Category: reason

It’s been almost two years since the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) began accepting applications for new growers of research cannabis, and two dozen applicants are still in regulatory limbo.

Since the DEA announced in August 2016 that it would end the federal monopoly on producing cannabis for scientific research in the United States, growers, investors, researchers, applicants, and even members of Congress have sought to understand why a relatively simple licensing review process has stretched on for nearly two years. The answer is pretty straightforward: Attorney General Jeff Sessions, for reasons he has not publicly disclosed, decided to intervene in a process that has historically not involved the attorney general in order to stop the DEA from issuing licenses to growers.

While the Controlled Substances Act gives the attorney general regulatory authority over scheduled drugs, that authority has historically been delegated to the DEA, which is part of the Justice Department. The DEA has a whole division, in fact, dedicated to “investigat[ing] the diversion of controlled pharmaceuticals and listed chemicals from legitimate sources while ensuring an adequate and uninterrupted supply for legitimate medical, commercial, and scientific needs.”

Members of Congress are not happy with Sessions’ obstruction of the licensing process. In April, Sens. Orrin Hatch (R–Utah) and Kamala Harris (D–Calif.) sent the attorney general a letter in which they asked him to provide the Senate with a timeline for processing applications from potential manufacturers of research marijuana. They also asked the DOJ to update applicants on the review process. Both actions, Hatch and Harris suggested, should be completed by May 15, 2018. Not only did the DOJ miss that deadline, but it doesn’t seem interested in playing catch-up.

Four license applicants I interviewed in late June told me they’ve received no official updates from either the DEA or the DOJ in months. Applicants who have spoken to congressional offices working on this issue say their contacts are equally frustrated by Sessions’ obstruction of the DEA’s licensing process.

(Reason obtained the identities of the 26 initial applicants through a Freedom of Information Act request to the DEA. Reason is not identifying which applicants provided information for this story so as not to jeopardize their chances of approval. )

“No ‘formal’ communication for months,” one applicant told me by email. “They do answer questions I’ve asked, although on a limited basis.”

“No formal communication,” another told me. “Hoping to hear more soon.”

“Just silence,” a third applicant told me over email.

The Hatch-Harris letter captures both the widespread support for studying cannabis and the disproportionate power Sessions has to maintain the status quo. “Expanded research has been called for by President Trump’s Surgeon General, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, the FDA, the CDC, the National Highway Safety Administration, the National Institute of Health, the National Cancer Institute, the National Academies of Sciences, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse,” the senators wrote. “In order to facilitate such research, scientists and lawmakers must have timely guidance on whether, when, and how these manufacturers’ applications will be resolved.”

The rapid pace of marijuana legalization at the state level, meanwhile, might seem to lessen the need for federally licensed growers of research cannabis. Can’t researchers just use the myriad cannabis products available in the 30 states that allow recreational or medical use? They cannot.

Researchers who want to test cannabis products in humans must comply with federal regulations governing the handling of Schedule I controlled substances. Those regulations require researchers who would like to use domestically produced marijuana to obtain their material from a federally licensed grower. For decades now, there has been only one such grower: Mahmoud ElSohly at the University of Mississippi, who operates under a contract with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). The hundreds of researchers who are licensed by the federal government to study marijuana in the U.S. must use material obtained from NIDA, despite credible concerns about quality control and the agency’s ability to provide material that reflects the diversity of products available to consumers in medical and recreational dispensaries across the country.

No other field of drug research or development requires that all pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions that would like to source their materials domestically get them from one person chosen by the federal government. To see the impact on the U.S. drug industry, one need look no further than the U.K., which produced Epidiolex, the first marijuana-derived drug to ever be approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Could GW Pharmaceuticals, the maker of Epidiolex, have brought its drug to market if its research had used cannabis grown at the University of Mississippi? Stephen Schultz, the company’s vice president of investor relations, wouldn’t speculate. He did say, however, that the U.K.’s cannabis regulations are essential to the company’s drug development strategy. “We develop medicines that have a very specific cannabinoid profile,” Schultz said. “So it is very important that we be in complete control of creating our medicines, from growing to extracting.”

What’s more, it won’t be possible to get FDA approval for a cannabis-derived medicine made in the United States until new manufacturers are approved, since the material used in Phase III clinical trials must be identical to the material used in the medicine. In other words, NIDA marijuana cannot be used in Phase III trials.

In August 2016, it seemed like the U.S. might finally allow a market for research cannabis. That month, the DEA, which for years had resisted attempts to create such a market, announced that it would begin accepting applications for additional licenses to manufacture research marijuana. “Although no drug product made from marijuana has yet been shown to be safe and effective,” the notice in the Federal Register said, the DEA “fully supports expanding research into the potential medical utility of marijuana and its chemical constituents.”

Some two dozen entrepreneurs and companies submitted lengthy applications in the months that followed that announcement. Many submitted additional information at the DEA’s request. Two applicants told me they’d raised millions in funding, and several others said they’d made intellectual property arrangements with cannabis growers and researchers overseas. Plots of land were scouted and buildings were leased.

But enthusiasm quickly gave way to anxiety after Sessions was confirmed as attorney general in February 2017. That August, anxiety turned to dread when The Washington Post reported that Acting DEA Administrator Chuck Rosenstein had resigned after butting heads with Sessions over research cannabis. Rosenstein was reportedly in favor of approving new licenses, but Sessions brought the review to a screeching halt.

The Washington Post story eventually made its way to Hatch, who asked Sessions at a hearing in October 2017 why the DOJ had yet to license new growers of cannabis for pharmaceutical research. During their brief exchange, Sessions told Hatch it would be “healthy to have some more competition in the supply” of research marijuana, but the DOJ was not going to approve all 26 applicants. I contacted Hatch’s office twice for comment but received no response.

Sessions suggested that the DEA lacked the capacity to supervise even a handful of additional cannabis manufacturers. That claim sounds spurious considering that the DEA routinely approves applications to manufacture Schedule I and II substances other than marijuana. The agency approved eight such manufacturing applications in June 2018, seven in May 2018, eight in April 2018, and three in February 2018. (One applicant familiar with the DEA’s licensing process told me the cost of supervising additional license holders is probably marginal.)

Senators questioned the attorney general again in April 2018. At that hearing, Sessions came up with another excuse for not allowing the DEA to move forward. This time, he claimed approving additional marijuana growers might violate a United Nations treaty signed by the U.S. This claim is almost certainly not true even under the most literal and conservative reading of that treaty.

One more deadline looms. Hatch and Harris would like to see Sessions act on all outstanding applications, either approving or rejecting them, by August 11, 2018, the two-year anniversary of the DEA’s announcement in the Federal Register. By comparison, it took the DOJ less than six months to process the controlled substance manufacturing applications it approved in June, one of which was for making synthetic marijuana.

If Sessions blows the August deadline, he won’t just be smiting a crop of would-be cannabis entrepenuers. He will be standing in the way of medical progress and punishing patients and their families in the process.

It turns out the European Union will not be destroying the internet with a harsh copyright enforcement system, at least not yet.

Today the European Parliament turned away a set of proposed regulations called the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. These regulations raised alarm bells among free speech and digital activists because they would greatly expand the reach and breadth of copyright laws for the benefit of media and entertainment companies in a way that is likely to result in massive amounts of online censorship.

Two articles within the directive were causing the biggest headaches. Article 11, designed to protect established media outlets in Europe, would have granted them the authority to demand that anybody who wanted to excerpt even small parts of their stories get (and potentially pay for) a license or permission from them. That requirement would have extended even as far as the “previews” that show up on social media sites when people share a link to a news story.

The larger threat came from Article 13. That section, designed for the benefit of the entertainment industry, would require any online outlet where users can share content (everything from YouTube to dating sites) to create an automated system of filters to prevent the posting of copyrighted material. Experts warned that such a system, which would rely on databases, would have no way of telling whether copyrighted material was being used legally under the “fair use” exceptions allowed by various countries.

The end result of both provisions could be a wide regime of online censorship that only the larger online companies would have to resources to successfully navigate. It would encourage scams and threats falsely accusing sites of copyright violations to shut them down or entangle them in court cases. Scholars, tech experts, and free speech advocates have been warning the European Union not to move forward with this plan. As a vote approached this week, Wikipedia shut down access to versions of its site in Spanish, Italian, and Polish as a protest and warning. These proposed rules would be a compliance nightmare for the free online encyclopedia, which relies heavily on fair use of media content and freely shared images.

While the new regulations passed a committee vote in late June, today E.U. lawmakers rejected it in by a vote of 318 to 278. That vote means the proposal will be debated by the full parliament in September and probably will be revised significantly. European media outlets and entertainment industry representatives plan to keep pushing for the regulations, which they say will provide much-needed “leverage” with big tech companies like Google and Facebook. But copyright enforcement mechanisms are often used against the little guy to try to censor criticism or other types of speech that people don’t like.

Read more about the awfulness of this E.U. proposal here.

In late June, members and supporters of Desiree Alliance, a sex work advocacy organization, gathered in the Los Angeles office of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to begin organizing for the legalization of sex work. The event featured nearly a dozen sex workers, including adult actress and Los Angeles-based sex work activist, Siouxsie Q.

Attendees at the meeting drafted a manifesto called the National Sex Worker Anti-Criminalization Principles, which author and escort Maggie O’Neill described as a document designed to “provide a working template for a national platform” for sex-worker rights.

In the one-page manifesto, they offer recommendations for both sex workers and those not in the profession. Recommendations include respecting the expertise and experience of sex workers and allowing sex workers to maintain their own health. The manifesto also demands that sex workers be granted certain rights such as choosing their own sexual relationships and guaranteeing full access to social, medical, and justice services without discrimination.

“We’re national voices, and we came together with a collective mission to put forth a statement of how we are to be interacted with,” said Cris Sardina, director of the Desiree Alliance. “And that was accomplished today.”

Sex work advocates hope their manifesto can tackle a host of issues, including concerns about FOSTA/SESTA legislation, which restricts their ability to advertise their services online; building a coalition of former and current sex workers to speak of their experiences; and pushing back against anti-sex work advocates conflating consensual sex work with “sex trafficking.”

There are clear parallels between the statement and the Denver Principles, published nearly three decades ago by HIV-positive gay men organizing a response to the AIDS crisis. The Denver Principles offered recommendations such as supporting HIV-positive people in the struggle against firings, evictions, and stigmatization while pushing for privacy rights and equal access to healthcare. Many LGBT scholars and activists cite the Denver Principles as a major blow to the stigmatization of persons with HIV/AIDS.

A 27-year-old Cleveland man faces between 15 and 30 years in prison for allegedly producing child pornography. But no children were harmed by his actions: The man merely took consensual, sexually suggestive pictures of his 17-year-old girlfriend when he was 20.

The age of consent in Ohio is 16, so it was legal for the man, Edward Marrero, to have sex with his girlfriend. It was a crime, however, to photograph her the in the nude, because the federal definition of child pornography covers images of anyone under the age of 18.

According to Cleveland.com, Marrero accidentally admitted his conduct while on the stand in federal court, testifying in defense of a roommate who was also facing child porn charges. (The article does not clarify whether the roommate’s alleged crimes were as farcical as Marrero’s, and it does not give the context of Marrero’s inadvertent confession.) As soon as Marrero had finished testifying, the feds arrested him.

FBI agents later interviewed Marrero’s ex-girlfriend, who confirmed that she was 17 at the time the pictures were taken. A conviction will force Marrero to register as a sex offender and could land him in prison for up to 30 years. According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s guide to federal child pornography law, “a first time offender convicted of producing child pornography…face fines and a statutory minimum of 15 years to 30 years maximum in prison.” Under Ohio law, which also sets the cutoff for child pornography at 18, Marrero would have faced between six months and eight years.

It defies all reason that a man could go to prison for three decades for taking a sexy picture of a teenager who was deemed fully capable of consenting to sex. This is a travesty of justice, a violation of consenting adults’ sexual freedoms, an abuse of mandatory minimum sentencing, a blow to states’ rights, and an absurd waste of the FBI’s time.

President Gerald Ford is credited to have said that a government that is powerful enough to give you everything you want is also powerful enough to take away everything you’ve got. But what’s also true is that a government that is ruthless enough to rip kids from migrants to stop them from coming and allegedly taking “U.S. jobs” is also ruthless enough from letting Americans leave to protect these jobs.

Therefore, I note in my column at The Week, this morning, it is no surprise that President Trump is threatening to tax the iconic American motorcycle manufacturer out of existence if it moves its operations abroad to avoid becoming a casualty of his trade war.

But Trump alone is not to blame. Attacking fleeing Americans as “unpatriotic” and “traitorous” has been part and parcel, bread and butter, bricks and mortar of Democratic politicos forever.

Trump is just the most consistent synthesizer of the most draconian instincts of the left and the right.

Go here to read the piece.

“Everyone is very excited” about the establishment of a Space Force, President Donald Trump said Wednesday. Numerous critics of creating a sixth branch of the U.S. military say otherwise.

Trump made this assertion during his speech at a July 4 military appreciation event on the South Lawn of the White House. “We have the Air Force—and by the way, I might add, we very well may soon have the Space Force. You’ve been hearing about that,” the president said. “Everyone is very excited about that.”

Trump officially announced plans to establish the Space Force as a co-equal branch of the military during a meeting last month of the National Space Council. “When it comes to defending America, it is not enough to merely have an American presence in space,” Trump claimed. He instructed the Department of Defense and the Pentagon “to immediately begin the process necessary to establish” a Space Force.

The United States already has the most powerful military in the world. Why not press our advantage and expand into space?

It’s not that simple, according to Bryan Nakayama, an international relations expert and visiting lecturer at Mount Holyoke College who specializes in the relationship between technology and warfare.

Writing in Fortune, Nakayama notes that there are already various defense agencies that deal with space, though for the most part they are tied to their own “parent services.” According to The Wall Street Journal, which cited a 2016 study from the Government Accountability Office, there are “60 distinct entities that deal with assets in space.” Thus, the establishment of a Space Force would be quite confusing, as all of these agencies with “differing organizational cultures and allegiances” would have to find a way to coexist under one banner, Nakayama writes.

It’s also worth pointing out that the U.S. already has a kind of Space Force—the Air Force Space Command. According to the Journal, more than 36,000 people work for the Air Force Space Command. Setting up a new headquarters for the Space Force “would spawn hundreds of new aides and staffers.”

And that’s not all. According to Nakayama, the U.S. depends heavily on Russia for imported rocket engines and “regular access to the International Space Station.” Russia, meanwhile, has expressed apprehension about the creation of a U.S. Space Force, warning of a “tough response” if the U.S. pulls out of the U.N. Outer Space Treaty. Establishing a Space Force when the U.S. can’t even get into space on its own seems ill advised, all the more so when considering the dangers of having a branch of the military depend on one of America’s biggest rivals.

There’s also the issue of the potential weaponization of outer space. The Outer Space Treaty prohibits the use of weapons of mass destruction in space, as well as the installation of military bases on the moon and asteroids, but as the University of Kent’s Gbenga Oduntan notes, the treaty does not preclude member countries from deploying other kinds of weapons in outer space. If Trump’s Space Force triggers an arms race in space, we could see “a total disruption of the agreed law that outer space is the common heritage of all humankind.”

People who support space exploration are also opposed to the creation of a Space Force. Mark Kelly, a retired astronaut and Navy combat veteran, called it a “dumb idea,” explaining on Twitter that “The Air Force does this already.”

“What’s next, we move submarines to the 7th branch and call it the ‘under-the-sea force?'” he wrote.

This is a dumb idea. The Air Force does this already. That is their job. What’s next, we move submarines to the 7th branch and call it the “under-the-sea force?” https://t.co/S1urOuJBe6

— Mark Kelly (@ShuttleCDRKelly) June 19, 2018

Even Defense Secretary James Mattis, who has no choice but to follow Trump’s orders, doesn’t seem to be a fan of the Space Force. When a bipartisan group of lawmakers tried to include language creating a new “Space Corps” in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, Mattis strongly opposed the idea, writing in a letter, “I oppose the creation of a new military service and additional organizational layers at a time when we are focused on reducing overhead and integrating joint warfighting functions.”

Trump’s assertion that “everyone is very excited” about the Space Force isn’t exactly true. Trump being Trump, though, the criticism may only fuel his enthusiasm.

Somalia’s so-called libertarian moment is over, now that Al Shabab—the Al Qaeda-linked Islamist terrorist organization that controls swaths of territory in the southern reaches of the anarchic, East African nation—has declared a prohibition on plastic bags.

News of the ban was first published on the reportedly Shabab-controlled site Somalimemo.net, which aired an audio recording of a Shabab official declaring the bags “a serious threat to the well-being of humans and animals alike.”

The New York Times reports that Shabab-linked twitter accounts and radio stations later broadcast news of the ban.

Press reports did not include details of Shabab’s enforcement strategy, but if its past behavior is any guide, penalties will be severe. The group already enforces prohibitions on music, movie theaters, and satellite TV, and is known for carrying out public executions of political rivals and homosexuals.

Other East African governments have also taken severe measures to crackdown on plastic bags. Since 2017, the government of Kenya—which is locked in a vicious war with Al-Shabab—has penalized mere possession of plastic bags with up to four years in prison or fines of $40,000.

Rwanda has banned plastic bags since 2008, earning it praise from environmental groups as “Africa’s cleanest nation” while its police beat, humiliate, and imprison bag smugglers caught crossing into the country.

It is certainly true that in poorer countries without well-developed waste management systems, plastic pollution poses a significant problem. Loose bags and debris block waterways, pile up in neighborhoods, and wind up in the stomachs of livestock. Most of the plastic getting into the world’s oceans comes from poor, populous coastal countries whose litter goes mostly uncollected.

Yet, judging by the thriving black markets for bags that have developed in Rwanda and other nations with bag bans, plenty of people still consider them necessities.

So while East Africa’s crop of authoritarian regimes and terrorist organizations are not wrong to worry about plastics effect on the environment, a more humane solution might be finding ways to improve its waste collection efforts, not hitting the world’s poorest people with fines and—often—much worse penalties.

While the country is fixated on the horrors of (ICE) Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents ripping infants from the arms of migrant parents, two people in the Trump administration have been quietly but painstakingly plotting a comprehensive assault on legal immigration: Attorney General Jeff Sessions and White House aide Stephen Miller. Both formed a close bond around their shared ultra-restrictionist agenda when Miller served as Sessions’ communications director in the Senate. Miller was the brains behind Trump’s scheme to take Dreamers hostage to force Congress to enact a 40-plus percent cut in legal immigration. But even before that failed, he and Sessions had started looking for ways to achieve that goal through regulatory means, doing an end run around Congress.

And they seem to be succeeding: A recent Washington Post analysis of State Department data found that the number of people receiving immigrant visas to live in the country is on pace to drop 12 percent in just the first two years of the Trump presidency. Here is how they’re doing it.

Erecting Regulatory Barriers to the Asylum Process

Asylum seekers are especially in their crosshairs because Trump himself pledged to deport them without due process. Vox’s Dara Lind has obtained the final draft of a Department of Justice memo that calls for treating anyone found between ports of entry as an “illegal immigrant” and denying them asylum. The administration had already started charging migrants picked up between ports on criminal grounds instead of civil ones as had hitherto been the case—never mind that many of these hapless and helpless migrants had no intention of living in the United States illegally. Some of them were lost or misdirected by smugglers (who want to create a diversion for Customs and Border Patrol), or rebuffed by border agents when they tried to present themselves at legit entry points as they are supposed to do. That’s why, to date, despite facing criminal charges, they had still been allowed to claim asylum. Apparently even that small mercy will now be rescinded.

The administration knows that a blanket policy akin to an outright ban may run afoul of domestic and international law that requires asylum seekers to at least get a hearing and hence may not withstand legal scrutiny. Therefore, the memo includes a Plan B: It will instruct immigration judges to weigh the circumstances of entry as a major factor in their asylum decisions, making the rejection of their petition a fait accompli. In other words, the administration is gaming asylum laws to deny asylum seekers a fair shot—subverting the law in the name of the “rule of law!”

Showing the Back of the Hand to Refugees

But the administration is not just shutting the door on asylum seekers who land on our shores. It is also turning away refugees petitioning from abroad. Thanks to “extreme vetting,” refugee admissions are on track to fall by 75 percent from 2016 levels, according to federal data. The administration has already slashed the annual refugee quota from 110,000 to 45,000; now it won’t fill even half of that.

But it’s not just asylum seekers and refugees the Sessions-Miller duo is dinging—they are also going after family-based and employment-based immigrants.

Restricting Family-Based Immigration

America implemented a family-based immigration system that gives the immediate family members of Americans and green-card holders priority in order to advance its commitment to family unity. Hence, since 1965 when this system was implemented, about 60 percent of all immigrants every year come through this category. But Trump has been openly hostile to this.

He has barred Americans from sponsoring family members from any of the five Muslim countries listed in his travel ban. In theory, the State Department is supposed to hand waivers from the ban to close family members—spouses and children—on a case-by-case basis. But as Justice Breyer pointed out in his dissent in Trump vs. Hawaii, the travel ban ruling, the administration approved a measly 430 waivers out of 6,555 eligible applicants in the first four months of the ban.

So it is no surprise that WaPo found the number of new arrivals from these countries is on track to decline by a whopping 81 percent. But what is surprising is that virtually all of the top 10 countries that send immigrants America’s way, with the possible exception of El Salvador, are set to experience a decline. And around 15 percent fewer immigrant visas were handed to immigrants from African countries. (Interestingly, however, the flow of immigrants from European countries is showing a slight increase.)

How exactly is the administration accomplishing this reduction given that Congress pointedly refused to enact its requested cuts? Basically, by implementing “extreme vetting” for family members as well.

Miller has worked with the State Department to require American consular officers—whom he regards as the “tip of the spear” in pushing his draconian controls—to subject applications to inordinately long scrutiny and slow the approval process to a crawl. The upshot is far fewer visas approved every month.

The administration’s excuse for slashing family-based immigration is that this category is not “merit based” so it does not draw the “best and the brightest.” That’s something of a myth because over 50 percent of immigrants admitted under the family-based and the diversity visa categories—which Republicans are champing at the bit to eliminate—have college degrees, compared to 29 percent of natives.

Shutting Out Skilled Immigrants

But if the administration is so concerned about merit-based immigration, surely it would be opening the doors wide to skilled foreigners, right? Especially when the country has record low unemployment and jobs are going a-begging. A recent Federal Reserve survey found worker shortages in various industries and various skill levels all across the country. The situation is particularly dire in STEM-related industries, where unemployment among Americans is about three percent, and in certain specialized professions—such as computer network architecture—near one percent. In other words, fullest of full employment! So it would stand to reason that the administration should be relaxing things for high-skilled, H-1B visas, especially since every high-skilled immigrant supports about 3.1 American jobs on average.

Think again.

The administration is applying the same basic strategy of smothering this program in red tape as it has done with asylum seekers and family-based immigrants. In particular, the administration is

• issuing many more “requests for evidence” from employers sponsoring foreign workers. This means that companies have to submit even more paperwork than they currently do to prove to the government that they really need the immigrant’s services and couldn’t find a qualified American to do the job. Worse, even as it is requiring employers to jump through more hoops, it is denying more H-1B requests. (The policy gamble is that if the government makes the process too fraught and onerous, employers will think twice before even thinking of hiring foreigners.)
• no longer allowing H-1Bs to renew their visas every three years as a matter of routine, which has been the case to date. They are forcing the visa holder and the sponsoring employer to re-file all the paperwork, as if they were applying for the first time. The horrendousness of this cannot be exaggerated. Most H-1Bs aspire to update their visas to green cards. But employment-based green cards are backlogged for decades, especially for Indians and Chinese. So if these folks can’t renew their H-1Bs automatically and their green cards are stuck in limbo, they basically have to live in fear of losing their jobs and being thrown out of the country after buying homes, building families, and putting down roots. This is massively disruptive for those already here, of course. But it also has a chilling effect on aspiring high-skilled immigrants. It may not be a coincidence that H-1B applications have dropped two years in a row (although they still vastly exceed the minuscule annual 85,000 annual quota, which Congress, in its infinite wisdom, set with no regard to the actual economic demand).
• significantly tightening the definition of a specialty occupation for which it is legit for companies to hire H-1Bs. For example, no longer might a bachelors in Computer Science be enough for Microsoft to hire a foreigner. A masters—or more—might be required.
• preparing to scale back the Optional Training Program for foreign students that allowed them to stay and work in the country after graduation (12 months for non-STEM students, three years for STEM students), giving them crucial work experience and time to find jobs. Considering how much time and expense foreign students invest to obtain an education in the United States, if this door is shut, they will simply opt for other more hospitable destinations like Canada and Australia. Indeed, the harsh, anti-immigration rhetoric was already turning off foreign students from American universities. Squeezing the OTP program will repel even more.
• scrapping work authorization for the highly qualified spouses of H-1B holders. This will essentially freeze many of them out of the labor market permanently, making America a very unattractive destination for talented married foreigners.

Spurning Foreign Entrepreneurs

If the visa options for high-skilled foreign workers are limited, they are almost non-existent for foreign entrepreneurs. The Obama administration took a small stab at fixing this situation when it passed the International Entrepreneur Rule—the so-called entrepreneur startup visa. This rule allows foreign entrepreneurs who launch businesses in the U.S. to live in the country for a renewable 30-month term, provided they can secure $250,000 in private venture capital funding or $100,000 in public grants. About 3,000 applications were expected under this rule each year. Other advancing countries such as Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, South Korea, and even communist China, are already offering similar incentives to attract innovative businessman.

But the Trump administration has issued notice to rescind this rule even though it was expected to help create hundreds of thousands of high-quality jobs in Midwestern cities between the coasts, not just in Silicon Valley.

We shouldn’t be making legal immigration harder than it already is

For many years now, restrictionists have weaponized the unauthorized immigrant issue and rallied Americans around the notion that those who want to come to America need to do so legally.

But as Reason’s 2008 pictorial representation shows this wasn’t easy even before Trump. Low-skilled foreigners who don’t have blood relatives or spouses in America to sponsor them have no legal options to permanently live and work in the country. Just to obtain temporary work permits such as H-2A and H-2B visas, they—and their employers—have always had to endure the bureaucratic equivalent of waterboarding. (For example, these visas require poor migrants to prove that they have a job or property to return to after their assignment in the United States is completed, basically closing off the American labor market to the people who need it the most. Such Catch-22 rules are the core cause of America’s unauthorized “problem.”)

But post-Trump, legally immigrating to the U.S. has become infinitely more difficult. Miller and Sessions are subjecting every immigrant in every category—refugees, asylum seekers, family-based, employment-based and entrepreneurs—to the same treatment. What has been listed above by no means exhausts everything the duo has up its sleeve. There is much, much more coming, including a plan to make it difficult for immigrants to upgrade their visa status if they or their American-born family use a whole slew of public services—not welfare, mind you—and even if they pay the same taxes as Americans.

As the Migration Policy Institute puts it, the administration “has initiated several small but well-calibrated actions through regulations, administrative guidelines, and immigration application processing changes” to severely slash overall legal immigration.

Even as Trump is having difficulty ginning up funds for his wall on the southern border, his two minions, with great ingenuity, are erecting a bureaucratic fortress all around the country.

A Pennsylvania man is suing the Lancaster Police Department and one of its officers after a video of him being tased from behind went viral. As Reason previously reported, Officer Philip Bernot instructed a seated Sean Williams to put his legs “straight out,” which he did. Bernot then told Williams to cross his ankles. When Williams tried to, Bernot shocked him with an Electronic Control Device (ECD).

Williams’ lawsuit, which seeks $75,000, alleges that Bernot told Williams to keep his legs “straight out or you’re getting tased.” It then states that Bernot tased Williams even though he complied “without resistance.”

The Lancaster Police Department is also accused of violating Williams’ civil rights by using excessive force and discriminating against Williams because of his race. The lawsuit claims the nature of the tasing was a violation of Williams’ Fourth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The lawsuit also cites Lancaster County arrest statistics to establish “a history and pattern of intentionally discriminating against African Americans and other minorities.”

According to a police report, the incident began when someone called about a disturbance involving Williams. The caller accused Williams of going after them on the street. The first officer to respond to the call instructed Williams to sit down “several times” as Williams demanded his Social Security card from one of the females in the group.

Bernot eventually took over. The subsequent events were captured on video by a bystander and posted on Facebook.

Following the initial incident, the Lancaster District Attorney tweeted that an investigation by the police department was underway. The office later announced that it was involved with the investigation “in a limited capacity” and would discuss the findings with the public.

While the country is fixated on the horrors of (ICE) Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents ripping infants from the arms of migrant parents, two people in the Trump administration have been quietly but painstakingly plotting a comprehensive assault on legal immigration: Attorney General Jeff Sessions and White House aide Stephen Miller. Both formed a close bond around their shared ultra-restrictionist agenda when Miller served as Sessions’ communications director in the Senate. Miller was the brains behind Trump’s scheme to take Dreamers hostage to force Congress to enact a 40-plus percent cut in legal immigration. But even before that failed, he and Sessions had started looking for ways to achieve that goal through regulatory means, doing an end run around Congress.

And they seem to be succeeding: A recent Washington Post analysis of State Department data found that the number of people receiving immigrant visas to live in the country is on pace to drop 12 percent in just the first two years of the Trump presidency. Here is how they’re doing it.

Erecting Regulatory Barriers to the Asylum Process

Asylum seekers are especially in their crosshairs because Trump himself pledged to deport them without due process. Vox’s Dara Lind has obtained the final draft of a Department of Justice memo that calls for treating anyone found between ports of entry as an “illegal immigrant” and denying them asylum. The administration had already started charging migrants picked up between ports on criminal grounds instead of civil ones as had hitherto been the case—never mind that many of these hapless and helpless migrants had no intention of living in the United States illegally. Some of them were lost or misdirected by smugglers (who want to create a diversion for Customs and Border Patrol), or rebuffed by border agents when they tried to present themselves at legit entry points as they are supposed to do. That’s why, to date, despite facing criminal charges, they had still been allowed to claim asylum. Apparently even that small mercy will now be rescinded.

The administration knows that a blanket policy akin to an outright ban may run afoul of domestic and international law that requires asylum seekers to at least get a hearing and hence may not withstand legal scrutiny. Therefore, the memo includes a Plan B: It will instruct immigration judges to weigh the circumstances of entry as a major factor in their asylum decisions, making the rejection of their petition a fait accompli. In other words, the administration is gaming asylum laws to deny asylum seekers a fair shot—subverting the law in the name of the “rule of law!”

Showing the Back of the Hand to Refugees

But the administration is not just shutting the door on asylum seekers who land on our shores. It is also turning away refugees petitioning from abroad. Thanks to “extreme vetting,” refugee admissions are on track to fall by 75 percent from 2016 levels, according to federal data. The administration has already slashed the annual refugee quota from 110,000 to 45,000; now it won’t fill even half of that.

But it’s not just asylum seekers and refugees the Sessions-Miller duo is dinging—they are also going after family-based and employment-based immigrants.

Restricting Family-Based Immigration

America implemented a family-based immigration system that gives the immediate family members of Americans and green-card holders priority in order to advance its commitment to family unity. Hence, since 1965 when this system was implemented, about 60 percent of all immigrants every year come through this category. But Trump has been openly hostile to this.

He has barred Americans from sponsoring family members from any of the five Muslim countries listed in his travel ban. In theory, the State Department is supposed to hand waivers from the ban to close family members—spouses and children—on a case-by-case basis. But as Justice Breyer pointed out in his dissent in Trump vs. Hawaii, the travel ban ruling, the administration approved a measly 430 waivers out of 6,555 eligible applicants in the first four months of the ban.

So it is no surprise that WaPo found the number of new arrivals from these countries is on track to decline by a whopping 81 percent. But what is surprising is that virtually all of the top 10 countries that send immigrants America’s way, with the possible exception of El Salvador, are set to experience a decline. And around 15 percent fewer immigrant visas were handed to immigrants from African countries. (Interestingly, however, the flow of immigrants from European countries is showing a slight increase.)

How exactly is the administration accomplishing this reduction given that Congress pointedly refused to enact its requested cuts? Basically, by implementing “extreme vetting” for family members as well.

Miller has worked with the State Department to require American consular officers—whom he regards as the “tip of the spear” in pushing his draconian controls—to subject applications to inordinately long scrutiny and slow the approval process to a crawl. The upshot is far fewer visas approved every month.

The administration’s excuse for slashing family-based immigration is that this category is not “merit based” so it does not draw the “best and the brightest.” That’s something of a myth because over 50 percent of immigrants admitted under the family-based and the diversity visa categories—which Republicans are champing at the bit to eliminate—have college degrees, compared to 29 percent of natives.

Shutting Out Skilled Immigrants

But if the administration is so concerned about merit-based immigration, surely it would be opening the doors wide to skilled foreigners, right? Especially when the country has record low unemployment and jobs are going a-begging. A recent Federal Reserve survey found worker shortages in various industries and various skill levels all across the country. The situation is particularly dire in STEM-related industries, where unemployment among Americans is about three percent, and in certain specialized professions—such as computer network architecture—near one percent. In other words, fullest of full employment! So it would stand to reason that the administration should be relaxing things for high-skilled, H-1B visas, especially since every high-skilled immigrant supports about 3.1 American jobs on average.

Think again.

The administration is applying the same basic strategy of smothering this program in red tape as it has done with asylum seekers and family-based immigrants. In particular, the administration is

• issuing many more “requests for evidence” from employers sponsoring foreign workers. This means that companies have to submit even more paperwork than they currently do to prove to the government that they really need the immigrant’s services and couldn’t find a qualified American to do the job. Worse, even as it is requiring employers to jump through more hoops, it is denying more H-1B requests. (The policy gamble is that if the government makes the process too fraught and onerous, employers will think twice before even thinking of hiring foreigners.)
• no longer allowing H-1Bs to renew their visas every three years as a matter of routine, which has been the case to date. They are forcing the visa holder and the sponsoring employer to re-file all the paperwork, as if they were applying for the first time. The horrendousness of this cannot be exaggerated. Most H-1Bs aspire to update their visas to green cards. But employment-based green cards are backlogged for decades, especially for Indians and Chinese. So if these folks can’t renew their H-1Bs automatically and their green cards are stuck in limbo, they basically have to live in fear of losing their jobs and being thrown out of the country after buying homes, building families, and putting down roots. This is massively disruptive for those already here, of course. But it also has a chilling effect on aspiring high-skilled immigrants. It may not be a coincidence that H-1B applications have dropped two years in a row (although they still vastly exceed the minuscule annual 85,000 annual quota, which Congress, in its infinite wisdom, set with no regard to the actual economic demand).
• significantly tightening the definition of a specialty occupation for which it is legit for companies to hire H-1Bs. For example, no longer might a bachelors in Computer Science be enough for Microsoft to hire a foreigner. A masters—or more—might be required.
• preparing to scale back the Optional Training Program for foreign students that allowed them to stay and work in the country after graduation (12 months for non-STEM students, three years for STEM students), giving them crucial work experience and time to find jobs. Considering how much time and expense foreign students invest to obtain an education in the United States, if this door is shut, they will simply opt for other more hospitable destinations like Canada and Australia. Indeed, the harsh, anti-immigration rhetoric was already turning off foreign students from American universities. Squeezing the OTP program will repel even more.
• scrapping work authorization for the highly qualified spouses of H-1B holders. This will essentially freeze many of them out of the labor market permanently, making America a very unattractive destination for talented married foreigners.

Spurning Foreign Entrepreneurs

If the visa options for high-skilled foreign workers are limited, they are almost non-existent for foreign entrepreneurs. The Obama administration took a small stab at fixing this situation when it passed the International Entrepreneur Rule—the so-called entrepreneur startup visa. This rule allows foreign entrepreneurs who launch businesses in the U.S. to live in the country for a renewable 30-month term, provided they can secure $250,000 in private venture capital funding or $100,000 in public grants. About 3,000 applications were expected under this rule each year. Other advancing countries such as Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, South Korea, and even communist China, are already offering similar incentives to attract innovative businessman.

But the Trump administration has issued notice to rescind this rule even though it was expected to help create hundreds of thousands of high-quality jobs in Midwestern cities between the coasts, not just in Silicon Valley.

We shouldn’t be making legal immigration harder than it already is

For many years now, restrictionists have weaponized the unauthorized immigrant issue and rallied Americans around the notion that those who want to come to America need to do so legally.

But as Reason’s 2008 pictorial representation shows this wasn’t easy even before Trump. Low-skilled foreigners who don’t have blood relatives or spouses in America to sponsor them have no legal options to permanently live and work in the country. Just to obtain temporary work permits such as H-2A and H-2B visas, they—and their employers—have always had to endure the bureaucratic equivalent of waterboarding. (For example, these visas require poor migrants to prove that they have a job or property to return to after their assignment in the United States is completed, basically closing off the American labor market to the people who need it the most. Such Catch-22 rules are the core cause of America’s unauthorized “problem.”)

But post-Trump, legally immigrating to the U.S. has become infinitely more difficult. Miller and Sessions are subjecting every immigrant in every category—refugees, asylum seekers, family-based, employment-based and entrepreneurs—to the same treatment. What has been listed above by no means exhausts everything the duo has up its sleeve. There is much, much more coming, including a plan to make it difficult for immigrants to upgrade their visa status if they or their American-born family use a whole slew of public services—not welfare, mind you—and even if they pay the same taxes as Americans.

As the Migration Policy Institute puts it, the administration “has initiated several small but well-calibrated actions through regulations, administrative guidelines, and immigration application processing changes” to severely slash overall legal immigration.

Even as Trump is having difficulty ginning up funds for his wall on the southern border, his two minions, with great ingenuity, are erecting a bureaucratic fortress all around the country.