The standard application fee for a B-2 tourist visa is $185, a sum that most Americans would consider trivial. In poor Third World countries, however, $185 might be more than a week’s pay, and that’s just for the application — paying $185 doesn’t guarantee the visa will be issued.
Keep that information in mind, as we discuss Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez, a Mexican who arrived in the U.S. in 2001 at age 6 along with his family, traveling on B-2 tourist visas. They never went back:
Federal officials say Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez, identified in court documents as the alleged ringleader of a plot to attack the White House UFC event this past weekend, was in the country illegally after overstaying a visa, according to information from Fox News Digital.
According to Homeland Security information in the documents, Alvarez came to the United States as a child and received deportation relief through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2014 after failing to leave when his B2 visa expired in 2001.
Five co?conspirators have been arrested this month in what investigators describe as a plan to use explosive?laden drones to force an evacuation from the event, followed by sniper fire aimed at the fleeing crowd. Federal authorities say Alvarez was responsible for planning, organizing and directing the planned attack.
Court records identified Alvarez as a foreign national after he consented to consular notification following his arrest this weekend, though the documents did not specify his immigration status or country of origin.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has lodged a detainer for him following his arrest by the FBI in Omaha, Nebraska, on the day of the event. . . .
According to the Department of Justice, Alvarez used the name “Shepherd” in a group chat dedicated to planning the attack and allegedly responded “as many and as deadly as we can get” when asked about making drones with explosives.
Andrew R. Arthur explains an important point about B-2 visas:
Lauren Bis, DHS acting assistant secretary for media relations, had the following to say about Alvarez and his alleged involvement in this purported plot:
This illegal alien from Mexico should never have been allowed in our country. He was the ringleader of a failed terror attack targeting UFC Freedom 250 at the White House. … He and his co-conspirators now face charges of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to commit violence on White House grounds. He will face justice and swiftly be removed from our country.
Given that Alvarez was about six years old when he came to this country in 2001 on a B-2 tourist visa (likely with family), I wouldn’t go so far as to state that he “should never have been allowed” into this country, but (assuming the reporting is true), the fact he never left suggests that whoever brought him didn’t have the appropriate “nonimmigrant” intent, i.e., the intent to return home. …
And when nonimmigrants — and B-2 tourists in particular — fail to depart as promised, it makes it more difficult their fellow countrymen to come here temporarily, but legally, in the future. Let me explain.
Section 214 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) governs the issuance of nonimmigrant visas at consular offices abroad, and subsection (b) therein states that an applicant for such a visa is “presumed to be an immigrant” — that is presumed to be coming here permanently, not temporarily — “until he establishes to the satisfaction of the consular officer … that he is entitled to a nonimmigrant status”.
That “214(b)” ineligibility is the most common ground on which consular officers deny nonimmigrant visas, and when nationals of a specific country have high nonimmigrant “overstay” rates, consulates tighten up their nonimmigrant-visa issuances.
While I haven’t handled an immigration case in over a decade, I remain an attorney in good standing and receive calls from U.S. citizens and green card holders who are attempting, unsuccessfully, to secure tourist visas for their parents and other loved ones to come to this country for a visit.
It breaks my heart, but there is usually nothing I can do. “Once bitten, twice shy” doesn’t just apply to unfamiliar canines. Untruthful and noncompliant nonimmigrant visitors ruin others’ hopes, plans, and reunions.
When we hear the phrase “illegal immigrant,” we tend to think of someone wading across the Rio Grande or being smuggled over the border, but these “visa overstay” cases are also a huge part of the problem: Foreigners get into the country on tourist visas, student visas or temporary work visas, and then just never go back. And as explained, these cheaters make it more difficult for honest people to get temporary visas. They pay their $185 application fee and then get turned down for a tourist visa because some State Department staffer at the embassy suspects they won’t return after their visa expires. Dear reader, I am personally familiar with such a case, and it makes me angry.
Speaking of angry, here’s Andrew R. Arthur on DACA:
For more than two decades, congressmen from both sides have tried to pass some form of “DREAM Act”, that is, an amnesty for aliens living in the United States illegally after arriving here — with and without their parents — as children.
And for nearly a quarter century, they’ve been unsuccessful, and regardless of how it turns out, this case is unlikely to further their cause.
The failure of DREAM Act legislation led the Obama administration to create DACA, which provides quasi-legal status to aliens who entered the United States while under the age of 16 before June 15, 2007, who were born after June 15, 1981, who meet certain educational standards, and who have not been convicted of certain crimes.
DACA was not created by Congress, or even by executive order or executive action, for that matter. Instead, it’s the product of a memo issued by then-DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano on June 15, 2012 (five months before that year’s presidential elections), that has become a political football ever since.
As its name suggests, DACA is a unique flavor of “deferred action”, an “inherently discretionary” exercise of “prosecutorial discretion” to which applicants have “no legal right”, though aliens granted deferred action don’t accrue periods of unlawful presence in the United States while in that status and are eligible to apply for employment authorization.
ICE is quick to add that “deferred action does not confer lawful immigration status upon an individual”, meaning that an alien granted DACA exists in a nether zone between legal and not.
How the hell has DACA survived? It’s not a law passed by Congress, nor is it an executive order. DACA exists because of a mere memo issued by Janet Napolitano 14 years ago, which ought to have been canceled the very day President Trump was first inaugurated in 2017, yet we still have many thousands of these DACA recipients in the country. Even if we stipulate that some of these people are potentially good citizens — having arrived here as children, through no criminal intent of their own, etc. — they have now had more than a decade to get their paperwork straightened out and obtain permanent legal residency (i.e., “Green Card” status) and go through the seven-year naturalization process.
The point here is that foreign lawbreakers make it more difficult for everybody else, in part because abuses of the immigration system make us Americans so angry that we start saying things like, “Mass deportation is the moderate option.” (Don’t ask about the extreme option.)
When politicians start using gimmicks like DACA to rig the system, it only compounds the anger among those of us who are smart enough to figure out that we’re being lied to, and who refuse to be guilt-tripped by a lot of “diversity is our strength” rhetoric or excerpts from the poetry of Emma Lazarus. Americans historically have been a pragmatic people, willing to apply practical common sense to any problem we encounter, but our leaders have taken advantage of our good nature by offering phony “reforms” and allegedly temporary measures like DACA that, upon closer examination, are really amnesty. Politicians know amnesty is unpopular, and therefore engage in attempted deception about what it is they’re doing. When we see through their charades and call them out, they then accuse of us of xenophobic bigotry: “RAAAAACIST!”
There is a certain handsome young fellow — an athlete and scholar from a fine Christian family — in a Latin American country famous for soccer and beef, who would very much like to visit the United States. About three years ago, this gaucho of the pampas was working in a coffee shop to earn his tuition when he made the acquaintance of an American girl who was spending her junior year of college studying abroad in a Spanish-language immersion program. Because the girl was very beautiful, of course the fellow at the coffee shop fell deeply in love with her. After she returned to America, the handsome young fellow went through the ordeal of trying to obtain a visa to come visit her (in order to meet the girl’s father, as is proper). He paid that $185 application fee and was turned down by some State Department hack at the U.S. embassy.
“Do not worry,” said the girl’s father. “This is the Biden administration. Once Trump gets in office, he’ll make Marco Rubio the Secretary of State, and my friend Marco will fix this problem.” The lovebirds are still waiting for this Hallmark Channel movie to reach its happy ending, but perhaps you understand my resentment of the status quo, where we’re expected to feel sorry for illegal aliens, even while the system makes life difficult for those who obey the law and follow the rules.
My interest in this issue is quite personal, and calling me a xenophobic bigot is only going to make me even angrier than I already am.
Remember: Mass deportation is the moderate option.
UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! It has been pointed out by commenters that Trump tried to end DACA, but that got overturned by a 5-4 Supreme Court, as if Cabinet secretaries can just determine immigration policy and, once such a policy is established, it can never be changed by any future administration. Exactly how that’s constitutional, I can’t understand. Neither could Justice Thomas:
DHS created DACA during the Obama administration without any statutory authorization and without going through the requisite rulemaking process. As a result, the program was unlawful from its inception. The majority does not even attempt to explain why a court has the authority to scrutinize an agency’s policy reasons for rescinding an unlawful program . . .
DACA was “unlawful from its inception,” and yet somehow it’s against the law to end it? It’s a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
