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American Secretary of State Comments on US Immigration Policy

Transcript of the above video:

In this video today, we're going to be discussing something we discussed in another video though more at length but I kind of wanted to take this from two different perspectives. One was specific and there's another video on Trump's recent policy positions that summarized in a recent executive summary of changes to policy with respect to immigration.

This is an announcement from the Secretary of State. It's a press statement from Rex W. Tillerson, Secretary of State Washington D.C. October 8, 2017 from www.state.gov. and to quote directly from the statement, “The President's new immigration priorities are focused on keeping Americans safe ensuring our sovereignty through strong borders and preserving our country as a nation of laws. The first duty of the Federal government is to provide for the national security of the American people and Presidents Trump's measures will end Molnar abilities in our immigration system that hinder our ability to protect our homeland. The State Department will do its part by among other measures continuing to crack down on passport fraud making sure all visa applicants are thoroughly screened (more on that momentarily) and putting pressure on countries to curb illegal immigration at the source. Working together with other federal agencies we will continue to implement measures that strengthen vetting of those referred for refugee resettlement even as we take steps to protect Americans. We’ll make sure the United States remains a beacon of Liberty for people the world over.”

Okay, specific to that and I go into some detail on this in another video but I think it's worth repeating. Visa screening. There's visa security measures of being put in place. Anti-fraud provisions being put into place. It appears they're going to probably be beefing up fraud prevention units at U.S. embassies outside the United States. I've even heard some anecdotal talk about the possibility of implementing ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement) sort of more in the process involved with visa adjudication.

The other thing with respect to this is there has been recent discussion in the past about taking the consular section that deals with visa issuance, non-immigrant immigrant visas taking that out of the portfolio of the Department of State and placing it in the portfolio of the Department of Homeland Security. So basically rather than having Department of State officers dealing with immigration matters you'd actually have Department of Homeland Security officers albeit overseas. But they and within the embassy, I mean as a practical matter folks probably wouldn't really notice the difference in these administrations. But as an administrative as a processing matter, it would change the system rather fundamentally frankly because up to this point Department of Homeland Security had one role within the immigration apparatus and Department of State have another role namely adjudicating visa applications to the US. And they and the Department of State was kind of at least abroad, they're very much the eyes and ears and the fraud with having one sort of the filter for maintaining or discerning whether fraud was taking place.

Again, if DHS was to take over that function, it would entirely be on a DHS I think that the entire immigration process would happen. Albeit overseas they would still be under the umbrella of an embassy would be, DHS functionaries who would actually be operating there. But that being said, the thing that I thought was interesting was notably that also putting pressure on countries to curb illegal immigration. As has been noted in another video on this channel, the United States recently placed some restrictions with respect to issuance of visas to Cambodian nationals most notably government officials at least for now based on the fact that the United States felt that the Cambodian government wasn't doing enough to cooperate with the United States government and to discourage illegal immigration.

What are we talking about? Well basically, Cambodia was refusing to take deportees who were being deported from the United States who are Cambodian nationality. They were, in some cases, refusing to accept those deportees and as a result, the United States was kind of stuck with these people that they would like to deport that Cambodia does not want to take. I don't want to go into too much detail with respect to that but I just want to show as one example of what's going on with respect to these policy changes that I think it's pretty clear, it is pretty safe to say that moving forward, I think immigration matters of all hues are going to probably become more cumbersome, time consuming I dare say, difficult. But perhaps that's not the right word. I just think there's going to be a higher level of scrutiny applied in all future applications for U.S. immigration benefits and I think just generally, processing is going to get a little bit slower as they're implementing all these initiatives to try to combat illegal immigration fraud misrepresentation and things of this nature. So just act accordingly and be prepared to have to deal with a visa process that's more time-consuming and perhaps a little bit more difficult in the future.