from the other side of the aisle, we would hear demands for amnesty, a pathway to citizenship for people who have no business being here to begin with, who came here illegally. And the result was that nothing was done to secure the border.
▶ 1:03:17One of the things that I'm most excited about about the big beautiful bill that we are working on and are going to get passed next week is that finally we can fund border security and mass deportations that the American people demand without having to negotiate on amnesty. In other words, the American people get what they would like. Republicans get all of our priorities. We get a border wall.
▶ 1:03:47We get river barriers. We get 10,000 new ICE And we don't have to deal with demands for mass amnesty. That is a huge win, not only for conservatives, but for all Americans. And I'm I'm excited about getting that done. I believe that that mass migration is the single biggest existential threat to our country today, and we're going to begin by fixing that.
▶ 1:04:15Um, so thank you to the witnesses for being here. Mrs. Vaughn, I'd like to start with you. I really appreciate your time here. Um, some claim that that in order to finally secure the border for good, we need to make a deal on amnesty or to expand our already extraordinarily generous legal immigration system or work visa programs. Does this viewpoint put the interest of the American people first? Absolutely not.
▶ 1:04:41Uh the the biggest problem well first of all we've tried this in the past and it it never worked. It was always amnesty now enforcement if we get around to it. Um and and so this doesn't work. But what we do know also from experience is that every time amnesty is raised um it destroys all incentive people have to voluntarily comply with immigration laws and go home on their own if they don't have a path to legal status.
▶ 1:05:10It creates incentives for people to stay here illegally and incentives for people to start cross trying to cross the border illegally as well. We should not be discussing contemplating um an amnesty of any kind until our there is integrity and enforcement of the immigration laws that we have. Um that's that's just not something that should be on the table now.
▶ 1:05:36Have the American people ever been promised border security in exchange for amnesty in the past? Oh, repeatedly, most notably in 1986, um when the the amnesty happened immediately, was given to more people than we were told would be qualifying for it and the enforcement promises were never uh in were never applied um never materialized. And it's been promised in a number of other uh types of legislation.
▶ 1:06:05in 2013, in 2007, uh it's it's always the same thing. Amnesty now, we'll we'll promise to give you enforcement later. Whenever amnesty is brought up in in the national conversation, have you found that it leads to increased illegal immigration? That is definitely what happened in 2012 before um the so-called gang of eight bill um and during that discussion. Um and it it has happened in the past as well.
▶ 1:06:34In fact, well, look at what happened before um the Biden administration took office. They had promised amnesty during the campaign and the illegal crossings and encounters at the border went up even before Biden took office in January. They were they were up substantially in December, the month before that. Yep. And then I'd like to ask you about our our green card system. Approximately how many immigrants are approved for permanent residency each year? It's about 1 million per year. about one million.
▶ 1:07:05And how many of those are via chain migration? About 60%. 60%. Awesome. Thank you, Mrs. Vaugh. Appreciate it. Um, and now I'd like to recognize the ranking member, Miss Gyipol, for five minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, maintaining a healthy, robust, secure visa system so people from all over the world can come to America is not should not be a partisan issue.
▶ 1:07:30Immigration has always been and continues to be one of the essential factors to America's success as a nation. Immigrants set up our founding governance system, serve in our armed forces, power our economy in just about every sector, and have brought innovation and entrepreneurial spirit with nearly half of Fortune 500 companies founded by immigrants or their children. We have, as our witness said, strong systems to ensure integrity with the terms of visa holders.
▶ 1:08:00They there are already consequences for those who violate the terms of their visas. For example, committing marriage fraud to obtain immigration benefit is already a federal crime. Our visa system has been the pathway for ambition and opportunity for so much of the rest of the world. And it's so disheartening to see the Trump administration do everything it can to destroy the legal immigration system. Look, this uh I know this system very well. I might have come to one of the embassies that you were at.
▶ 1:08:29I came to the United States uh on a student visa. I made my way through an alphabet soup of visas. It took me 17 years to become a US citizen and I eventually ended up here as the first naturalized citizen to serve as ranking member of this subcommittee in Congress on immigration. That's a testament to the amazing things that can only happen in the United States of America. Mr.
▶ 1:08:54uh Norasta, let me ask you, your testimony does a great job of showing the intense level of vetting students and other visa applicants receive when applying to come to this country. tell the American citizen that's out there watching what the benefit is to them of having foreign students come to the United States and why it actually helps the United States if they decide to seek employment here after finishing their course of study. So the benefits are extraordinary.
▶ 1:09:22oftent times foreign students are the first step in a long process just like your process of uh eventually getting uh oftentimes OPT oftentimes an H-1B visa often and then a uh employment based green card and then citizenship that is the way that the immigration system has been set up in the United States.
▶ 1:09:42So if we want to have the benefits of high-skilled immigrants and entrepreneurs, people like Elon Musk who started here in the United States on these same ways uh and millions of other people, then we need to maintain a large open student visa system because it's the first link in that chain. Thank you. The Trump administration has targeted student visa holders in all these different ways and there's been incredible chaos in the student visa uh system.
▶ 1:10:10There's been cancelling of visas without warning, sending masked ICE officers to kidnap and disappear students, pausing visa interviews for student and exchange visas right when those applicants would normally be starting to apply for their visas. One student lost his status because of an issue with a fishing license. Um, another lost hers because she was a victim of domestic violence and the police picked up both her and her abuser.
▶ 1:10:36about 15% of the foreign physicians who were supposed to come here to work at training hospitals when we have a real der of medical professionals um were unable to get their visas in time. How does all of that chaos hurt our country and our ability to retain and attract top talent that we need here in America?
▶ 1:10:57The Trump administration's sewing of chaos in the legal immigration system undermines much of what makes this country successful, great, and free. Economic uncertainty is a killer. This is one of the things that I learned in my education that I saw around the world that you see in our practice. And nothing like uncertainty in employment, in legal residency, in being able to be here sews devastation.
▶ 1:11:21It makes people's lives unsettled both for the immigrants and their American families, employers, friends, the schools where they are, uh, their neighbors. It unsettles everything. It is devastating to this country. It is devastating to them and it's devastating to future Americans. Let me turn to the absurd travel ban, arbitrary travel ban that President Trump announced. He alleges this travel ban is necessary to protect us from terrorist attacks and other national security threats. Is that true? Just yes or no? No.
▶ 1:11:52So let me go through some examples. Given the recent events in Boulder, Colorado, why is Egypt not on the banned list? Egypt was also one of the countries along with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Lebanon who were involved in 9/11. Your testimony, as you noted, 98% of the people killed in the United States by foreign terrorists were casualties of 9/11. Why are none of those countries on the banned list? I mean, explain this to me. Make some sense of it. I'm sorry, but I can't explain something where there is absolutely no sense. It doesn't make any sense. It's totally arbitrary.
▶ 1:12:21It seems like a justification for reducing legal immigration that is divorced from any legitimate security or national security or anti-rime perspective. It is just an arbitrary ban and I guarantee we're going to have more of them come down the line that are based on nothing more than the desire to reduce legal immigration. Thank you. Uh Mr. Chairman, I have a unanimous consent uh request objection to enter.
▶ 1:12:44This is a press release from the Department of Homeland Security and it highlights that the some of the Iranian nationals that recently were arrested enter the country or were ordered removed under the Trump Great. Yel back. Without objection. Thank you. And uh now uh the gentleman from Arizona, the great Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In May, not one illegal alien was released into the United States. So, Mr.
▶ 1:13:14Narista, do you consider that to be a successful month? Uh, yeah. Good. Yes. Good. I'm always looking for accommodation and comedy. So, we have some comedy right there. I think we have more than that. So, uh I don't know. We'll find out. The most recent uh Congressional Border Security Caucus, we had the ICE director, acting ICE director, Mr. Todd Lions, come in. Mr. Lions uh was describing visa overstays.
▶ 1:13:41So I would ask the panel, have you all familiar with the the term visa overstays? Mr. Brown, you need to ask her out loud. Yeah, this is like a court. You got to ask out loud. Very familiar. Okay. Mr. Narista. Yes. Mr. Henson. Yes. And Miss Vaughn. Yes. So let's talk about one visa overstay. Um, I'm thinking of the Egyptian fellow um who went on a rampage, an anti-semitic rampage and attacked people in border col B Boulder, Colorado.
▶ 1:14:12Um, did you know that he was a visa overstay, Miss Von? Mrs. Vaughn? Yes. And what type of visa did he have before he overstayed? I don't think I have seen it confirmed, but I believe it was a visitor visa, B1, B2. That's what's been reported anyways that it was a visitor visa. Um, and how many um, Mr. Henson, how many visa overstays are there in the country right now roughly?
▶ 1:14:40It's microphone maybe a half a million a year. Um, total overstays, but not all of those are permanent. The figures are a bit uh, difficult to parse. Okay. So when we when we look at uh visa overstays, I want to go back here now to to Mrs. Vaughn for a sec. Khaled Shik Muhammad, the architect of the 9/11 attack said that marriage fraud is a quote fantastic mechanism for terrorist operatives to acquire valid documents close quote.
▶ 1:15:10And but rather than you will go Mr. Brown, do you agree with that? Absolutely. And can you re you've given in your opening statement you talked about how marriage fraud enterprises work. Um, how would you describe DHS's process for detecting marriage fraud, Mr. Brown? Do they do that? Can they do that? Their their process is virtually non-existent. When I refer to the deliberate dismantling of anti-fraud safeguards, this is a great example.
▶ 1:15:36Uh, for example, under the last administration, they one of the key fraud safeguards that Congress enacted in the immigration marriage fraud amendments act of 1986 was interviews. They started waving all the interviews. When our clients reported fraud, you know what they got back? Silence. Nothing. Yeah.
▶ 1:15:55And I want to make this We have obtained internal data from And from 2016 to 2019, little subset, you know what their fraud denial rate was for the marriage-based cases? 0% rounded to the nearest whole number. Th this is this is not accidental. Something is deeply deeply wrong with our immigration system and there's a lot of innocent Americans who are suffering.
▶ 1:16:25Thank you for that. Mr. Henkinson, what's the process like for vetting student visa applicants? Well, it's as good as we can make it. Um the interviews take just a couple of minutes. Um and most of the information that they provide can't be uh immediately verified, so we probably get it right most of the time.
▶ 1:16:45So we have an ICE the acting ICE director told us the other day that in re relooking at some of these student visas they had a a student from China who was entering his 13th year of a balora degree program for a bachelor's degree. Um that seems I don't know I I've put kids through college and thank goodness none of them ever took 13 years to get through college. Um and if they if Mrs.
▶ 1:17:14Von, if a student commits a crime or otherwise becomes uh does something that would disqualify them for continuing on the uh student visa, how is that how does that get reported to ICE or the school? Uh well, if they are arrested for a state or local crime, ICE will get that information through the Secure Communities program.
▶ 1:17:42Um but ICE is not necessarily going to prioritize it because that as a student visa holder they are entitled to more due process than for example someone who's in the country illegally and commits the same crime. So what what the director told us is that there it's not often that they're notified and the school is rarely notified as well. Yeah. The school wouldn't necessarily be notified.
▶ 1:18:09So, as I as my time expires, I what I would point out to the my committee members that there's been some suggestions by Mr. Brown, Mr. Hen, Mrs. Vaughn on some ways to fix the visa system. I think it's worth reviewing. And then I've got a couple of uh unanimous consents. This one's called what we know about the visa obtained by Egyptian man who injured a dozen people in Colorado. Another one by Mr. Henson actually.
▶ 1:18:33um uh commentary on on the borders on border security and then a letter that we sent to Secretary Mayorcus just a few months ago asking for information about marriage fraud uh with regard to visa status. Without objection. Thank you. Without objection. Uh thank you Mr. Biggs. And uh now Mr. Rascin is recognized for five minutes. Great. Thank you very much Mr. Chairman.
▶ 1:18:59Uh the distinguished gentleman from Arizona began by talking about visa overstays and so Mr. Norstart wanted to ask you about that. Um we there's been a lot of discussion recently about a famous case of a visa overstay that of Elon Musk who had a student visa was granted entry to the country and then didn't go to school and said he never really wanted to go to school but stayed and was able to get to work.
▶ 1:19:26And I wonder uh in your response to the gentleman from Arizona, you said or someone said that there was something like a half million people in this context. What are we doing about these visa overstays? And going back to your original comment, would we be better off if uh people like Elon Musk were kicked out of the country at that point? People who overstay a student visa or a work visa.
▶ 1:19:53Um, you know, because my experience from traveling abroad is that oftentimes what we get in America is the most ambitious people, the people want to work the hardest, create the businesses, win, you know, Pulitzer prizes and Nobel prizes and so on. And he would seem to fall into that example. I mean, I guess he's in a category of his own, but somebody who was very ambitious and wanted to come here. But would we be better off making sure that everybody was kicked out of the country the day after their visa expired? uh we absolutely would not be better off.
▶ 1:20:23We'd be substantially worse off if that were the case. Especially in that example of uh Mr. Musk, the reason why he did what he did with his student visas and that the tricky H-1B situation, everything was because there was no other way for him to come to this country lawfully.
▶ 1:20:40And it is absurd that in this country which has been built by immigrants, all of us are descendants of immigrants here in this country today, uh we have a proud history of being open, that there is no other way for him to come here lawfully to open businesses, to try his metal, to create new uh firms that are multi-billion dollar trillion dollars of value uh that he has created uh in the world and other people like him. The government should focus on the security threats. They should focus on criminals.
▶ 1:21:10They could go after these folks like ICE went after these Iranians in the last couple days, many of whom had criminal convictions. They should not be wasting their time on people with expired fishing licenses who are student visas. Now, the government does do a good amount now, especially under this administration of trying to track down some of these overstays. Uh but it's not a high priority because they need to go after criminals and national security threats and people like that.
▶ 1:21:35every dollar they spend and every minute they waste going after non-criminals and non people who aren't national security threats is a waste. Okay. Um I I think you're that intimating views that are congruent with my own which are we should make it much much more difficult for people to get into America illegally and much easier for people to get into the country legally and lawfully.
▶ 1:22:00And I think that we have bipartisan convergence around the first issue that we want to make it difficult to get in the country illegally, but we seem to disagree about the importance or the value of allowing people to get into the country lawfully. I think that our temporary chairman here said, and please correct me if I'm wrong, mass migration is the single biggest existential threat to our country today.
▶ 1:22:27What what do you think about that as you know setting aside climate change, terrorism, social and racial division? Is mass migration the biggest threat to our country? If we had massive lawful migration, would that be a bad thing for America? Uh the overuse of the word existential is a prime example of threat inflation, of trying to terrify people for no good reason.
▶ 1:22:55The idea that the existence of the United States is threatened by immigration is absurd. It is just the opposite. The future of the United States is guaranteed and enhanced by immigration to this country. It is what will guarantee the growth. If there was no immigration, for instance, starting right now, the population of this country will start to shrink in the mid2040s. There will be fewer Americans.
▶ 1:23:19is there will be a smaller America unless we expand and or at least at least continue the legal immigration that we have now. Okay. So, why do you think immigration has become such a vexed political problem? I know historically we've gone through periods of anti-immigration fervor and xenophobia. Um, but if we've got the grounds for bipartisan compromise, as we've seen repeatedly, why do some people keep on wanting to use this as a political club?
▶ 1:23:49So, I think it's it's obviously a vote getter. It obviously infuriates a lot of people and and to be, you know, totally fair to these folks who I disagree with. I do think people see chaos and they really don't like it, right? But I think the chaos is caused by our restrictive immigration system overwhelmingly. If we want to get control in the long term, we need to do what you suggest, which is expand legal immigration opportunities to the United States. Enforcement matters, but legal immigration matters a ton, too. Times expired.
▶ 1:24:20Thank you. We now recognize Mr. Mr. Narasta, do you believe the uh immigration system improved under the Biden administration? Uh, under some ways, yes, and some ways no. So it's it's it's it's a it's a very large complex system as you know it's second in complexity only to the income tax. So um so your colleague David Beer was here about six months ago and he said um yes the immigration system improved under the Biden administration.
▶ 1:24:51What's the change here of Kato's position? So uh the KO Institute doesn't have positions. The scholars at the Ko Institute do. Uh but the if you want to narrow in on the legal immigration system, then I agree with my colleague David that the legal immigration system did improve during the Biden administration, but there's large other sections of immigration that have to do with enforcement, uh other categories going around telling people around the country here today that hey, I'm gonna split hairs and I'm gonna tell
▶ 1:25:21people that this one subset of immigration, hey, things are things are just fine in the United States of America. it all it's all good when they understand this as a broader part of the immigration system as a whole which has been a complete failure. Well, sir, I don't I don't work in talking points like that. I I'm interested in facts and the legal immigration system is not just fine. I've spent my career about how we need to expand legal immigration. So, no, I don't go around saying it's just fine.
▶ 1:25:48I said that things have improved and uh No, I don't I don't go around talking Don't filibuster. I got questions asking. I only have five minutes. So, you're saying the vett you say in here vetting is effective and the visa process is secure. You stand by that, right? Absolutely. How did 350,000 children come into America that we have no idea where they're at at the end of the Biden administration? How are there 600,000 criminal aliens in this country that committed often times violent crimes um everything from um attempted murder to carjacking?
▶ 1:26:17The vast majority of those did not go through the legal immigration system. And that is entirely the point that we are trying to make here today is that they did not go through illegal immigration. If they did, then most of those people would have been this administration which you said in some ways the previous administration they just let people come in without being able to get a visa. So does your data that you purport to put out there that proves this?
▶ 1:26:41Does it include the death of Steven Nasham, a truck driver in Russ County, uh, Wisconsin, up where I live, uh, who left behind three daughters. Does that include him in the data? He's dead as a result of an illegal alien, um, running him off the road. The evidence that we have is Does it include the two children in Abbottzford, Wisconsin?
▶ 1:27:00includes all people who are convicted of crimes in this country, sir, and all people who are arrested and all people who are incarcerated for crimes in the United States during multiple years, including the great state of Texas, which has wonderful data, the best crime data out there, confirms my research. Every death and every murder is a tragedy and those individual criminals should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. But that is not a reason to punish criminals. Are they in the data? Of course.
▶ 1:27:26are the 100,000 children that died of fent or young people number one killer of young people in America ages what 21 to 45 fentinyl do you include the fentinel you mean the people who voluntarily took fentanyl and overdosed under that tragic situations no those are not homicides sir or do you mean the communist Chinese who sent the precursors over here and then the u uh the talking about the drug war now we're talking about the drug war and by the way they sent it in being carried
▶ 1:27:57by people who are coming in with the immigration. Why don't you count why don't you count the automobiles imported that also cost you defending. Have you done in your data have you reviewed the impact on wages for those who are in the lowest economic strata with these millions of people coming into America taking their jobs. I'll end there. Miss Vaughn, of course, vast economic literature on that that contradicts your share with us.
▶ 1:28:23Has there been an impact on on Americans earnings as a result of illegal immigration? There's no question that illegal immigration causes unfair competition, uh, costing people job opportunities, depressing their wages, and and causing those millions of Americans who've dropped out of the labor market to have trouble getting back into it. No question. So, it's clear they're making less money. Yes.
▶ 1:28:51And that should be included in any data set when we're considering what we should do with immigration. Is that correct? That's the the inevitable result. That's supply and demand. And when you increase the supply of labor, distort the labor markets, you're going to get lower wages. It it supply and demand. You're only talking about supply. These immigrants are out of order. No, no. I'll direct a question to you, sir. Mr. H. I'm not asking a question. Was there a cost to the fentinel deaths here in America?
▶ 1:29:21the the open border made it a lot easier to bring in a lot of drugs and a lot of drugs killed as you said about 66,000 people just fentinel alone in one year. How much do you value all life? You can't put a price on a human life. I yield back. Chair recognizes Mr. Nadler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, Republicans love to claim that while they oppose illegal immigration, they are for legal immigration.
▶ 1:29:49Yet the Trump administration is doing everything it can to slow down or entirely stop legal immigration to the United States. Would you agree with that, Mr. Nar? Yeah. Yes. Under this administration, we've seen attacks on green card holders for exercising their free speech rights. We've seen a complete shutdown of the refugee program and a relentless assault on student visas. Would you agree with that? Absolutely, sir. Thank you.
▶ 1:30:12The Department of State is revoking the visas of students in the United States without any transparency while ICE is terminating the legal status of students and in some cases not even informing them of their respect or their in respective institutions. Would you agree with that? That's absolutely true and it's a total travesty. It is a poor way to run an immigration system and it's a it's a it's bad for the United States that this is happening like that.
▶ 1:30:35According to recent reports, more than 1,800 students and recent graduates across 280 colleges, universities have had their visas revoked. Is that true? Uh, as far as I know, and the most recent data I've seen, yes, this is changing, of course, all the time because the administration is so aggressively anti-legal immigration, it's hard to keep it up with the new numbers. Thank you, Mr. Nar.
▶ 1:30:58Isn't it true that ever since World War II uh the United States has followed a policy of uh attracting people from other countries to come and study in the United States um and that that policy has led to tremendous scientific military and computer advancements that have helped make America the strongest most technologically developed country in the world? That's absolutely true.
▶ 1:31:18In fact, economist Charles Jones, who is one of the preeminent experts in economic growth, has found that the increase in technicians and scientists and engineers, largely a lot of it fueled by immigration in the postw World War II period can explain about half of productivity growth up through the 1990s. A tremendous increase and uh which results in a tremendous increase in in wages, in new inventions, and economic growth that has made all of our lives better.
▶ 1:31:44And you would agree, I assume, that we risk turning the greatest minds in the world away from the United States if we treat international students as like criminals. That's absolutely one of the biggest risks and the things that worry me the most is what genius entrepreneurs uh like Elon Musk or what great scientists uh like uh the woman whose name escapes me right now, but who um helped discover the mRNA vaccine are we turning away? What is the loss? I'm sorry. Jennifer Dudna.
▶ 1:32:11She's, you know, an incredible, brilliant genius whose uh work has helped save millions and millions of lives around the world. And if she weren't allowed in here, I just I just doubt that she would have been able to make those discoveries and contributions in a country like Hungary. Thank you. Now, Mr. Mr. Nosta, um, the replacement rate to keep an population steady is 2.1 births per woman. The rate in the United States is 1.6 six per woman.
▶ 1:32:42Now, obviously, this will result eventually in fewer uh Americans. I I think you mentioned that. What is the effect of having fewer and fewer Americans, more and more people of uh of um um um advancing age to be supported by fewer people in prime earning years. The economic effects are uh devastating. They are much slower economic growth, slower wage growth.
▶ 1:33:11We can see an advanced example of this in East Asia, especially in the country of Japan, which has had lower fertility, below replacement for decades now. Um, it's no doubt that American fertility is below replacement, as you said, it will likely fall further. The only thing that is propelling growth in a good way and has for for a long period of time is immigration to the United States.
▶ 1:33:34And I think supporting less immigration through the United States is the same as supporting a smaller America with fewer Americans, a less dynamic economy, and one where we have less of a footprint in the world. And I think that's tragedy. And one where more people of working age have to support I'm sorry, fewer people of working age have to support, more people of advanced age. Uh um um threatening our social security system. That's right.
▶ 1:34:01It it definitely exacerbates the uh insolveny issues with social security and Medicare. It will bring on those problems faster and uh in a more severe way. One of the best ways to maintain and even the social security administration acknowledges this when they model out their social security predictions. Um expanding legal immigration does help extend the life of these programs.
▶ 1:34:24And what do we risk uh losing if the United States becomes perceived as a less welcoming destination for international students? I think the United States will lose one of the great selling points and attractions for this country. The attraction that that of opportunity that has um uh enticed so many of our ancestors to come here over the centuries. Part of what it means to be an American and in this country is the openness to immigration. That has been part of our history forever. We are all the products of that.
▶ 1:34:54This wonderful, vast country is a product of it. There are a hundred times more Americans today than when this country was founded. We are better off because of it. And I want to see a future with more Americans. Thank you. My time is expired. I yield back. Thank you, sir. The chair recognizes Mr. Roy. Thank the chairman. Uh I thank the chair for calling this hearing. Um you know, Mr. Now, I assume that when you say you'd like a future with more Americans that that includes Joselyn Nungare. Do you know Jocelyn Hungry? Have you talked to her mother, Alexis?
▶ 1:35:25I know her. She was murdered by an illegal immigrant in Houston. People who were released into this country with a notice to appear in court did not appear and then violently killed a young woman and is now dead and her mother lost her. And she's one of dozens, hundreds, thousands of examples of Americans who are dead because of policies that were advocated for by the Biden administration and people parading around as libertarians. Miss Vaughn, parading around. What does that mean, Miss Vaugh? exactly what it means. It's my time, not yours.
▶ 1:35:55My time, not yours. I don't have any time to listen to libertarian. I know you don't have any time to listen. Killing Americans because that's what you're doing. And you're hiding behind Americans that is resulting in the death of Americans. That's a heck of a thing to say to somebody, sir. That is totally exceptional. It's true. And everybody in America, sir, and that is really exceptional.
▶ 1:36:14When you go talk to Alexa Nungra and talk about her daughter no longer being with us beneath you as an individual to say that to somebody van on June 25th 2024 DHS office of inspector general released a report entitled CBP has limited information to assess interview wave non-immigrant visa holders. Are you familiar with that report? Yes. In that report is it not true?
▶ 1:36:35It says here that the report found the Biden administration expanded a co era policy of waving visa applicant interviews and fingerprint collecting to reduce visa backlogs and staffing shortages which worsened at the peak of the pandemic. Is that correct? Yes. Biden took this co era policy to admit over 7 million foreign nationals from across the globe into the United States. Does that sound correct? Uh well the yeah the numbers in later years are more like nine million a year.
▶ 1:37:01Certainly significant numbers of people, millions without having DHS interview them. Yes. DHS failed to fingerprint an unknown number of visas applicants during the 2020 to 2023 period. Correct. Yes. And actually part of that responsibility is on the state department as well. And do you find this u this discovery particularly troubling? Absolutely.
▶ 1:37:23Um it, you know, it it it underscores how much um the Biden administration and others before it swiftness in processing, just moving these applications through, getting to yes, rubber stamping approvals over making the correct decision. And it it emphasizes that um vetting is not just a matter of looking people up in a database that may or may not have relevant information to the decision.
▶ 1:37:53Interviews are a way for them to establish the credibility of the applicant and whether they actually qualify for the visa. I want to ask you about about the visa waiver program as well. Um it it ostensibly does not require an alien to possess a visa to enter the country. Correct. Correct. And it's a gaping vulnerability in our legal immigration system. Right. inherently. Yes. Um so with respect to that, are you familiar with the South American theft groups, particular Chile, who commit burglary tourism through the visa um waiver program?
▶ 1:38:22I've heard a lot about them from law enforcement agents. For a time, Chile, a VWP program, refused to provide US authorities the required background information on its nationals seeking entry into the United States despite entering into security shared agreement in 2013. Are you familiar with that? Yes. So, I sent a letter to DHS Secretary Gnome and Secretary uh State Department Secretary Rubio to alert them to Chile's abuse. I'd like to insert that into the record without objection. Without objection. And um DHS informed my office that Chile's now apparently complying with the agreed upon security agreements.
▶ 1:38:52However, because so many Chilean criminals have established theft rings across the nation thanks to the VWP, these theft groups have recruited Chilean nationals with no criminal record to enter the US through the VWP to commit Berkeley tourism. Are you familiar with that extension? Yes. Yes. Um and it's a real problem and this is the kind of thing that multiplies when we have a lack of seriousness on these issues. Correct. Correct. And it exists with Irish contractors in the Boston area as well. They totally exploit these these. Last last question here.
▶ 1:39:18Could um with respect to the U visa program that presents an opportunity for alleged illegal alien crime victims to obtain work authorization and protection from deportation. Correct. Yes. And on January 6, 2022, the DHS OIG again released a report entitled USCIS U Visa Program is not managed effectively and is susceptible to fraud. Correct. Yes. Um I could go through a whole litany of things, but I don't have the time to do that.
▶ 1:39:42But I'd like to just acknowledge that problem that I has recognized another problem, and I'll just finish with this since I represent uh southwest corner of Austin. Don't don't blame me for the downtown Austin stuff, but um Mr. Brown, I'd like you to be able to exp have a minute to expand just a little bit further on how that abuse of the U visa program affected your life because of what we allow to occur and what that did to you and your family.
▶ 1:40:08My wife still has trouble talking about it and it felt like we were under siege and it was confusing. We had no idea what was going on. And if I didn't have the background that I have, a little bit of law, a little bit of homeland security, I'm not sure most people would even know what happened. That's my biggest concern is that people who are victimized like this, they don't know.
▶ 1:40:35If they don't know that a U visa program exists, how will they ever know to ask for that discovery? expired. We have some prosecutors who we know refuse to disclose or even certify U visas until after a case is concluded. Gentleman's time is expired. There's something called the Brady Doctrine. Yeah, the gentleman's correct. I appreciate the gentleman's um testimony and sorry that that occurred to you. Yield back. Chair recognizes represent Scandlin. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
▶ 1:41:02Um, I thought this was supposed to be one hearing where we weren't focused on illegal crossings at the border, but instead we're going to look at reforms to our legal immigration and our visa programs. But apparently some of our folks didn't get the memo. Um, look, since the first day of this administration, it's been clear that its chaotic and often lawless immigration agenda is based on a false choice.
▶ 1:41:27One that mistakenly asserts that in order to keep Americans safe, we have to slam our doors to the world, ignore the laws and values that this nation has been built upon and our very history. reject the people and traditions that have actually made our country great and turn our backs on a critical source of labor to support and expand our economy and especially our health care systems. So, this administration has claimed to only be going after the worst of the worst.
▶ 1:41:57But day after day, instead of hardened criminals, we see them going after hardworking people with no criminal records who are being ripped from their workplaces, schools, the courts where they're pursuing their legal immigration remedies, etc. So, we see people with legal status having had the rug pulled out from under them, including our Afghan allies.
▶ 1:42:20These are folks who had our troops backs during that conflict and came here legally on temporary protected status and now they're facing deportation. So, refugee resettlement has all but been shut down. People who've already completed the complicated and arduous vetting and security process have been left high and dry, often placing them and their families in dangerous conditions overseas.
▶ 1:42:46And this administration is now targeting international students, people here to learn from and contribute to our universities, to our economy, to innovation, and to our healthcare systems. And it's penalizing green card holders for expressing opinions that this administration doesn't agree with, despite the plain language of the First Amendment.
▶ 1:43:09So ultimately, despite all the rhetoric we're hearing, these actions hurt our economy, hamper our ability to compete with other countries on the global stage and really damage our reputation worldwide. We're already seeing, I think the figure was a 12 billion decrease in tourism as people are afraid to come here. They don't like what they're seeing.
▶ 1:43:31For America's for centuries, America has been a shining city on a hill, a place where the world's best and brightest seek to come and contribute and be successful in a culture of innovation and achievement and that's being tarnished. It may it's it's just moving away from that tradition is the wrong direction. So, uh Mr.
▶ 1:43:56Nasta, my district is home to a bunch of colleges and universities, many of which have 10, 12, 15% foreign students. Um, revoking their visas without transparency, terminating their legal status, um, seems like it's a big problem.
▶ 1:44:14And I I know I hear from these universities that one of the reasons they like uh having international students aside from the different perspectives they bring, the different knowledge they bring is they bring dollars without student loans. Um can you talk a little bit about what is happening with respect to uh the decrease in international students? Yeah. So they do bring in a lot of dollars and American educational services are a large export of the United States.
▶ 1:44:45And this administration talks frequently about wanting to, you know, close the trade deficit, which is frankly an economically meaningless term. But if they were really interested in that, they would actually liberalize student visas because it actually increases exports. It's a very valuable one. But the biggest benefit of course is what these people do if they do end up staying here. The firms that they found, the skills that they learn, the extra goods and services that they supply that make all of our lives better off.
▶ 1:45:15This committee had a hearing on February 15th uh 2022 on the essential role of immigrant physicians to American healthcare. Have you looked at that at all? I mean, we have a lot of folks come here to get their medical degrees. many would like to stay. We have tens of thousands of doctor vacancies in this country right now and uh we've had foreign physicians filling those those gaps. Can you speak to that issue at all? I can speak a little bit to that.
▶ 1:45:45I mean uh foreigner uh immigrants are over represented in most medical uh sub occupations um and they're um you know contribute mightily uh to this. Uh the United States has about 4 to 5% of the world's population. It would be um extraordinarily accidental if those people who are born here happen to be the best of the best. I think we really punch above our weight when it comes to that.
▶ 1:46:08But there are a lot of talented foreigners out there who could be great American physicians and medical professionals and I think it's pretty absurd that we make it difficult for so many of them to come in. Time is expired. Thank you. Thank you. The chair recognizes Representative Vandrew. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to condense this down. Let's be clear. Nobody here on this side, I am not against legal immigration. We are against breaking the law.
▶ 1:46:39We, you know, we want to make this complicated. Not you all. I'm not blaming you, but in general, it's not complicated. We don't want the law to be broken. And the abuse that's going on or did go on is causing the American people to lose faith in our immigration system. And see, that's the worst of it. And I'm going to emphasize this over and over again. Unfortunately, folks on the left, folks on the other side, it's even happening today.
▶ 1:47:03They'll talk about doctors and teachers and scientists coming over and how we're going to stop that and they're going to not want to come over. They're not the ones we're concerned with. Scientists and doctors are coming over legally. They're going through the system and they're actually getting hurt because of what has happened over the last number of years with the illegals coming in because Americans are getting somewhat confused. Unfortunately, let's not blur this.
▶ 1:47:34Nobody is against legal immigration of good people coming to America. That's the way America was built. And as many times as the other folks on the other side will say immigration, I'm going to keep qualifying. We're talking about illegal activity and illegal immigration. And worst of all, we keep doing this over and over again. And that under Joe Biden, the problem wasn't just illegal entry at the border.
▶ 1:48:03And it's what we're here to talk about today. It was our legal visa processing system. For years, that administration opened the floodgates. They allowed criminals in. They allowed individuals that were indicted in their own country or indicted here. They allowed individuals that were convicted in their own country or convicted here. We had people on the terror watch list. And I'm not only one saying that. We had the FBI director, the previous FBI director here under the Biden administration.
▶ 1:48:32No friend of mine, don't particularly care for him, but he said America was more dangerous than ever before in its entire history. And that's got nothing to do with Trump. He wasn't president yet, so let's cut it out. It's tell the truth time. It's time to be honest. and programs that were designed to bring in skilled workers, students, and seasonal labor have been twisted into a gateway for the wrong people to come into our country.
▶ 1:49:01Bad actors were allowed to skip the line. And all while good people that were mentioned and are mixed in were pushed to the back of the line. The people that we do want to come to America, that boulder terrorist. Anybody look at his social media He was involved in pro-Muslim Brotherhood propaganda. It was supposed to be a red flag. It usually is a red flag, I guess, but it wasn't red flag.
▶ 1:49:26It appears no one actually screamed this Meanwhile, I'm going to say it again because I really want to pound this in. Lawabiding good immigrants who do it properly. They're waiting for years. And I'd actually agree sometimes too long. They're good people. They love America. Some of them love America more than the people who are born here in America because the system is overwhelmed by fraud and abuse.
▶ 1:49:54The more we let bad actors come in into the system, the more it becomes harder for the good actors to succeed and make their way to America. And we've got programs that are good. People come here for a while and they stay. Some of them become citizens. Some come go back every year and they work hard. Those are good people. But we're screwing them. We're giving them the short end of the stick.
▶ 1:50:17And that's why it's so hypocritical to mix in the bad folks with the good folks the way we are when we converse and debate about it. A secure legal immigration system is not anti-immigrant. It's pro-American and it's pro-immigrant. And we need to restore that integrity. So let's stop letting bad people abuse the system. I got some questions for you real fast. It's like when you vote, you got to vote for this one or that one.
▶ 1:50:46I simply want a yes or a no answer. I don't want a whole long thing. Mr. Norasteraster, I want a yes or a no. Are Americans safer when we stop thoroughly vetting visa applicants? Miss Juan, you start. No. No. No. No. Good. Should foreign nationals with radical or anti-American social media be denied visas? Yes. Yes. Broadly depends. I'm a free speech absolutist. I'm a free speech absolutist.
▶ 1:51:14I believe in the first amendment of the United States. When you vote, when you vote as a first amendment believer, when you vote, don't talk over me. This is my time, not yours. When you vote, you have to make a decision. Is it fair to legal immigrants who wait years to let visa overstays apply for work permits after they broke the law? Yes or no? No. No. Yes. No. Should someone who was Last one. Should someone who was I'm out of time.
▶ 1:51:44I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I have two quick unanimous consent requests. Yes, ma'am. Uh the first one is an article from NBC News entitled, "Hundreds of international doctors due to Start Medical Residencies are in visa limbo." And the second one is um because we've had so much conversation on overstays, it's the Homeland Security fiscal year 2023 entry exit overstay report that specifically says that the overstay rate is 1.02%.
▶ 1:52:16Without objection, admitted. The chair recognizes Representative Ross. Uh thank you, Mr. Chairman, and the ranking member for holding this hearing. Um, I am gonna I'm gonna try to overlap in a positive way with Mr. Van Drew and talk about what we need to enhance legal immigration.
▶ 1:52:36I am absolutely convinced that um we can fix our immigration system to deal with illegal immigration um the overstay situation. Obviously, we're working on the border, but we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Both the chairman and I represent one of the fastest growing areas in this country in North Carolina every day. And we just came back from being in our districts.
▶ 1:53:07I hear from the agriculture sector, largest um largest sector uh economic sector in North Carolina, the hospitality industry, the construction industry. We've talked about the medical industry, the research industry that they need more workers and they need to have people who can get their visas. They need better H-1B processing.
▶ 1:53:36They need better H2B visa processing. They want to hire people who are legal. But we have a backlog. We have not increased many of these uh these visa quotas in more than 30 years. People want to come into this this area. We are growing. We have amazing institutions of higher education educating lots of people from the United States.
▶ 1:54:04I'm very big on increasing the pipeline from the United States. But as we've discussed in North Carolina, there simply are not enough people for our growing economy. So increasing pathways to legal immigration is either the first or the second highest priority for the North Carolina Farm Bureau, the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce, the North Carolina Homebuilders, our education
▶ 1:54:35institutions. Mr. Nar, can you tell us how we could fix some of the problems that we're hearing with our visa system and expand opportunities for more of these people to get legal visas because these employers in my district and in my state who are generating all the economic prosperity want to do it the
▶ 1:55:05right way. The major problem with the legal immigration system in the US is that it is far too restrictive. It is far too complicated. It is far too burdensome. It is the second most complicated portion of American law after the income tax. Now, I'm just a humble supporter of the free market. But I think that people should be able to go back and forth based on where they are demanded, where their opportunities are, where people want to buy and sell uh from them and to them.
▶ 1:55:32And I think that we need to expand these opportunities for low-skilled workers in areas like agriculture, but also create a visa for construction workers. I think we need to create a visa for manufacturing, for all different types of for every sector of the American economy, for midskilled workers, for people who are higher skilled, make it easier for them to come in. Some of them temporarily, some of them permanently. I mean, but at a minimum, I think the thing that we can do is create a visa for entrepreneurs, which this country entirely lacks. I mean, that's the no-brainer here. That's the biggest no-brainer around.
▶ 1:56:03And Mr. Nasta, we've only touched on this. Um, I have ever since I got here been one of the primary sponsors of a bipartisan biccameal bill to deal with what we call the documented dreamers. The children of H1B visa holders who come over here before, you know, they weren't born here. Sometimes their siblings are US citizens, but they are not. and they literally age out of their visas when they're 21 years old.
▶ 1:56:31And the backlog is so long that they will never be able to be able to get a visa or become a US citizen. There are the children of highly educated people. Most of them are in college. We've paid for their education and now we're deporting them to countries that we compete with. What do you say to those documented dreamers who I've been fighting so hard for? You should be allowed to stay in the United States. You should be allowed to become an American citizen.
▶ 1:56:59You should be allowed to use your talents and your skills and your grit to do well here. The one thing we know about children doing well or how well they're going to do in life is it's related to their parents. And H1Bs who come to the United States do extraordinarily well. They have above the 90th percentile in wages in the United States. So kids are going to do about as well as they do if we let them. if the government lets them succeed. And all we need to do is get out of their way.
▶ 1:57:26All we need to do is take the government out of this equation to legalize these folks and allow them to do what they want to do, which is to succeed and become Americans. Thank you, and I yield back. Thank you, Miss Ross. The chair now recognizes myself for five minutes. Miss Vaughn, one of my greatest frustrations is the conflating of illegal versus legal. No one up here is against legal.
▶ 1:57:48We all want to strengthen it, but it's very hard to be pro-leal immigration and pro- illegal And this notion that uh we are the recipients of only the best to the brightest, only those who refuse to commit crimes, only those who give more than they take to this country. That is not necessarily the case in any way, shape, or form as it relates to illegal immigrants. I'm a former federal prosecutor. I saw a lot of the people that were coming across the border.
▶ 1:58:16Uh many of whom we had no idea who they were. We had no idea that they were here until they committed some grievous act. Can you paint the other side of this coin, ma'am, and talk about the tolls that this country has received and been victimized by as it relates to illegal Wow. Let me count the ways.
▶ 1:58:35Um but I want to do want to address one quick beforehand and that is that you know I we've talked about um good people coming here through some of the legal programs and um I think we also need to remember that our student visa programs and our exchange visitor programs and some of the work programs would would be far more successful if the people who who benefited from those programs went back to their home country and helped en enrich and advance their home countries.
▶ 1:59:06That's part of the original purpose of these types of programs. So, I don't think we should always talk in in terms of trying to get people to stay here. But, as far as the the costs of illegal immigration, they're numerous. Um, it it causes labor market distortions that harm Americans. The fiscal costs are huge. The CBO just came out with a report uh detailing those costs.
▶ 1:59:29But the the the worst cost is the public safety and national security threats that occur when we allow people. Just off the top of your head, do you know how many Americans died in 1990 from drug overdoses? I do not. It was roughly 4,500. Do you know how many have died in the last 20 years from drug from drug overdoses? I do not. Almost 1.2 million. And I know there was an effort to the role that illegal immigration plays in the drug culture, in drug crimes, in violent crime and so forth.
▶ 1:59:59But can you separate America's problem and addiction and death from drugs and crime from illegal immigration? No. Uh there is a direct nexus um with uh transnational crime and and an insecure border in this uh that's very well established and you cannot separate the two. Mr. Mr.
▶ 2:00:18Hanges, in regards to your experience and your uh expertise, did the Biden administration, again going back to this this construct, legal versus illegal immigration, did they do anything to prevent illegal immigration from only accelerating in this country? No, I think they they did the opposite. They wanted to conflate all immigration into migrants so that there was no distinction between legal and illegal.
▶ 2:00:42And did that open up the the pathway not only for illegal immigration to overwhelm the system, but also the pathways of legal immigration? Were those abused by bad actors? Well, when you put all the staff, for example, the border patrol is not patrolling the border, more people can come in. Um, if USCIS is processing all the cases of of paroleies and asylles, they don't have time to process the the legal cases. So, I think legal immigrants suffered more under the Biden administration than they should have.
▶ 2:01:09and this idea that um that illegal immigrants do not commit crime. I want to ask you a very basic question. Is it easier to prosecute, convict, and jail someone who was born in the United States, or is it easier to convict someone that you don't even know is here? Well, it's easier to convict someone when you know who they are. But either way, it takes a lot of time. That's right. That's right. And so people for the in terms of the drug sales, the drug smuggling and so forth, if we don't know that they're here in the first place, it's harder to investigate and convict.
▶ 2:01:39Is that correct? Yes. Now, Mr. Brown, in regards to uh your own personal story, I want to ask you just a few questions outside of your own experience. What other types of victims do you deal with as it relates to immigration fraud? Vast majority of our clients are traditional one-sided marriage fraud cases. Uh those are traditionally when someone a foreign national convinces and deceives a US citizen into marriage for the purpose of getting a green card.
▶ 2:02:06But over the last couple decades, there's been new types of marriage fraud that has emerged. One is called VAWA self-etition fraud. That's when they file a form I360. That's when they falsely accuse their spouse of some sort of domestic violence in order to become eligible to basically pursue the green card without any obstruction. Um, another one is an I751 waiver fraud. The Congress passed the 1986 marriage fraud amendments act and created this conditional permanent residency regime.
▶ 2:02:37And this I uh 751 waiver is a way for them to get around the joint petition requirement by making a false accusation. The final form of marriagebased fraud is I864 fraud, which is a huge problem. I864 is basically a form of immigration alimony these days. And we've had numerous clients where foreign national marries them, comes into the US, doesn't even cohabitate with them, and sues them under the I864. There's no fraud exception in the federal statute, which should be changed. Okay, sir.
▶ 2:03:07Thank you for your testimony. To the victims who are here in the back, thank you for coming. We see you and um I yield back. Mr. Fry, Mr. Garcia, Mr. Garcia, Illinois. Mr. Garcia, I wasn't trying to skip you. I had to leave. So, I'm getting Mr. Fry to come and sit in the chair. Thank you uh Mr. Chairman.
▶ 2:03:28Uh before I make uh a few remarks, uh I want to just observe that the bulk of this hearing has been about illegal or unauthorized immigration and we're supposed to be talking about legal immigration and visas and the visa Uh in addition to that, people went as far as to talk about an existential threat.
▶ 2:03:54People talked about inaccurately about the last amnesty that was granted which is incorrect. It was 39 years ago that Congress enacted the Immigration Reform and Control Act known as URKA signed into law by President Reagan for those who may be mistaken or were too young or not born yet to be able to talk about it as if it were a fact.
▶ 2:04:23But once again, we're here so that Republicans can pretend to be concerned about an immigration system that they have consistently undermined. For more than 30 years, 39 to be exact, Republicans, with a few exceptions, temporary ones, have rejected immigration reform and embrace largely a racist narrative that portrays immigrants as criminals and terrorists, all for short-term political gain.
▶ 2:04:53And I say that as a proud American who also is an immigrant to this country. And now under this administration, we have a lawless authoritarian regime that is terrorizing communities, kidnapping people off the streets, deporting US citizens, including children with cancer, locking up nearly 60,000 people, and depriving them of even food and basic necessities, and openly violating the
▶ 2:05:23law and preventing members of Congress from doing oversight. ITE visits. I experienced that last week with three other members in Illinois. And as my colleagues have pointed out, the administration is cracking down on legal immigration through over broad and discriminatory actions targeting international students and imposing travel bans on 19 countries.
▶ 2:05:51It is a cynical and cruel campaign that does nothing to improve the lives of working families. And the people of this country see through it. That's why the president's polling on immigration is underwater. Even though Republicans don't want to fix our immigration system, it's more important than ever to promote a thoughtful and nuanced approach to these issues. and we can look to history to inform our path forward.
▶ 2:06:21Mr. Narat, thank you for being here today. I want to ask you about the Brasetto program in the 1950s and60s that was a program as you know, do you think that it was more effective than the overly punitive system that we have in place today? And what lessons about the visa process can we learn from that program today? It was far more effective than the process we have today. It was not perfect by any means.
▶ 2:06:51There were definitely problems I think in any of these programs. The problems though back then were largely caused by too many rules and restrictions and frankly by the Mexican government side which sort of inserted a lot of corruption to steal wages uh from some of these workers. But what we saw was at the beginning of the expansion of the Brero program in 1952, there are around 2 million or so unauthorized immigrants in the US, almost all of them from Mexico.
▶ 2:07:16And within a few years of this program, the uh border flows, the illegal crossings uh fell by over 95% and the illegal immigrant population fell by 90% because they got these uh visas. was ended this program in 1964 and that is when the modern illegal immigration program or illegal immigration uh problem began was because Americans still demanded immigrant laborers but uh Congress uh had made it illegal.
▶ 2:07:47Thank you for that and I ask you that because it's personal to me. My father came to this country under that program, eventually became a lawful permanent resident and petitioned for us. That's how we arrived in 1965, another historic year in immigration law.
▶ 2:08:04So if Republicans want to restore integrity and I think you corrected the record uh sir and security to the visa process or enhance it perhaps then they should stop criminalizing immigrants at large and destroying those lawful pathways.
▶ 2:08:23If America wants to stay the vital country that it has been and remain a beacon for the rest of the world, then we need to restore those pathways which have been shut down. Thank you and I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I have a unanimous consent request. Uh, I seek unanimous consent to enter into the record this congressional research report titled US Citizenship and Immigration Services Operations and Issues for Congress.
▶ 2:08:53And it shows that out of 10 million forms processed by USCIS in 2023, only 1.6% were referred to the Office of Fraud Detection, National Security for any indications of fraud or national security threats. Without objection, chair now recognizes this gentleman from Texas, Mr. Hunt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Under the Biden administration, the United States was flooded with tens of millions of illegal immigrants that used dozens of visa programs to finesse their way into our great nation.
▶ 2:09:23In response to this invasion, President Trump signed an executive order simply returning immigration law back to the standards of July 19th, 2021, which restores and enhances all screening of foreign nationals, especially those who are considered to be a high risk to this country. In order to secure the homeland, which was about 77 millions million Americans voted for, we must do more than just finish the wall, fund CBP, and support ISIS's lawful deportation operations.
▶ 2:09:53We must also reform visa programs, which have been used to usurp federal immigration law. We were told post 911 that we were going to fight in Afghanistan, and that we had to fight in Iraq. And why? Because if we didn't fight the enemy there, then we're going to have to fight them here in our own country now. And now, because of the failures of the Democrat party's policies, they are now in our homeland. And how do we know?
▶ 2:10:20Because 382 citizens who are matches on the terror watch list were encountered at the southern border. And 99 of those were released into the United States from 2001 through 2023. Unacceptable. The Democrat party under Joe Biden and Kla Harris, Alejandro Mayorcus and numerous other dark money groups and NOS's made it their mission to flood this country with tens of millions of unvetted immigrants and people who wish to do us harm.
▶ 2:10:50Terrorists like Egyptian national Muhammad Sabri Solomon who used a homemade flamethrower and Molotov cocktails in Boulder, Colorado to attack pro-Israel demonstrators who are advocating for the release of hostages.
▶ 2:11:05this man who was admitted into the US in 2022 on a tourist visa and was then given work authorization in 2023 by yes, you guessed it, the Biden administration and had been posting pro-Muslim Brotherhood propaganda on his Facebook page for more than a decade. Disgusting. Miss Vaughn, thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate your testimony.
▶ 2:11:31If you had a magic wand that could create any policy to prevent tragedies such like we saw in Boulder, Colorado a few weeks ago, what would it be, ma'am? Uh, well, unfortunately, there's no machine that can read people's minds uh to know what their intent is um when they're coming here.
▶ 2:11:47Um but I think um one of the most important um uh improvements that we could make would be to require mandatory interviews for non-immigrant visa applicants and also um uh people who are applying for green cards and immigrant visas. Okay. We we should have eyes on and uh um you know personal contact with everyone who is Can you say can you say that again please?
▶ 2:12:16We should have personal contact with every single visa holder of every single individual that wants to enter this country. Am I right or wrong? Right. At a minimum for their first application. Some renewals are not high risk once you can examine their travel history. But every new applicant with very few except exceptions should have a personal interview.
▶ 2:12:38What what what the American public needs to understand and what we know is that 77 million people voted for exactly what President Trump is executing right now. The faux outrage from the left continues to ignore the damage that has been that has been done to our country and people that are literally maming our fellow fellow Americans while we have done nothing and we stood by idally. We are now acting and behaving in a way that enforces the law. This is not xenophobia.
▶ 2:13:08This is the way and the process that it takes to enter a sovereign nation. And we at the federal government must protect that. I am somebody that has deployed all over the world. No other country operates this way. There is not a single country in the world that would allow 20 million people to enter their country illegally and then when we do something about it, we then cry xenophobia. It would never happen.
▶ 2:13:35when I was stationed in Saudi Arabia, you have to have a diplomatic passport just to enter Saudi Arabian So, the idea that we should at least speak to every single person that wants to enter our country is a novel idea because everybody else does it. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for being here. Mr. Chair, I yield back the remainder of my time. Gentleman yields. The chair now recognizes the gentle lady from Texas, Miss Crockett. Thank you so much.
▶ 2:13:59Just interesting that um we're being accused of wanting all kinds of criminals to be on the streets or that we don't believe that people should show up to their um meetings and appointments. Last time I checked, there's a lot of people that are actually being grabbed as they are going in for their appointments. In fact, we know that one of the candidates that was recently running uh in this mayoral, he ended up being arrested because he decided that he was actually going to escort people that are actually showing up to their meetings.
▶ 2:14:25Or we know that the pope, yes, the pope himself decided that the church may need to have people that are going to escort people as they're going into their meetings because the reality is that what they are claiming what they want to do versus what they're actually doing, the actions don't match up. And while we are supposed to be talking about visas, somehow we continue to cherrypick and talk about one criminal act and another criminal act.
▶ 2:14:49And it is so very interesting to me that yes, we will say people are xenophobic because when you start to decide that just because somebody came from another country, they are automatically some kind of criminal, that does sound kind of xenophobic to me because you are using a paintbrush to paint an entire group of people where the vast majority of them are coming here because they are actually seeking a better life. But let me get to what this hearing is supposed to be about.
▶ 2:15:15The idea that Trump and my Republican colleagues want to restore integrity and security in the visa process is actually a joke. Let me be clear. Integrity is not snatching lawful visa holders off the streets and throwing them into unmarked vans. Integrity is not revoking visas based on social media post that hurt somebody's little feelings because kids decide that they want to go after Trump or this administration. We have a thing called free speech in this country.
▶ 2:15:41And since we're talking about integrity, I'm confused as to why my Republican colleagues aren't talking about the lack of integrity when it comes to the president's family's visas. Let me remind y'all that Melania, the first lady, a model. And when I say model, I'm not talking about Tyra Banks, Cindy Crawford, or Naomi Campbell level, applied for and was given an EB1 visa. And what's that stands for is an Einstein visa. Now, y'all that don't know, let me tell you how you receive an Einstein visa.
▶ 2:16:11You're supposed to have some sort of significant achievement, like being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize or a Pulitzer, um being an Olympic medalist, or having other sustained extraordinary abilities and success in sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics. Last time I checked, the first lady had none of those accolades under her belt. It doesn't take an Einstein to see that the math ain't math in here.
▶ 2:16:35Nevertheless, what Republicans are doing with this reconciliation process, the travel bans, and revoking visas jeopardizes our national security, it threatens our communities, our higher education, and our economy. Visas like the largely vetted J visas for higher education and M visas for trade, training attract the next innovators, medical providers, researchers, and educators that we need to build on American success.
▶ 2:17:05I'm not gonna mess up your name, so I'm not doing that, but I'm with you. Okay. Um, in your experience, do individuals on J or M visas typically improve or impair our economy? Uh, they generally improve the economy and I can give a brief example. Uh, my wife is a very successful woman. She makes a ton of money, which I'm grateful for. Uh, and the reason why we're able to do that while having three children is because of the Opair visa.
▶ 2:17:33somebody who is here on a J who is here and able to supply this uh for us. But I also want to defend Melania real quick. Not everybody could marry Donald Trump and I think that's quite an achievement. Uh so I think she deserves credit for that. Nobody up here could have done it. I you you sure right. I couldn't do it. Uh but anyway, in fact, J visa holders contribute 43.8 billion to the US economy and support more than 300,000 jobs. And make no mistake, immigrants improve the health of US citizens, too.
▶ 2:18:00Despite the fact we already have a doctor shortage, Trump's reckless travel ban and visa overhaul are exacerbating this crisis by impairing hundreds of hospitals with foreign trained doctors set to do their residencies here in the United States, meaning fewer people will get the help they need and more people will die. Now, let me remind you that Republicans are trying to gut Medicaid. Roughly 4.5 million people receive caregiver services through Medicaid. And most of these folks are in red states.
▶ 2:18:26And wouldn't you know that in 2023, Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that almost 30% of long-term care providers or home caretakers were immigrants. It's like Republicans want Americans to suffer. Now, Republicans say visas make us less secure. Let's talk about how U visas visas given to victims of crimes like rape, murder, human trafficking, torture, abduction, kidnapping to help law enforcement with their investigation or prosecutions of these crimes.
▶ 2:18:55These folks are risking their own security for broader safety of Americans and our communities. Thank you so much. I will Gentle lady yields. And um I'll chair now recognizes himself for five minutes. Uh I think it's important to realize how we got here, right? I I served in Congress for two and a half years and one of the first hearings that we ever had. The ranking member of this committee, not this one, uh said that we were imagin Republicans were imagining a border crisis, right?
▶ 2:19:23Kind of a stark commentary from the ranking member when all evidence seemed to suggest and show that there was indeed a border crisis where millions of people were pouring in illegally. And one of the concerns of that not only from the illegal side Mr. not talked about. Uh but the legal side too, Miss Vaughn, uh it seems to me that the evidence suggests that the Biden administration kind of flooded the zone a little bit and there weren't adequate checks on the people that were going through the visa process normally. Would you agree with that? I would agree with that.
▶ 2:19:53They implemented through um Secretary Morcus a get to yes culture. um were instructed to minimize vetting um and to approve, you know, as a default and discouraged from um uh referring cases to fraud. They were not allowed to issue notices to appear for failed benefit applicants.
▶ 2:20:18So they sort of took away the consequence of filing a a frivolous application um by you know letting people who who were here illegally applied for visas and the few that were denied you know nothing happened to them. They and that created um a huge impetus to apply for some of these visa programs that people you know really wouldn't even claim to qualify for.
▶ 2:20:43They knew by just filing the application they could get a work permit and protection for deportation and and that just destroys the integrity of the system and it makes legal applicants have to wait longer for the benefits that they deserve. Correct. And now we're now we're forced with figuring out whether people are categorized in the right place. Right. Whether they were even lawfully uh allowed to to get the visa that they were supposed to to receive. That's right.
▶ 2:21:07There have been people whose lawful status has been held back by all these frivolous applications and people who are have either received them already um fraudulently or who are um on waiting lists and who have work permits who shouldn't have them at all.
▶ 2:21:24When it comes to vetting, obviously the Biden administration rescended Trump's prior executive order for his from his first term uh that that kind of strengthened the visa process, but the the new executive order under President Trump called for maximum vetting uh and ordered reviews of countries with poor screening uh and and airgo travel suspensions of course. Um Mr. Henson, can can a restriction on a country be And how would that look?
▶ 2:21:50I guess when they would comply and have adequate background checks of their own citizens, that would that would be a a reason why uh a country that is on that list uh could now be um allowed into the country. If they would take all of their citizens back when we asked them to was one factor. Uh the overstay rate in some of these countries for Chad it was 50%. So out of every two people issued a visa, one doesn't come back. Maybe it's time to rethink that one.
▶ 2:22:16um if they got their house in order, if their central agencies were able to issue credible documents and verify criminal records, I would assume that they could be let back in. Mr. Angerson, would you agree that our foreign adversaries exploit our immigration system? And if you do agree with that, how so? Absolutely. Um well, we know that the Chinese have uh spied on American companies, American universities, and the American government. Obviously, it's not all of them. It's just a small percentage, but that's all you need.
▶ 2:22:44We know that uh the Russians have done the same, the Cubans. Um it it's a very easy uh country to get into or at least it has been. Uh Mr. Brown, does the current executive order by President Trump, do you believe that that closes security gaps uh more effectively than the previous administrations? Uh maybe, but I think the what the Trump administration has is some wonderful statutes that you all have already passed and gives them wide latitude to enforce some of these laws.
▶ 2:23:14You just brought up the fact, what do we do with all those people who came in under the Biden administration through legal channels and weren't eligible? In my opinion, the Trump administration tomorrow should stand up a permanent revocation division inside USCIS and look at these look at these applications that went through.
▶ 2:23:31Number two, the other thing they can do right now is for a lot of the victims who have been personally harmed by these foreign nationals, there is an existing process in place with the Board of Immigration Appeals that allows them to appeal their I130 petitions based on fraud. That's something they can implement right now. There's no other statute that needs to be done. Thank you for that, Miss Miss Vaughn.
▶ 2:23:53Uh, regarding President Trump's executive current executive order, do you believe that if we had had this in place during the Biden administration, uh, that ICE would not have had to uh, apprehend 11 Iranian nationals this past Sunday, one of them being a former army sniper for the IRGC? Um, well, I mean, it's hard to know.
▶ 2:24:12Um but I do believe that there would have been um the ones who came over the border would are more likely to have been stopped and the ones who came on visas are less likely to have been able to get those visas.
▶ 2:24:25I mean really um you know since we can't don't have a machine that can read people's minds, the the best defense against allowing people to enter who mean our country harm is to have routine across the board immigration enforcement that will ensnare the the threats as well as the people who are committing fraud or simply don't qualify. I agree with you and including a look a purview of their social media which would have shown at least with the Boulder, Colorado individual. Yes.
▶ 2:24:55Uh sharing Muslim Brotherhood propaganda. Uh with that I see my time has expired. Um and Mr. Chairman UC recognized. Go ahead. Thank you. It's a UC request further to the colloquy between Mr. Noresta and uh the congresswoman from Texas. Um a m this is in Pew Research Center. A majority of Americans say immigrants fill jobs US citizens do not want. Without objection. Thank you. Uh that concludes today's hearing.
▶ 2:25:24We thank the witnesses for appearing before the subcommittee today. Without objection, all members will have five legislative days to submit additional written requests for the witnesses uh or additional materials for the record. Without objection, the hearing is adjourned. Thank you.