[House Hearing, 119 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
RESTORING INTEGRITY AND SECURITY TO
THE VISA PROCESS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION INTEGRITY, SECURITY, AND ENFORCEMENT
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 2025
__________
Serial No. 119-28
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via: http://judiciary.house.gov
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
60-840 WASHINGTON : 2025
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
JIM JORDAN, Ohio, Chair
DARRELL ISSA, California JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland, Ranking
ANDY BIGGS, Arizona Member
TOM McCLINTOCK, California JERROLD NADLER, New York
THOMAS P. TIFFANY, Wisconsin ZOE LOFGREN, California
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
CHIP ROY, Texas HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr.,
SCOTT FITZGERALD, Wisconsin Georgia
BEN CLINE, Virginia ERIC SWALWELL, California
LANCE GOODEN, Texas TED LIEU, California
JEFFERSON VAN DREW, New Jersey PRAMILA JAYAPAL, Washington
TROY E. NEHLS, Texas J. LUIS CORREA, California
BARRY MOORE, Alabama MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania
KEVIN KILEY, California JOE NEGUSE, Colorado
HARRIET M. HAGEMAN, Wyoming LUCY McBATH, Georgia
LAUREL M. LEE, Florida DEBORAH K. ROSS, North Carolina
WESLEY HUNT, Texas BECCA BALINT, Vermont
RUSSELL FRY, South Carolina JESUS G. ``CHUY'' GARCIA, Illinois
GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin SYDNEY KAMLAGER-DOVE, California
BRAD KNOTT, North Carolina JARED MOSKOWITZ, Florida
MARK HARRIS, North Carolina DANIEL S. GOLDMAN, New York
ROBERT F. ONDER, Jr., Missouri JASMINE CROCKETT, Texas
DEREK SCHMIDT, Kansas
BRANDON GILL, Texas
MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER, Washington
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION INTEGRITY, SECURITY,
AND ENFORCEMENT
TOM McCLINTOCK, California, Chair
ANDY BIGGS, Arizona PRAMILA JAYAPAL, Washington,
TOM TIFFANY, Wisconsin Ranking Member
CHIP ROY, Texas JERROLD NADLER, New York
JEFF VAN DREW, New Jersey J. LUIS CORREA, California
TROY NEHLS, Texas MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania
BARRY MOORE, Alabama DEBORAH K. ROSS, North Carolina
WESLEY HUNT, Texas JESUS G. ``CHUY'' GARCIA, Illinois
RUSSELL FRY, South Carolina JASMINE CROCKETT, Texas
GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin ZOE LOFGREN, California
BRAD KNOTT, North Carolina STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
ROBERT F. ONDER, Missouri Vacant
DEREK SCHMIDT, Kansas Vacant
BRANDON GILL, Texas Vacant
CHRISTOPHER HIXON, Majority Staff Director
JULIE TAGEN, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Wednesday, June 25, 2025
OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
The Honorable Tom McClintock, Chair of the Subcommittee on
Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement from the State
of California.................................................. 1
The Honorable Pramila Jayapal, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee
on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement from the
State of Washington............................................ 4
The Honorable Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the Committee on
the Judiciary from the State of Maryland....................... 5
WITNESSES
Jessica M. Vaughan, Director, Policy Studies, Center for
Immigration Studies
Oral Testimony................................................. 8
Prepared Testimony............................................. 11
Simon R. Hankinson, Senior Research Fellow, Border Security and
Immigration Center, The Heritage Foundation
Oral Testimony................................................. 23
Prepared Testimony............................................. 25
Alex Nowrasteh, Vice President, Economic and Social Policy
Studies, Cato Institute
Oral Testimony................................................. 36
Prepared Testimony............................................. 38
Cody M. Brown, Managing Attorney, Codias Law
Oral Testimony................................................. 54
Prepared Testimony............................................. 56
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC. SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
All materials submitted for the record by the Subcommittee on
Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement are listed
below.......................................................... 215
Materials submitted by the Honorable Pramila Jayapal, Ranking
Member of the Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security,
and Enforcement from the State of Washington, for the record
A press release entitled, ``ICE Arrests 11 Iranian Nationals
Illegally in the U.S. Over the Weekend,'' Jun. 24, 2025,
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
An article entitled, ``Hundreds of international doctors due
to start medical residencies are in visa limbo,'' Jun.
24, 2025, NBC News
A report entitled, ``Entry/Exit Overstay Report: Fiscal Year
2023 Report to Congress,'' Aug. 5, 2024, U.S. Customs and
Border Protection, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
A report entitled, ``U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services (USCIS): Operations and Issues for Congress,''
Apr. 5, 2024, Congressional Research Service
Materials submitted by the Honorable Andy Biggs, a Member of the
Committee on the Judiciary from the State of Arizona, for the
record
An article entitled, ``What we know about the visa obtained
by Egyptian man who injured a dozen people in Colorado,''
Jun. 4, 2025, AP News
A commentary article entitled, ``Foreign student visas Need
Limits,'' May 15, 2025, The Heritage Foundation
A letter to the Honorable Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary, U.S.
Department of Homeland Security, Aug. 1, 2024, from the
Members of Congress
A letter to the Honorable Kristi Noem, Secretary, U.S. Department
of Homeland Security, and the Honorable Marco Rubio, Secretary,
U.S. Department of State, from Members of Congress, Jan. 29,
2025, submitted by the Honorable Chip Roy, Member of the
Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and
Enforcement from the State of Texas, for the record
An article entitled, ``A majority of Americans say immigrants
mostly fill jobs U.S. citizens do not want,'' Jun. 10, 2020,
Pew Research Center, submitted by the Honorable Jamie Raskin,
Ranking Member of the Committee on the Judiciary from the State
of Maryland, for the record
QUESTIONS AND RESPONSES FOR THE RECORD
Questions submitted by the Honorable Russell Fry, a Member of the
Committee on the Judiciary from the State of South Carolina,
for the record
Questions for Jessica M. Vaughan, Director, Policy Studies,
Center for Immigration Studies, and Simon R. Hankinson,
Senior Research Fellow, Border Security and Immigration
Center
Response from Jessica M. Vaughan, Director, Policy Studies,
Center for Immigration Studies, and Simon R. Hankinson,
Senior Research Fellow, Border Security and Immigration
Center
Questions for Simon R. Hankinson, Senior Research Fellow,
Border Security and Immigration Center, The Heritage
Foundation
Response from Simon R. Hankinson, Senior Research Fellow,
Border Security and Immigration Center, The Heritage
Foundation
RESTORING INTEGRITY AND SECURITY TO THE VISA PROCESS
----------
Wednesday, June 25, 2025
House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security,
and Enforcement
Committee on the Judiciary
Washington, DC
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 p.m., in Room
2141, Rayburn House Office Building, the Hon. Tom McClintock
[Chair of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Members present: Representatives McClintock, Biggs,
Tiffany, Roy, Van Drew, Moore, Hunt, Fry, Grothman, Knott,
Onder, Schmidt, Gill, Jayapal, Raskin, Nadler, Scanlon, Ross,
Garcia, Crockett, and Cohen.
Mr. McClintock. The Subcommittee 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.
We will begin with opening statements. We will begin with
mine.
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 six
million illegal aliens directly into our community. While the
Border Patrol was overwhelmed by arranging lodging,
transportation, food, healthcare, legal services for this
massive population, and another two million got-aways entered
our country as well.
The result was devastating for our Nation and 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.
The cost of these services is estimated at $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 Democrats' sanctuary laws, and Leftist DAs and
judges.
The sad, senseless, and entirely preventable tragedies
produced by these policies continue to unfold before us on a
daily basis.
For four years Democrats in this Congress and in this
Committee told us this was for our own good and, besides, there
wasn't anything we could do about it anyway short of their
demand for widespread amnesty. The American people knew better.
They knew, as President Trump put it, that we didn't need new
laws, we needed to get a new President.
We got one. Within 30 days illegal border crossings were
cut 96 percent, and traffic across the deadly Darien Gap
dropped 99 percent, saving thousands of lives.
Since taking office, roughly 150,000 illegal migrants, many
with criminal convictions and charges, have been detained by
the Trump Administration as required by law, and the largest
illegal mass migration in history is now being redressed by the
largest repatriation.
Reportedly, roughly a million illegal migrants have already
decided voluntarily return to their own countries as a result.
We have a long way to go in restoring 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 enforce the laws the
American people demanded, Democrats will burn our cities to the
ground. We are not going to allow such intimidation to prevail.
In the coming months we will report from the Judiciary
Committee a new version of H.R. 2 which will assure that this
deliberate and rampant illegality can never again threaten our
Nation, our communities, or our people.
The 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 assure 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. During Fiscal Year 2023, the U.S. Government issued
more than 10.4 million nonimmigrant 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.
Suffice it to say for now that during those four years the
administration sacrificed the integrity and security in the
screening process in issuing visas, exploiting the discretion
in the legal requirement for in-person interviews with a
consular officer.
Integrity in the visa process is a matter of national
security for our country. Take, for instance, the case of
Mohammed Soliman who perpetrated his depraved, antisemitic
terrorist attack in Boulder, Colorado, earlier this month.
Soliman 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 Soliman
filed an asylum application. Such action clearly showed that he
never intended to leave the U.S. once here, as required by his
tourist visa. Subsequent statements by his family members have
validated that assertion.
The cases like this demonstrate why it is imperative that
the 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 U.S. Government
interagency screening and vetting process.
As we have heard in previous testimony about illegal alien
border crossers, if an alien has no criminal or other security-
related record it is like they are ``being vetted against a
blank sheet of paper,'' as one witness told us in Subcommittee
last year.
The same is true of aliens seeking visas. There can be no
substitute for looking virtually every applicant in the eye and
questioning their motives, intent, and plans.
Once again President Trump has taken decisive action to
approve 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.
Nonimmigrant 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 U.S. citizenship. It should be
no surprise that criminal rings have been uncovered to stage
phony crimes and take advantage of this process.
Fraud and lax vetting in the visa process do not exist
solely in the nonimmigrant 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 U.S.
Government officials to try to get diversity applicants to pay
them money, but fake documents and sham marriages have become
commonplace.
The 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
U.S. nearly indefinitely.
The VAWA self-petition process conducted in secret without
the knowledge of the U.S. citizen spouse has also been subject
to fraud as well.
As this administration closes this dangerous chapter of
outright illegal immigration under Biden, we must also protect
our legal channels from fraud and abuse. That is the purpose of
today's hearing. We look to our witnesses for their guidance
and suggestions on doing so.
With that, I now yield to the Ranking Member for her
opening statement.
Ms. Jayapal. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
In my 2\1/2\ 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 am 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. Many of our
colleagues on the other side of the aisle love to say that they
support legal immigration and people coming in ``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.
Across 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. The administration has revoked
thousands of student visas as a weapon to stifle political
dissent, restrict due process, and enforce an exclusionary and
nativist vision of America that runs counter to everything our
institutions of higher learning stands for.
Just last week, video of masked ICE agents violently
beating the father of three U.S. Marines has absolutely shocked
the conscience of Americans across the political spectrum.
The administration's actions to close off legal pathways
will actually hurt America's ability to innovate and attract
the talent we need. Make no mistake, they are not about
national security. We know this because just last month
Secretary of State Rubio announced plans to ``aggressively
revoke student visas of Chinese students,'' all in the name of
national security.
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 ``it has always been good with me.''
After a pause, the United States has resumed interviews for
F, J, and M Visas, but added new screening of the applicants'
social media. These visas cover more than just students. They
apply to physicians, university researchers, and au pairs, many
of whom come to work for military families and others.
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. According to State Department data, the
proclamation has the potential to block at least 34,000 Green
Cards from being issued, and over 125,000 nonimmigrant 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. These countries may
be subjected to partial or even full travel bans if they do not
meet certain benchmarks over the next two months. Alarmingly,
it appears that the Trump Administration is attempting to
coerce 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. Many 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 is not just African, Asian, or Latin American
countries. Every 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. Often, they
then wrongly send those people to ICE detention for weeks. This
includes a German national on a fiance visa who spent over two
weeks in an ICE detention center because he and his U.S.
citizen spouse simply took a day trip to Mexico.
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.
The Canadian woman on a work visa detained at the Tijuana
border who spent 12 days in detention before finally being able
to return home.
Here is 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. These for-profit facilities are
rife with abuse because they are 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. Attacking legal immigration, The
student visas, workers with valid visas, even sweeping up U.S.
citizens, that is 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 $12.5 billion in
tourism alone this year. The students, 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. I
yield back.
Mr. McClintock. The gentlelady yields back.
I now recognize the Ranking Member of the Full Committee,
Mr. Raskin, for an opening statement.
Mr. Raskin. Mr. Chair, thank you very kindly. Thank you to
all the witnesses for being with us today.
There is more to immigration and border enforcement, as the
Ranking Member of the Subcommittee just said. It is a good
thing that our friends are waking up to that.
President Trump and Stephen Miller's ambition to deport 12
million people from the country has been a terrible failure on
its own terms. Even in its failure it has turned our society
upside-down. It has terrorized both citizens and noncitizens,
destabilized and divided our communities, wrecked small
businesses who have lost their workers, and trashed our
Constitution for everybody.
It has gotten so bad that Donald Trump even seems to have
recognized that his policies don't fit reality.
Two 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 ``good, long-time workers,'' and
that he had been lobbied both by his Agriculture Secretary and
by large agricultural interests to stop the ICE raids on farms,
as they are spreading panic and keeping a majority of the
workforce from showing up at work.
He decided he would stop enforcing the mass dragnet ICE
raids there, and invoked the same logic for the restaurant
sector, also heavily dependent on undocumented people. Of
course, it would apply equally, then, to the construction
sector, landscaping and gardening, nursing, you name it.
The vast majority of immigrants, even those here illegally,
are not rapists and criminals, but hard-working people
essential to our economy, just looking to make a better life
for themselves. Think of the Dreamers.
So, it is good for us to have 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,
dogmatism, and fanaticism that have made his enforcement
measures so unpopular. The administration has tortured our laws
and trampled our Constitution to kick out permanent resident
Green Card holders, students, and target universities who voice
opinions that he disapproves.
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.
The result: About 15 percent of foreign doctors 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.
The monstrous Reconciliation Bill threatens to slash
Medicaid funding on which rural hospitals rely.
The administration has also recently implemented its
xenophobic travel ban to unilaterally ban entrance into 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.
The travel ban will likely have significant economic
consequences by restricting travel and migration from the
targeted Nations. In 2022, at least 298,000 noncitizens from
countries affected by the new travel ban arrived in the U.S.
Most of them came to the U.S. temporarily, spending money as
tourists or as students, fueling our economy.
The following year households with nationals from the
targeted countries collectively earned $3.2 billion in income,
paid $750 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 re-vetted individuals
would be detrimental to the United States. Then, he allowed
White Afrikaners to apply via a Google form and to undergo an
expedited process to come to the U.S. as refugees. It should
shock no one to learn that after they arrived reporters were
able to dig up numerous antisemitic posts from the refugees.
One of them had never been subjected, apparently, to the new
antisemitism screen being used for other visa candidates.
The 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. His war on immigrants is
designed to distract us from the fact that they are trying to
cut 14 million Americans off Medicaid, destroying small
businesses with chaotic and unlawful tariff policies, gutting
Federal agencies, 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 has had his lucid moments on
immigration. During his first term while saying he wanted to
build a big beautiful wall, he said the wall would have a big,
very beautiful door signifying his support for legal
immigration.
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 the immigrants convicted of serious
crimes and public safety threats, a pathway to citizenship for
the law-abiding, tax-paying undocumented immigrants who Trump
recently called very good, long-time workers, and to modernize
the immigration system that will make it easier to come here
lawfully while protecting American workers.
We have come very close to doing this in the past. We can
do it again.
Tom Paine, who arrived in the country in 1774, fell in love
with America when he got here. He said this land will become an
asylum to humanity. Not an insane asylum, mind you, but a place
of refuge for people seeking freedom from religious, political,
economic persecution, and discrimination from all over the
world.
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. This
is a land of immigration, a land of immigrants, and land of
laws. We can make it all fit together.
I hope we can work together on a bipartisan basis to make
that happen.
I yield back, Mr. Chair.
Mr. McClintock. The gentleman yields back.
Without objection, all other opening statements will be
included in the record.
I will now introduce today's witnesses.
We have with us today Ms. Jessica Vaughan, who is the
Director of Policy Studies for the Center for Immigration
Studies. Prior to that, Ms. Vaughan was a State Department
Foreign Service Officer serving in Belgium, Trinidad, and
Tobago.
Ms. Vaughan has a Master's Degree from Georgetown
University and a Bachelor's Degree from Washington College in
Maryland
Simon Hankinson is a Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage
Foundation's Border Security and Immigration Center. From 1999-
2022, he was a State Department Foreign Service Officer serving
in several capacities in countries including Kenya, France,
Fiji, and Ghana.
Prior to entering into the State Department, Mr. Hankinson
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, DC.
Mr. Alex Nowrasteh is the Vice President for Economic and
Social Policy Studies at the CATO Institute. He has written on
the economic impacts of immigration and the economy.
Mr. Nowrasteh received a B.A. in Economics from George
Mason University and an M.S. in Economic History from the
London School of Economics.
Finally, Mr. Cody Brown is the Managing Attorney of Codia
Law, a firm that represents U.S. citizens who are victims of
immigration fraud. He has worked on the Senate Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and as legislative
counsel for a member of the House Homeland Security Committee,
among other jobs.
Mr. Brown earned an LL.M. from Georgetown University Law
Center, a J.D. from Hamline University School of Law, and a
B.S. from Northwestern College.
We want to welcome all our witnesses and thank them for
appearing today. We will begin by swearing you in.
Would you please rise and raise your right hand.
Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the
testimony you are about to give is true and correct to the best
of your knowledge, information, and belief, so help you God?
[Affirmative responses.]
Mr. McClintock. Let the record reflect the witnesses have
answered in the affirmative.
Thank you. Please be seated.
Please note that your written testimony will be entered
into the record in its entirety. Accordingly, we ask that you
summarize your testimony in five minutes.
We will begin with Ms. Vaughan.
STATEMENT OF JESSICA M. VAUGHAN
Ms. Vaughan. Thank you. 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
nine million illegal border crossers and parolees were allowed
to enter the country. Our foreign-born population has spiked to
the highest point in history, with just over 53 million people,
and the highest percentage of our population ever, almost 16
percent.
Not all these newly arrived illegal aliens were caught and
released at the border. Many 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 percent, to 11 million in 2024. New issuances of the short-
term B-1 and B-2 visitor's visas, which is the largest and most
overstay-prone category, went up 40 percent to nine million in
2024 alone.
Our visa process is improved but still far from secure.
Thanks to the more lenient policies which include interview
waivers, 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.
Not only does this often disadvantage qualified applicants
who have to wait longer to receive visas, fraud and abuse
undermine public support and, worst of all, allow bad actors
who are public safety or national security threats, to gain
access to our country.
These risks are not minor or unreliable. Frankly, I think
it is insensitive and irresponsible to trivialize these
incidents that have occurred as a result of these vetting
failures. It is insensitive to the victims and irresponsible
for policymakers to do so.
One new example of a visa vetting mistake is Behzad Nejad,
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. ICE finally picked him up just
this week, in possession of a firearm on top of it.
Then, there's Abdullah Hassan who came on a visa in 2022,
settled in Falls 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.
In 2023 alone, there were more than 18,000 entries of
Iranian citizens on NIVs, including more than 10,000 on B1/B2
visas, more than 5,000 entries on student visas, and more than
1,000 on exchange visas. This is just way too big a haystack
for ICE to have to sift through when there is a potential
threat as we have now.
The 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.
It is not just a processing problem. We have to make sure
that applicants are actually eligible for the visas they seek.
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.
Among the less 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. The latter,
in particular, needs urgent attention from Congress, especially
in light of the hundreds of thousands of minors who have 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 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, claims
that are nearly impossible to verify even if anyone tried.
Criminal histories can be excused or may be unavailable to
adjudicators if they were committed as juvenile, making this
the amnesty program of choice for MS-13 gang members, among
others.
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.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Vaughan follows:]
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Gill. [Presiding.] Thank you, Ms. Vaughan. Mr.
Hankinson, you may begin.
STATEMENT OF SIMON R. HANKINSON
Mr. Hankinson. Chair Gill, Ranking Member Jayapal, and the
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 is the U.S.
Embassy.
The guards will want to know who the visitor is, where he
is 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 are limited in what they can find
out.
If they are satisfied as to his identity and truthfulness,
they give the visitor permission to go inside and knock on the
castle door. That permission is the visa. It gives the holder
the likelihood, but not the right to be let into the castle.
When the visitor knocks on the castle door the person at
the door is the Customs and Border Protection Inspector. He
sees that the visitor has gotten past the guards, but he will
still ask questions to make sure he is satisfied before letting
the visitor inside.
Visas have three main vulnerabilities: Fraud, vetting, and
overstays.
Fraud. A fact of life in visa work. It varies by place and
person. Applicants, particularly in poor and corrupt countries,
lie to get visas. I had been lied to thousands of times.
Consular offices are unable to see or to verify accurate
records for most applicants, so they have to use their
professional judgment.
Vetting. Checking for criminal records or other
ineligibilities. Consular officers again are limited to what
the applicant presents and whatever exists in U.S. Government
databases, which don't include criminal records for most
countries. Some visa applicants lie about their intent for
traveling to the U.S. and they overstay.
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. In response, USCIS
should strip schools whose students overstay at high rates of
the right to admit foreign students. The State Department
should limit issuing student visas in those countries of
origin.
A visa is a privilege and not a right. Just 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 antisemitism, terrorism, or to attack U.S. foreign
policy. The law gives the President and the Secretary of State
wide discretion to keep undesirable foreigners out. Their use
of this Constitutional prerogative must not be obviated by
judicial overreach.
At the same time, the original scope of some visa
categories has warped into something unintended by Congress. I
will give just a few examples.
The purpose of the 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 H1-B Visa was created 30 years ago to fill a short-term
need for skilled labor, with a limit of 65,000 a year. Today,
many
H1-B workers are paid below the median wage for their
occupations. The H1-Bs disproportionately benefit large tech
firms and foreign outsourcing companies at the expense of
smaller employers and American workers.
The H1-B 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 six percent, which is twice the rate for
all graduates. Up the 70 percent of science, technology,
engineering, and math graduates don't even work in STEM fields.
Yet, even as they lay off thousands of workers, major U.S.
companies continue to petition for thousands of H1-B workers,
claiming they can't find qualified Americans.
We need to return the H1-B 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 U.S. Government, companies, and
university research programs. 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. We should not allow this.
Visa holders seeking to change their status to student
researcher or worker should go home first and apply at a U.S.
Embassy, so they are properly scrutinized.
The biggest vulnerability of temporary visas is that
holders can claim asylum once in the U.S. With lengthy process,
appeals, and a massive backlog it is 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.
There 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 standardized
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 indigents; or we
could let only accredited institutions with a good compliance
record admit foreign students and cap the percentage of those
students.
Now, with our Southern border no longer wide open, and
interior enforcement once again underway, we have the time to
consider all these ideas and more.
Thank you. I am happy to take questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hankinson follows:]
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Gill. Thank you, Mr. Hankinson. Mr. Nowrasteh, you may
begin.
STATEMENT OF ALEX NOWRASTEH
Mr. Nowrasteh. Chair McClintock, Ranking Member Jayapal,
and the distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, thank you
for the opportunity to testify.
Over the decades, the CATO Institute has produced original
research on immigration, including the threat of foreign-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. The title ``Restoring Integrity and Security to the
Visa Process'' implies that integrity and security were 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
nonimmigrants since then.
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-9/11 overhaul 19 people
have been murdered and attacked on U.S. soil committed by
foreign-born terrorist who entered on nonimmigrant visas. Now,
every murder, of course, is a tragedy. Perspective also matters
when deciding how to save the greatest number of lives.
For instance, it is likely that more people have been
killed in the U.S. by shark attacks since 9/11 than by foreign-
born terrorists who entered on nonimmigrant visas. Zero people
were murdered by foreign-born terrorists on U.S. soil during
the Biden Administration, the first administration with zero
such murders for as far back as we have data. That is evidence
of a visa system with the integrity and security that Americans
deserve.
ICE recently arrested 15 Iranian nationals as of last
night. The justification was a supposed terrorist threat from
phantom Iranian sleeper cells we have heard so much about over
the decades. ICE knew about these Iranian nationals, many of
whom are criminals, before 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.
The 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 foreign nationals from countries that don't
cooperate and share crime data with the U.S. 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. It is not. We
cannot expect it to be. 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 countries on flimsy security pretext is
costly. Obviously, visa security and integrity are important.
However, visa security theater is not a free lunch. That bill
is paid by the United States in lost economic growth, lost
opportunity, lower wages, and less government revenues.
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.
Immigrant 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 childcare, engineering, and the
sciences. Immigrants pay about $1.38 in taxes to the Federal
Government for every dollar in benefits they receive. The
benefits to the United States go on.
I want you to imagine what our country would look like
today without immigrants in the past.
The U.S. population is approximately 340 million. If
immigration were shut down in the year 1800, there would only
be about 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 will be richer
if we close the border today. The visa system has integrity.
The 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, add country bans that fix a nonexistent problem.
Don't impose that burden on Americans today or our descendants
tomorrow.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Nowrasteh follows:]
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Gill. Thank you, Mr. Nowrasteh. Mr. Brown, you may
begin.
STATEMENT OF CODY M. BROWN
Mr. Brown. Mr. Chair and the Members of the Committee, my
name is Cody Brown. I am the Managing Attorney at Codias Law,
the Nation's premier immigration law firm, exclusively for U.S.
citizens who have been victimized by immigration fraud, which I
note is a felony under Federal law.
For 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 unenforced,
and antifraud safeguards are deliberately dismantled.
Why spend billions on border security if foreign threats
can march through the front door?
Immigration fraud is not a victimless crime. I 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 are defamed, they
are extorted, they are betrayed, and they are sued for their
life savings under the i-864. Some lose custody of their
children. For some female clients their final childbearing
years are stolen. All so a foreign national can get an
immigration benefit.
What many of my clients do not know until today is that I,
too, have walked in their shoes. On September 19, 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 had
never met, accused me of stalking her. While 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.
Her statements were riddled with contradictions. There was
no corroborating evidence whatsoever. The alleged incidents
occurred in areas with numerous surveillance cameras, yet I
appeared in none.
She claimed we had conversations. I don't speak Spanish,
and she needed an interpreter in court.
When asked to identify me in court, she could not.
Seven 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 U.S. House and Senate Judiciary
Committees opened a probe into the U Visa program. They
concluded it is being exploited by those wishing to defraud the
system and avoid deportation. Yet, 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. When confronted
with this evidence, the prosecutor in Travis County expunged
the case.
What I soon realized was there was another trial, one that
I was never told about. It took place inside the walls of
USCIS. Congress has created several U Visa programs that
empowered Federal bureaucrats to act as judge and jury over
whether a U.S. citizen committed a crime. These are secret
trials.
The U.S. citizen is never notified. There is no hearing,
there is no cross-examination. There is no opportunity to
provide counterevidence to defend yourself. By a mere
preponderance of the evidence a bureaucrat can convict a U.S.
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.
These secret trials are not limited to just U Visas. They
occur every day in marriage-based cases, VAWA self-petitions,
i-751 waivers, both of which allow a foreign spouse to accuse
their citizen spouse of a crime to fast track their Green Card.
In fact, by volume, marriage-based fraud dominates the system,
including one-sided marriage fraud, VAWA self-petition fraud,
and i-751 fraud.
Nearly a quarter of all new immigrants are spouses of U.S.
citizens, approximately 300,000 per year.
I am almost done.
The incentives for immigration marriage fraud are
irresistible: Exemption from visa caps, adjustment of status,
expedited citizenship, and accelerated chain migration.
Throughout the 20th Century Congress repeatedly amended the
immigration law.
Mr. Gill. Your time has expired.
Mr. Brown. If there is 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, Chair.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Brown follows:]
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Gill. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Brown, we appreciate
it.
Now, we are going to move on to five minutes of
questioning. I will begin by recognizing myself.
For decades the United States have had an existential
problem with illegal immigration. This isn't something that is
new. It wasn't something that was created under the Biden
Administration. We have had it for a long time.
The 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.
What would happen in Washington is that the Republicans
would ask for border security. We would ask for a law. We would
ask for things that we can fund that would stem this tide of
illegal immigration.
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. The result was that nothing was done to secure the
border.
One of the things that I am most excited about, about the
Big Beautiful Bill that we are working on, and we 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, the Republicans get
all our priorities, we get a border wall, we get river
barriers, we get 10,000 new ICE agents, 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.
I am excited about getting that done. I believe that mass
migration is the single biggest existential threat to our
country today. We are going to begin by fixing that.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here.
Ms. Vaughan, I would like to start with you. I really
appreciate your time here.
Some claim that in 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 interests of the American
people first?
Ms. Vaughan. Absolutely not.
The biggest problem--well, first, we have tried this in the
past and it has never worked because always amnesty now,
enforcement if we get around to it. This doesn't work.
What we do know, also from experience, is that every time
amnesty is raised it destroys all incentives people have to
voluntarily comply with immigration laws and go home on their
own if they don't have a path to legal status. It 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 amnesty of any
kind until our--there is integrity and enforcement of the
immigration laws that we have.
That is, that is just not something that should be on the
table now.
Mr. Gill. Have the American people ever been promised
border security in exchange for amnesty in the past?
Ms. Vaughan. Oh, repeatedly, most notably in 1986 when the
amnesty happened, immediately was given to more people than we
were told would be qualifying for it. The enforcement promises
were never applied and never materialized. It has been promised
in a number of other types of legislation in 2013 and 2007.
It is always the same thing: Amnesty now, we will promise
to give you enforcement later.
Mr. Gill. Whenever amnesty is brought up in the national
conversation have you found that it leads to increased illegal
immigration?
Ms. Vaughan. That is definitely what happened in 2012
before the so-called Gang of 8 bill, and during that
discussion. It has happened in the past as well.
In fact, well, look what happened before the Biden
Administration took office. They had promised amnesty during
the campaign. The illegal crossings and encounters at the
border went up even before Biden took office in January. They
were up substantially in December, a month before that.
Mr. Gill. Then, I would like to ask you about our Green
Card system. Approximately how many immigrants are approved for
permanent residency each year?
Ms. Vaughan. It is about one million per year.
Mr. Gill. About one million. How many of those are via
chain migration?
Ms. Vaughan. About 60 percent.
Mr. Gill. Sixty percent. Awesome. Thank you, Ms. Vaughan. I
appreciate it.
Now. I would like to recognize the Ranking Member Ms.
Jayapal for five minutes.
Ms. Jayapal. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
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. Immigration has always been and continues
to be one of the essential factors to America's success as a
Nation.
Immigrants set up our founding government system, served in
our armed forces, power our economy in just about every sector,
and have brought innovation and entrepreneurial spirit, with
nearly half the 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.'' There are already
consequences for those who violate the terms of their visas.
For example, committing marriage fraud to obtain an 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. It is so
disheartening to see the Trump Administration do everything it
can to destroy the legal immigration system.
I know this system very well. I might have come to one of
the embassies that you were at. I came to the United States on
a student visa and made my way through an alphabet soup of
visas. It took me 17 years to become a U.S. citizen. I
eventually ended up here as the first naturalized citizen to
serve as Ranking Member of this Subcommittee in Congress on
immigration.
That is a testament to the amazing thing that can only
happen in the United States of America.
Mr. Nowrasteh, 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 is 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?
Mr. Nowrasteh. So, the benefits are extraordinary.
Oftentimes foreign students are the first step in a long
process, just like your process, of eventually getting an OPT,
an H1-B Visa, then an employment-based Green Card, and then
citizenship. That is the way that the immigration system has
been set up in the United States.
So, if we want to have these benefits of high school
immigrants and entrepreneurs, people like Elon Musk who started
here in the United States on these same ways, and millions of
other people, then we need to maintain a large, open student
visa system because it is the first link in that chain.
Ms. Jayapal. Thank you.
The Trump Administration has targeted student visa holders
in all these different ways. There has been incredible chaos in
the student visa system. There has been canceling 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.
Another lost hers because she was a victim of domestic
violence, and the police picked up both her and her abuser.
About 15 percent of the foreign physicians who were
supposed to come here to work at training hospitals when we
have a real dearth of medical professionals who were unable to
get their visas in time.
How does all that chaos hurt our country and our ability to
retain and attract top talent that we need here in America?
Mr. Nowrasteh. The Trump Administration's sowing of chaos
in the legal immigration system undermines much of what makes
this country successful, great, and free.
An economic uncertainty is a killer. This is one of the
things that I learned in my education, that I saw around the
world, and that you see in our practice. Nothing like
uncertainty in employment, in legal residency, and in being
able to be here sows devastation. It makes people's lives
unsettled both for the immigrants and their American families,
employers, friends, the schools where they are, their
neighbors. It unsettles everything. It is devastating to this
country. It is devastating to them, and it is devastating to
future Americans.
Ms. Jayapal. 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.
Mr. Nowrasteh. No.
Ms. Jayapal. So, 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 percent 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? Explain this to me, make some sense of it.
Mr. Nowrasteh. I am sorry, but I can't explain something
where there is absolutely no sense. It doesn't make any sense.
It is totally arbitrary. It seems like a justification for
reducing legal immigration that is divorced from any legitimate
security, or national security, or anticrime perspective.
It is just an arbitrary ban. I guarantee we are going to
have more of them come down the line that are based on nothing
more than the desire to reduce legal immigration.
Ms. Jayapal. Thank you. Mr. Chair, I have a unanimous
consent request to enter.
Mr. Gill. Without objection.
Ms. Jayapal. This is a press release from the Department of
Homeland Security. It highlights that some of the Iranian
nationals that recently were arrested and entered the country
were ordered removed under the Trump Administration.
Mr. Gill. Great.
Ms. Jayapal. I yield back.
Mr. Gill. Without objection. Now, the gentleman from
Arizona, the great Mr. Biggs.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
In May, not one illegal alien was released into the United
States. So, Mr. Nowrasteh, do you consider that to be a
successful month?
Mr. Nowrasteh. Yes.
Mr. Biggs. Good. Good. I am always looking for
accommodation and comity. We have some comity right there.
Mr. Nowrasteh. I think we have more than that.
Mr. Biggs. So, I don't know. We will find out.
The most recent Congressional Border Security Caucus we had
the ICE Director, Acting ICE Director Mr. Todd Lyons come in.
Mr. Lyons was describing visa overstays.
So, I would ask the panel, are you all familiar with the
term ``visa overstays''? Mr. Brown? You need to answer out
loud.
Mr. Brown. Yes. Very familiar.
Mr. Biggs. OK. Mr. Nowrasteh?
Mr. Nowrasteh. Yes.
Mr. Biggs. Mr. Hankinson?
Mr. Hankinson. Yes.
Mr. Biggs. Ms. Vaughan?
Ms. Vaughan. Yes.
Mr. Biggs. Let's talk about one visa overstay. I am
thinking of the Egyptian fellow who went on a rampage, an
antisemitic rampage, and attacked people in Boulder, Colorado.
Did you know that he was a visa overstay, Ms. Vaughan, Ms.
Vaughan?
Ms. Vaughan. Yes.
Mr. Biggs. What type of visa did he have before he
overstayed?
Ms. Vaughan. I don't think I have seen it confirmed. I
believe it was a visitor visa, B1/B2.
Mr. Biggs. That is what has been reported anyways; that it
was a visitor visa.
How many, Mr. Hankinson, how many visa overstays are there
in the country right now, roughly? Microphone.
Mr. Hankinson. Maybe a half million a year total overstays.
Not all those are permanent. The figures are difficult to
parse.
Mr. Biggs. OK. So, when we look at visa overstays, I want
to go back here now to, to Ms. Vaughan for a sec.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attack,
said that marriage fraud is a ``fantastic mechanism for
terrorist operatives to acquire valid documents.''
To you, Mr. Brown, do you agree with that?
Mr. Brown. Absolutely.
Mr. Biggs. You have given in your opening statement you
talk about how marriage fraud enterprises work. How would you
describe DHS's process for detecting marriage fraud, Mr. Brown?
Do they do that? Can they do that?
Mr. Brown. Their process is virtually nonexistent. When I
referred to the deliberate dismantling of antifraud safeguards,
this is a great example.
For example, under the last administration one of the key
frauds safeguards that Congress enacted in the Immigration
Marriage Fraud Amendments Act of 1986 is they started waiving
all immunities.
When our clients reported fraud, do you know what they got
back? Silence. Nothing.
I want to make this point. We have obtained internal data
from USCIS. From 2016-2019, a little subset, do you know what
their fraud denial rate was for the marriage-based cases? Zero
percent rounded to the nearest whole number.
This is not accidental. Something is deeply, deeply wrong
with our immigration system. There are a lot of innocent
Americans who are suffering.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you for that. Mr. Hankinson, what is the
process like for vetting student visa applicants?
Mr. Hankinson. Well, it is as good as we can make it. The
interviews take just a couple of minutes. Most of the
information that they provide can't be immediately verified.
We probably get it right most of the time.
Mr. Biggs. We have an ICE, the Acting ICE Director told us
the other day that in re-looking at some of these student visas
they had a student from China who was entering his 13th year of
a baccalaureate degree program for a Bachelor's Degree. That
seems, I don't know, I put kids through college and, thank
goodness, none of them ever took 13 years to get through
college.
Ms. Vaughan, if a student commits a crime or otherwise does
something that would disqualify them for continuing on the
student visa, how does that get reported to ICE or the school?
Ms. Vaughan. Well, if they are arrested for a State or
local crime, ICE will get that information through the Secure
Communities Program. ICE is not necessarily going to prioritize
it because, as a student visa holder, they are entitled to more
due process than, for example, someone who is in the country
illegally and commits the same crime.
Mr. Biggs. What the Director told us is that it is not
often that they are notified. The school is rarely notified as
well.
Ms. Vaughan. Yes, the school wouldn't necessarily be
notified.
Mr. Biggs. As my time expires I would point out to my
Committee Members that there has been some suggestions by Mr.
Brown, Mr. Hankinson, and Ms. Vaughan on some ways to fix the
visa system. I think it is worth reviewing.
Then, I have got a couple of unanimous consents.
This one is called ``What We Know About the Visa Obtained
by Egyptian Man Who Injured a Dozen People in Colorado.''
Another one by Mr. Hankinson actually, a commentary on the
border security.
Then, a letter that we sent to Secretary Mayorkas just a
few months ago asking for information about marriage fraud with
regard to visa status.
Mr. Gill. Without objection.
Mr. Biggs. Thank you.
Mr. Gill. Without objection. Thank you, Mr. Biggs.
Now, Mr. Raskin is recognized for five minutes.
Mr. Raskin. Great. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
The distinguished gentleman from Arizona began by talking
about visa overstays. So, Mr. Nowrasteh, I wanted to ask you
about that.
There has 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 to enter the country, and then didn't go to
school, and said he never really wanted to go to school but
stayed. He was able to get to work.
I wonder, 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 those
visa overstays?
Going back to your original comment, would we be better off
if people like Elon Musk were kicked out of the country at that
point, people who overstay a student visa or a work visa?
Because my experience from traveling abroad is that
oftentimes what we get in America is the most ambitious people,
the people who want to work the hardest, create the businesses,
win Pulitzer Prizes and Nobel Prizes, and so on. He would seem
to fall into that example. I guess he is in a category of his
own.
Somebody who was very ambitious wanting 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?
Mr. Nowrasteh. We absolutely would not be better off. We
would be substantially worse off if that were the case,
especially in that example of Mr. Musk.
The reason why he did what he did, with the student visas
and the tricky H-1B situation and everything, was because there
was no other way for him to come to this country lawfully.
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, 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 firms that are
multibillion dollar, trillion dollars of value that he has
created in the world, and other people like him.
The government should focus on the security threats. They
should focus on criminals. They could go after these folks,
like ICE went after these Iranians in the last couple of 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 trying to track down some of these
overstays. It is not a high priority because they need to go
after criminals, national security threats, and people like
that.
Every dollar they spend, and every minute they waste going
after noncriminals and non-people who aren't national security
threats, is a waste.
Mr. Raskin. OK. I think you are 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.
That we have bipartisan convergence around the first issue
that we want to make it difficult to get in the country
illegally. We seem to disagree about the importance or the
value of allowing people to get into the country lawfully.
I think that our temporary Chair here said, and please
correct me if I am wrong, ``mass migration is the single
biggest existential threat to our country today.''
What do you think about that as 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?
Mr. Nowrasteh. The overuse of the word existential is a
prime example of threat inflation, of trying to terrify people
for no good reason. The 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
growth.
If there was no immigration, for instance, starting right
now, the population of this country will start to shrink in the
mid-2040s. There will be fewer Americans, there will be a
smaller America unless we expand or at least, at least continue
the legal immigration that we have now.
Mr. Raskin. OK. Why do you think immigration has become
such a vexed political problem?
I know historically we have gone through periods of anti-
immigration fervor and xenophobia. If we have got the grounds
for bipartisan compromise, as we have seen repeatedly, why do
some people keep on wanting to use this as a political club?
Mr. Nowrasteh. It is obviously a vote getter. It obviously
infuriates a lot of people. To be totally fair to these folks
who I disagree with, I do think people see chaos and they
really don't like it. Right?
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.
Mr. Knott. [Presiding.] Time has expired. Thank you. We now
recognize Mr. Tiffany.
Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Nowrasteh, do you believe the immigration
system improved under the Biden Administration?
Mr. Nowrasteh. Under some ways, yes. In some ways, no. It
is a very large complex system, as you know. It is second in
complexity only to the income tax.
Mr. Tiffany. Your colleague, David Bier, was here about six
months ago, and he said ``yes, the immigration system improved
under the Biden Administration.''
What is the change here regarding Cato's position?
Mr. Nowrasteh. The Cato Institute doesn't have positions.
The scholars at the Cato Institute do. 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.
There are large other sections of immigration that have to
do with enforcement, other categories--
Mr. Tiffany. They are going around telling people around
the country here today that hey, I am going to split hairs.
I am going to tell people that this one subset of
immigration, hey, things are just fine in the United States of
America, it is all good, when they understand this as a broader
part of the immigration system as a whole, which has been a
complete failure.
Mr. Nowrasteh. Well sir, I don't work on talking points
like that. I am interested in facts, and the legal immigration
system is not just fine. I have spent my career talking about
how we need to expand legal immigration.
I don't go around saying it is just fine. I said that
things have improved. No, I don't go around talking about--
Mr. Tiffany. Sir, don't filibuster. I have got questions to
ask, and I only have five minutes.
So, you are saying here, vetting is effective, and the visa
process is secure. You stand by that, right?
Mr. Nowrasteh. Absolutely.
Mr. Tiffany. How did 350,00 children come into America that
we have no idea where they are at, at the end of the Biden
Administration? How are there 600,00 criminal aliens in this
country that committed, oftentimes, violent crimes? Everything
from attempted murder, to carjacking, to--
Mr. Nowrasteh. The vast majority of those did not go
through the legal immigration system. That is entirely the
point that we are trying to make here today, is that they did
not go through legal immigration.
If they did, then most of those people would have been kept
out.
Mr. Tiffany. It is because of this administration, which
you said--
Mr. Nowrasteh. This administration did a good job.
Mr. Tiffany. Did a good job 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, does it include the death of Steven Nasholm, a
truck driver in Rusk County, Wisconsin, up where I live, who
left behind three daughters, does that include him in the data?
He is dead as a result of an illegal alien running him off
the road.
Mr. Nowrasteh. The evidence that we have is dependent on--
Mr. Tiffany. Does it include the two children in
Abbotsford, Wisconsin--
Mr. Nowrasteh. It includes all people who are convicted of
crimes in this country, sir.
Mr. Tiffany. Who are dead--
Mr. Nowrasteh. 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, the tragedy and those
individual criminals should be punished to the fullest extent
of the law. That is not a reason to punish other people who are
not criminals--
Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Nowrasteh, are they in the data?
Mr. Nowrasteh. For that.
Mr. Tiffany. Are they in the data?
Mr. Nowrasteh. Of course.
Mr. Tiffany. Are the 100,000 children that died of
fentanyl--or young people, the No. 1 killer of young people in
America ages what, 21-45, fentanyl.
Do you include the fentanyl deaths?
Mr. Nowrasteh. Do you mean the people who voluntarily took
fentanyl and overdosed under that tragic situation? No, those
are not homicides, sir.
Mr. Tiffany. Do you mean the communist Chinese who sent the
precursors over here, and then the cartels who--
Mr. Nowrasteh. Are we talking about the drug war now? We
are talking about the drug war?
Mr. Tiffany. Through them sent in--and, by the way, they
sent it in being carried by people who are coming in with the
immigration system.
Mr. Nowrasteh. Why don't you count the automobile imported
that also caused accidents.
Mr. Tiffany. Do you have that in your data? Have you done,
in your data, have you reviewed the impact on wages for those
who are in the lowest--
Mr. Nowrasteh. Sure.
Mr. Tiffany. Economic strata with these millions of people
coming into America, taking their jobs? I will end there.
Mr. Nowrasteh. Of course. I have vast economic literature
on that this contradicts your data.
Mr. Tiffany. Ms. Vaughan, share with us, has there been an
impact on Americans' earnings as a result of illegal
immigration?
Ms. Vaughan. There is no question that illegal immigration
causes unfair competition, costing people job opportunities,
depressing their wages, and causing those millions of Americans
who have dropped out of the labor market to have trouble
getting back into it. No question.
Mr. Tiffany. It is clear they are making less money.
Ms. Vaughan. Yes.
Mr. Tiffany. That should be included in any dataset when we
are considering what we should do with immigration. Is that
correct?
Ms. Vaughan. That is the inevitable result. That is supply
and demand. When you increase the supply of labor, distort the
labor markets, you are going to get lower wages.
Mr. Nowrasteh. Supply and demand. You are only talking
about supply. These immigrants are coming--
Mr. Knott. Mr. Nowrasteh, you are out of order. You are out
of order.
Mr. Tiffany. No, no. I will direct the questions to you,
sir. Mr. Hankinson,--
Mr. Nowrasteh. I am not asking a question.
Mr. Tiffany. Was there a cost to the fentanyl deaths here
in America?
Mr. Hankinson. The open border made it a lot easier to
bring in a lot of drugs. A lot of drugs killed, as you said,
about 66,000 people, just fentanyl alone, in one year.
Mr. Tiffany. How much do you value a life?
Mr. Hankinson. You can't put a price on a human life.
Mr. Tiffany. I yield back.
Mr. Knott. The Chair recognizes Mr. Nadler.
Mr. Nadler. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, Republicans
love to claim that while they oppose illegal immigration, they
are for legal immigration.
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. Nowrasteh?
Mr. Nowrasteh. Yes. Yes.
Mr. Nadler. Under this administration, we have seen attacks
on Green Card holders for exercising their free speech rights.
We have seen a complete shutdown of the refugee program, and
the relentless assault on student visas.
Would you agree with that?
Mr. Nowrasteh. Absolutely, sir.
Mr. Nadler. Thank you. The 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 or their
respective institutions. Would you agree with that?
Mr. Nowrasteh. That is absolutely true. It is a total
travesty. It is a poor way to run an immigration system. It is
bad for the United States that this is happening like that.
Mr. Nadler. According to recent reports, more than 1,800
students and recent graduates across 280 colleges and
universities have had their visas revoked. Is that true?
Mr. Nowrasteh. As far as I know, in the most recent data I
have seen, yes. This is changing, of course, all the time,
because the administration is so aggressively antilegal
immigration. It is hard to keep up with the new numbers.
Mr. Nadler. Thank you. Mr. Nowrasteh, isn't it true that
ever since World War II, the United States has followed a
policy of attracting people from other countries to come and
study in the United States, and that this policy has led to
tremendous scientific, military, and computer advancements that
have helped make America the strongest, most technologically
developed country in the world?
Mr. Nowrasteh. That is absolutely true. In 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 post-World War II period, can explain about
half the productivity growth up through the 1990s.
A tremendous increase and which resulted in a tremendous
increase in wages, in new inventions, and economic growth that
has made all our lives better.
Mr. Nadler. 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 like criminals?
Mr. Nowrasteh. That is absolutely one of the biggest risks.
The things that worry me the most, is what genius
entrepreneurs, like Elon Musk, or what great scientists, like
the woman whose name escapes me right now, but who helped
discover the mRNA vaccine, are we turning away? What is the
loss?
Mr. Nadler. Jennifer Doudna.
Mr. Nowrasteh. I am sorry?
Mr. Nadler. Jennifer Doudna.
Mr. Nowrasteh. She is, yes, an incredible, brilliant genius
whose work has helped save millions and millions of lives
around the world. If she weren't allowed in here, I just doubt
that she would have been able to make those discoveries and
contributions in a country like Hungary.
Mr. Nadler. Thank you. Now, Mr. Nowrasteh, the replacement
rate to keep the population steady, is 2.1 births per woman.
The rate in the United States is 1.6 per woman. Now,
obviously, this will result eventually in fewer Americans. I
think you mentioned that.
What is the effect of having fewer and fewer Americans,
more and more people of advancing age to be supported by fewer
people in prime earning years?
Mr. Nowrasteh. The economic effects are devastating. They
are much slower economic growth and slower wage growth. We can
see an advanced example of this in East Asia, especially in the
country of Japan, which has had lower fertility, a low
replacement for decades now.
It is 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 a
long period of time, is immigration to the United States.
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. That is tragedy.
Mr. Nadler. One where more people of working age have to
support, I am sorry, fewer people of working age have to
support more people of advanced age, threatening our social
security system.
Mr. Nowrasteh. That is right. It definitely exacerbates the
insolvency issues with Social Security and Medicare. It will
bring on those problems faster and 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, expanding legal immigration
does help extend the life of these programs.
Mr. Nadler. What do we risk losing if the United States
becomes perceived as a less welcoming destination for
international students?
Mr. Nowrasteh. The United States will lose one of the great
selling points and attractions for this country. The attraction
of opportunity has enticed so many of our ancestors to come
here over the centuries.
A 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. This 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. I want to see a future with more
Americans.
Mr. Nadler. Thank you. My time has expired. I yield back.
Mr. Knott. Thank you, sir. The Chair recognizes Mr. Roy.
Mr. Roy. I thank the Chair. I thank the Chair for calling
this hearing.
Mr. Nowrasteh, I assume that when you say you would like a
future with more Americans, that includes Jocelyn Nungaray?
Do you know Jocelyn Nungaray? Have you talked to her
mother, Alexa?
Mr. Nowrasteh. I know her. She was murdered by an illegal
immigrant in Houston.
Mr. Roy. 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. Her mother lost her.
She is 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.
Ms. Vaughan.
Mr. Nowrasteh. Parading around as libertarians? What does
that mean?
Mr. Roy. Ms. Vaughan, is there--it means exactly what it
means.
Mr. Knott. You are out of order, Mr. Nowrasteh.
Mr. Roy. It is my time, not yours.
Mr. Nowrasteh. I take that as a personal outright attack.
Mr. Roy. It is my time, not yours.
Mr. Nowrasteh. I take objection to that.
Mr. Roy. I don't have any time to listen to libertarian
claptrap--
Mr. Nowrasteh. I know you don't have any time to listen.
Mr. Roy. That is killing Americans. Because that is what
you are doing. You are hiding behind a brand--
Mr. Nowrasteh. Killing Americans?
Mr. Roy. That is resulting in the death of Americans.
Mr. Nowrasteh. That is a heck of a thing to say to
somebody, sir. That is totally false.
Mr. Roy. Mr. Nowrasteh, you are out of order.
Mr. Nowrasteh. I take exception to that.
Mr. Roy. Well, it is true. It is true and everybody in
American knows it.
Mr. Nowrasteh. I am not killing anybody, sir. That is--
Mr. Roy. Ms. Vaughan--
Mr. Nowrasteh. Completely exceptional, even for you.
Mr. Roy. Ms. Vaughan--then you go talk to Alexa Nungaray
and talk about her daughter no longer being with us.
Mr. Nowrasteh. Beneath you--
Mr. Knott. Out of order.
Mr. Nowrasteh. To even say that to somebody, sir.
Mr. Roy. Ms. Vaughan, on June 25, 2024, DHS Office of
Inspector General released a report entitled ``CVP has Limited
Information to Assess, Interview, Waive Non-Immigrant Visa
Holders.''
Are you familiar with that report?
Ms. Vaughan. Yes.
Mr. Roy. In that report, is it not true, it says here that
the report found the Biden Administration expanded a COVID era
policy of waiving visa applicant interviews and fingerprint
collecting, to reduce visa backlogs and staffing shortages,
which worsened at the peak of the pandemic.
Is that correct?
Ms. Vaughan. Yes.
Mr. Roy. Biden took this COVID era policy to admit over
seven million foreign nationals from across the globe into the
United States. Does that sound correct?
Ms. Vaughan. Well, yes. The numbers in later years are more
like nine million a year.
Mr. Roy. Certainly, significant numbers of people,
millions, without having DHS interview them?
Ms. Vaughan. Yes.
Mr. Roy. The DHS failed to fingerprint an unknown number of
visa applicants during the 2020-2023 period, correct?
Ms. Vaughan. Yes. Actually part of that responsibility is
on the State Department as well.
Mr. Roy. Do you find this discovery particularly troubling?
Ms. Vaughan. Absolutely. It underscores how much the Biden
Administration, and others before it, emphasized swiftness in
processing. Just moving these applications through, getting to
the yes, rubber stamping approvals, over making the correct
decision.
It emphasizes that vetting is not just a matter of looking
people up in a data base that may or may not have relevant
information to the decision. Interviews are a way for them to
establish the credibility of the applicant and whether they
actually qualify for the visa.
Mr. Roy. I want to ask you about the Visa Waiver Program as
well. It ostensibly does not require an alien to possess a visa
to enter the country, correct?
Ms. Vaughan. Correct.
Mr. Roy. It is a gaping vulnerability in our legal
immigration system, right?
Ms. Vaughan. Inherently, yes.
Mr. Roy. With respect to that, are you familiar with the
South American theft groups, particularly Chile, who commit
burglary tourism through the Visa Waiver Program?
Ms. Vaughan. I have heard a lot about them from law
enforcement agencies.
Mr. Roy. For a time, Chile AVWP program refused to provide
U.S. authorities the required background information on its
nationals seeking entry to the United States, despite entering
into a security shared agreement in 2013.
Are you familiar with that?
Ms. Vaughan. Yes.
Mr. Roy. So, I sent a letter to DHS Secretary Noem and
Secretary, State Department Secretary Rubio, to alert them to
Chile's abuse. I would like to insert that into the record
without objection.
Mr. Knott. Without objection.
Mr. Roy. The DHS informed my office that Chile is now
apparently complying with the agreed on security agreements.
However, because so many Chilean criminals have established
theft rings across the Nation thanks to the VWP, these theft
groups have recruited Chile nationals with no criminal record
to enter the U.S. through the VWP to commit burglary tourism.
Are you familiar with that extension?
Ms. Vaughan. Yes. Yes.
Mr. Roy. It is a real problem. This is the kind of thing
that multiplies when we have a lack of seriousness on these
issues, correct?
Ms. Vaughan. Correct. It exists with Irish contractors in
the Boston area as well. They totally exploit these people.
Mr. Roy. Last question here. 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?
Ms. Vaughan. Yes.
Mr. Roy. On January 6, 2022, the DHS OIG again, released a
report entitled ``USCIS U Visa Program is not managed
effectively, and it is susceptible to fraud,'' correct?
Ms. Vaughan. Yes.
Mr. Roy. I could go through a whole litany of things, but I
don't have the time to do that. I would like to just
acknowledge that problem, that OIG has recognized another
problem, and I will just finish with this since I represent the
Southwest corner of Austin, don't blame me for the downtown
Austin stuff.
Mr. Brown, I would like you to be able to 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 allowed to
occur, and what that did to you and your family.
Mr. Brown. My wife still has trouble talking about it. It
felt like we were under siege. It was confusing, we had no idea
what was going on.
If I didn't have the background that I have, a little bit
of law, a little bit of homeland security, I am not sure most
people would even know what happened.
That is my biggest concern is that people who are
victimized like this, they don't know. If they don't know that
a U Visa Program exists, how will they ever know to ask for
that discovery?
Mr. Knott. Time has expired.
Mr. Brown. We have some prosecutors who we know refuse to
disclose or even certify U Visas until after a case is
concluded.
Mr. Knott. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Brown. There is something called the Brady Doctrine.
Mr. Roy. Yes, the gentleman is correct. I appreciate the
gentleman's testimony. Sorry that this occurred to you.
I yield back.
Mr. Knott. The Chair recognizes Representative Scanlon.
Ms. Scanlon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thought this was
supposed to be one hearing where we weren't focused on illegal
crossings at the border, but instead were going to look at
reforms to our legal immigration and our visa programs.
Apparently some of our folks didn't get the memo. Look,
since the first day of this administration, it has been clear
that it is chaotic.
Often a lawless immigration agenda is based on a false
choice, one that mistakenly asserts that to keep Americans
safe, we have to slam our doors to the world, ignore the laws
and values that this Nation has been built on 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
healthcare systems.
This administration has claimed to only be going after the
worst of the worst. 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 are pursuing their legal
immigration remedies, et cetera.
We see people with legal status having had the rug pulled
out from under them, including our Afghan allies. These are
folks who had our troops' backs during that conflict and came
here legally on temporary protected status, and now they are
facing deportation.
Refugee resettlement has all but been shut down. People who
have 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.
This administration is now targeting international
students, people here to learn from and contribute to our
universities, our economy, innovation, and to our healthcare
systems.
It is penalizing Green Card holders for expressing opinions
that this administration doesn't agree with, despite the plain
language of the First Amendment.
Ultimately, despite all the rhetoric we are 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 are already seeing the figure was a $12 billion decrease
in tourism, as people are afraid to come here. They don't like
what they are seeing.
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. That is being tarnished. It is just moving away
from that tradition in the wrong direction.
Mr. Nowrasteh, my district is home to a bunch of colleges
and universities, many of which have 10-15 percent foreign
students. Revoking their visas without transparency,
terminating their legal status, seems like it is a big problem.
I hear from these universities that one of the reasons they
like having international students, aside from the different
perspectives they bring, the different knowledge they dollars
without student loans.
Can you talk a little bit about what is happening with
respect to the decrease in international students?
Mr. Nowrasteh. Yes. They do bring in a lot of dollars. The
American educational services are a large export of the United
States.
This administration talks frequently about wanting to close
the trade deficit, which is frankly an economically meaningless
term. If they were really interested in that, they would
actually liberalize student visas, because it actually
increases exports.
It is a very valuable one. 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 our lives
better off.
Ms. Scanlon. This Committee had a hearing on February 15,
2022, on the essential role of immigrant physicians to American
healthcare. Have you looked at that at all?
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. We have had foreign
physicians filling those gaps.
Can you speak about that issue at all?
Mr. Nowrasteh. I can speak a little bit about that. Foreign
immigrants are overrepresented in most medical suboccupations.
They contribute mightily to this.
The United States has about 4-5 percent of the world's
population. It would be extraordinarily accidental if those
people who are born here happen to be the best of the best.
We really punch above our weight when it comes to that.
There are a lot of talented foreigners out there who could be
great American physicians and medical professionals. It is
pretty absurd that we make it difficult for so many of them to
come in.
Mr. Knott. Time has expired.
Ms. Scanlon. Thank you.
Mr. Knott. Thank you. The Chair recognizes Representative
Van Drew.
Mr. Van Drew. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 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. We want to make this
complicated. Not you all, I am not blaming you, but in general,
it is not complicated. We don't want the law to be broken.
The abuse that is going on, or did go on, is causing the
American people to lose faith in our immigration system. That
is the worst of it, and I am going to emphasize this over and
over again.
Unfortunately, folks on the Left, folks on the other side,
it is even happening today, they will talk about doctors, and
teachers, and scientists coming over, and how we are going to
stop that. They are going to not want to come over.
They are not the ones we are concerned with. Scientists and
doctors are coming over legally. They are going through the
system. They are 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. Nobody is against legal immigration of
good people coming to America. That is the way America was
built.
As many times as the other folks on the other side will
say, immigration, I am going to keep qualifying, we are talking
about illegal activity and illegal immigration. Worst of all,
we keep doing this over and over again.
Under Joe Biden, the problem wasn't just illegal entry at
the border and is what we are 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 am not the only one saying that.
We had the FBI Director, the previous FBI Director here
under the Biden Administration, no friend of mine, don't
particularly care for him, but he said America was more
dangerous than ever before in its entire history. That has got
nothing to do with Trump. He wasn't President yet.
Let's cut it out. It is telling the truth time. It is time
to be honest. 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.
The bad 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
content? 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 flagged. It appears no one actually
screened this guy.
Meanwhile, I am going to say it again, because I really
want to pound this in, law-abiding good immigrants who do it
properly, they are waiting for years, and I would actually
agree sometimes too long. They are 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.
The more we let bad actors come into the system, the more
it becomes harder for the good actors to succeed and make their
way to America. We have got programs that are good.
People come here for a while, and they stay. Some of them
become citizens. Some come and go back every year, and they
work hard. Those are good people.
We are screwing them. We are giving them the short end of
the stick. That is why it is 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
is pro-American, and it is pro-immigrant. We need to restore
that integrity. Let's stop letting bad people abuse the system.
I got some questions for you real fast. Like when you vote,
you got to vote for this one or that one, I simply want a yes
or a no answer. I don't want a whole long thing Mr. Nowrasteh.
I want a yes or a no.
Are Americans safer when we stop thoroughly vetting visa
applicants? Ms. Vaughan, you start.
Ms. Vaughan. No.
Mr. Hankinson. No.
Mr. Nowrasteh. No.
Mr. Brown. No.
Mr. Van Drew. Good. Should foreign nationals with radical
or anti-American social media be denied visas?
Ms. Vaughan. Yes.
Mr. Hankinson. Yes.
Mr. Nowrasteh. Broadly. It depends. I am a free speech
absolutist.
Mr. Van Drew. Yes or no?
Mr. Nowrasteh. I am a free speech absolutist. I believe
in--
Mr. Van Drew. It is yes or no.
Mr. Nowrasteh. --the First Amendment of the United States.
Mr. Van Drew. When you vote you don't get to--
Mr. Nowrasteh. So, I guess no. As a First Amendment
believer or no.
Mr. Van Drew. --when you vote, don't talk over me. This is
my time, not yours.
Mr. Nowrasteh. I know.
Mr. Van Drew. 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?
Ms. Vaughan. No.
Mr. Hankinson. No.
Mr. Nowrasteh. Yes.
Mr. Brown. No.
Mr. Van Drew. Should someone who was, last one, should
someone who was--
Ms. Crockett. Time.
Mr. Van Drew. I am out of time? OK. I yield back, Mr.
Chair.
Ms. Jayapal. Mr. Chair, I have two quick unanimous consent
requests.
Mr. Knott. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Jayapal. The first one is an article from NBC News
entitled, ``Hundreds of International Doctors Due to Start
Medical Residencies are in Visa Limbo.''
The second one is because we have had so much conversation
on overstays, it is the Homeland Security Fiscal Year 2023
Entry/Exit Overstay Report that specifically says that the
overstay rate is 1.02 percent.
Mr. Knott. Without objection, admitted. The Chair
recognizes Representative Ross.
Ms. Ross. Thank you, Mr. Chair and the Ranking Member for
holding this hearing. I am going to try to overlap in a
positive way with Mr. Van Drew and talk about what we need to
enhance legal immigration.
I am absolutely convinced that we can fix our immigration
system to deal with illegal immigration, the overstay
situation, obviously, we are working on the border. We can walk
and chew gum at the same time.
Both the Chair 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, I hear from the
agriculture sector, the largest sector, economic sector in
North Carolina, the hospitality industry, the construction
industry, we have 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. They need better H-2B
visa processing. They want to hire people who are legal. We
have a backlog.
We have not increased many of these visa quotas in more
than 30 years. People want to come into this area. We are
growing.
We have amazing institutions of higher education, educating
lots of people from the United States. I am very big on
increasing the pipeline from the United States. As we have
discussed, in North Carolina, there simply are not enough
people for our growing economy.
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 institutions.
Mr. Nowrasteh, can you tell us how we could fix some of the
problems that we are hearing with our visa system, and expand
opportunities for more of these people to get legal visas?
These employers in my district and in my State, who are
generating all the economic prosperity, want to do it the right
way.
Mr. Nowrasteh. The major problem with the legal immigration
system in the U.S. 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 am just a humble supporter of the free market, but
people should be able to go back and forth based on where they
are demanded, where their opportunities are, and where people
want to buy and sell from them and to them.
We need to expand these opportunities for low-skilled
workers in areas like agriculture, but also create a visa for
construction workers. We need to create a visa for
manufacturing, for all different types and for every sector of
the American economy.
For mid-skill workers, for people who are higher-skilled,
make it easier for them to come in, some of them temporarily
and some of them permanently. At a minimum, the thing that we
can do is create a visa for entrepreneurs, which this country
entirely lacks.
That is the no-brainer here. That is the biggest no-brainer
around.
Ms. Ross. Mr. Nowrasteh, we have only touched on this, I
have, ever since I got here, been one of the primary sponsors
of a bipartisan bicameral bill to deal with what we call the
documented dreamers, the children of H-1B visa holders who come
over here before they weren't born here.
Sometimes their siblings are U.S. citizens, but they are
not. They literally age out of their visas when they are 21
years old. The backlog is so long that they will never be able
to get a visa or become a U.S. citizen.
They are the children of highly educated people. Most of
them are in college. We have paid for their education. Now, we
are deporting them to countries that we compete with.
What do you say to those documented dreamers who I have
been fighting so hard for?
Mr. Nowrasteh. You should be allowed to stay in the United
States. You should be allowed to become an American citizen.
You should be allowed to use your talents, your skills, and
your grit to do well here.
The one thing we know about children doing well, or how
well they are going to do in life, is it is related to their
parents. The H-1Bs who come to the United States do
extraordinarily well.
They have above the 90th percentile in wages in the United
States. Their kids are going to do about as well as they do if
we let them, if the government lets them succeed.
All we need to do is get out of their way. All 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.
Ms. Ross. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Knott. Thank you, Ms. Ross. The Chair now recognizes
myself for five minutes.
Ms. Vaughan, one of my greatest frustrations is the
conflating of illegal versus legal. No one up here is against
legal. We all want to strengthen it.
It is very hard to be prolegal immigration and pro-illegal
immigration. This notion that we are the recipients of only the
best and the brightest, only those who refuse to commit crimes,
only those who give more than they take from this country, that
is not necessarily the case in any way, shape, or form as it
relates to illegal immigrants.
I am a former Federal prosecutor. I saw a lot of the people
that were coming across the border, 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 immigration?
Ms. Vaughan. Wow. Let me count the ways. I do want to
address one quick--
Mr. Knott. Please.
Ms. Vaughan. Beforehand, and that is that, we have talked
about good people coming here through some of the legal
programs.
We also need to remember that our student visa programs,
and our exchange visitor programs, and some of the work
programs would be far more successful if the people who
benefited from those programs went back to their home country
and helped enrich and advance their home countries.
That is part of the original purpose of these types of
programs. I don't think we should always talk in terms of
trying to get people to stay here.
As far as the costs of illegal immigration, they are
numerous. It causes labor market distortions that harm
Americans. The fiscal costs are huge. The CBO just came out
with a report detailing those costs.
The worst cost is the public safety and national security
threats that occur when we allow people in.
Mr. Knott. Just off the top of your head, do you know how
many Americans died in 1990 from drug overdoses?
Ms. Vaughan. I do not.
Mr. Knott. It was roughly 4,500. Do you know how many have
died in the last 20 years from drug overdoses?
Ms. Vaughan. I do not.
Mr. Knott. Almost 1.2 million. I know there was an effort
to delineate the role that illegal immigration plays in the
drug culture, drug crimes, violent crime, and so forth, but can
you separate America's problem, and addiction and death, from
drugs and crime, from illegal immigration?
Ms. Vaughan. No. There is a direct nexus with transnational
crime and an insecure border in this. That is very well
established, and you cannot separate the two.
Mr. Knott. Mr. Hankinson, in regard to your experience and
your expertise, did the Biden Administration, again, going back
to this construct, legal versus illegal immigration, did they
do anything to prevent illegal immigration from only
accelerating in this country?
Mr. Hankinson. No. That they did the opposite. They wanted
to conflate all immigration into migrants, so that there was no
distinction between legal and illegal.
Mr. Knott. Did that open up the pathway not only for
illegal immigration to overwhelm the system, but also the
pathways of legal immigration? Were those abused by bad actors?
Mr. Hankinson. Well, when you put all the staff, for
example, the border patrol is not patrolling the border, more
people can come in. If USCIS is processing all the cases of
parolees and asylees, they don't have time to process the legal
cases.
Legal immigrants suffered more under the Biden
Administration than they should have.
Mr. Knott. This idea 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?
Is it easier to convict someone that you don't even know is
here?
Mr. Hankinson. Well, it is easier to convict someone when
you know who they are. Either way, it takes a lot of time.
Mr. Knott. That is right. That is right. In terms of the
drug sales, the drug smuggling, and so forth, if we don't know
that they are here in the first place, it is harder to
investigate and convict. Is that correct?
Mr. Hankinson. Yes.
Mr. Knott. Now, Mr. Brown, in regard to 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?
Mr. Brown. The vast majority of our clients are traditional
one-sided marriage fraud cases. Those are traditionally when
someone, a foreign national, convinces and deceives a U.S.
citizen into marriage for the purpose of getting a Green Card.
Over the last couple of decades, there has been new types
of marriage fraud that has emerged. One is called VAWA self-
petition fraud. That is when they file a Form I-360. That is
when they falsely accused their spouse of some sort of domestic
violence to become eligible to basically pursue the Green Card
without any obstruction.
Another one is an I-751 waiver fraud. The Congress passed
the 1986 Marriage Fraud Amendments Act and created this
conditional permanent residency regime. This I-751 waiver is a
way for them to get around the joint petition requirement by
making a false accusation.
The final form of marriage-based fraud is I-864 fraud,
which is a huge problem. The I-864 is basically a form of
immigration alimony these days. We have had numerous clients
where a foreign national marries them, comes into the U.S.,
doesn't even cohabitate with them, and sues them under the I-
864.
There is no fraud exception in the Federal statute, which
should be changed.
Mr. Knott. Right. OK. Sir, thank you for your testimony. To
the victims who are here in the back, thank you for coming. We
see you. I yield back.
Mr. Fry? Mr. Garcia. No, I am sorry, Mr. Garcia. Mr.
Garcia, I wasn't trying to skip you. I had to leave, so I am
getting Mr. Fry to come and sit in the chair.
Mr. Garcia. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Before I make a few
remarks, I want to just observe that the bulk of this hearing
was about illegal or unauthorized immigration.
We are supposed to be talking about legal immigration and
visas and the visa system. In addition to that, people went as
far as to talk about an existential threat.
People talked about, inaccurately, 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 IRCA, 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.
Once again, we are 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 embraced largely a racist narrative that portrays
immigrants as criminals and terrorists all for short-term
political gain. I say that as a proud American who also is an
immigrant to this country.
Now, under this administration, we have a lawless
authoritarian regime that is terrorizing communities, kidnaping
people off the streets, deporting U.S. citizens, including
children with cancer. Locking up nearly 60,000 people and
depriving them of even food and basic necessities.
Openly violating the law and preventing the Members of
Congress from making oversight visits. I experienced that last
week with three other Members in Illinois.
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.
It is a cynical and cruel campaign that does nothing to
improve the lives of working families. The people of this
country see through it.
That is why the President's polling on immigration is
underwater. Even though Republicans don't want to fix our
immigration system, it is more important than ever to promote a
thoughtful and nuanced approach to these issues. We can look to
history to inform our path forward.
Mr. Nowrasteh, thank you for being here today. I want to
ask you about the Bracero Program in the 1950s and 1960s. 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?
What lessons about the visa process can we learn from that
program today?
Mr. Nowrasteh. It was far more effective than the process
we have today. It was not perfect by any means. There were
definitely problems 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 from some of these workers.
What we saw was at the beginning of the expansion of the
Bracero Program in 1952, there were around two million or so
unauthorized immigrants in the U.S., almost all of them from
Mexico. Within a few years of this program, the border flows,
the illegal crossings, fell by over 95 percent.
The illegal immigrant population fell by 90 percent because
they got these visas. This was ended, this program, in 1964.
That is when the modern illegal immigration program, or illegal
immigration problem began, was because Americans still demanded
immigrant laborers, but Congress had made it illegal.
Mr. Garcia. Thank you for that. I ask you that, because it
is personal to me. My father came to this country under that
program, eventually became a lawful permanent resident and
petitioned for us. That is how we arrived in 1965, another
historic year in immigration law.
If Republicans want to restore integrity, and you corrected
the record, sir, and security to the visa process or enhance
it, perhaps, then they should stop criminalizing immigrants at
large and destroying those lawful pathways.
If 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. I yield back, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Jayapal. Mr. Chair, I have an unanimous consent
request. I seek unanimous consent to enter into the record,
this Congressional research report titled, ``U.S. Citizenship
and Immigration Services Operations and Issues for Congress.''
It shows that out of 10 million forms processed by USCIS in
2023, only 1.6 percent were referred to the Office of Fraud
Detection and National Security for any indications of fraud or
national security threats.
Mr. Fry. [Presiding.] Without objection. The Chair now
recognizes the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Hunt.
Mr. Hunt. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 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.
In response to this invasion, President Trump signed an
Executive Order simply returning immigration law back to the
standards of July 19, 2021, which restores and enhances all
screening of foreign nationals, especially those who are
considered to be a higher risk to this country.
To secure the homeland, which was about 77 million
Americans voted for, we must do more than just finish the wall,
fund CBP, and support ICE's lawful deportation operations. We
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. Why? Because if
we didn't fight the enemy there, then we are going to have to
fight them here in our own country.
Now, because of the failures of the Democrat party's
policies, they are now in our homeland. How do we know? Because
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 2001-2023. Unacceptable.
The Democrat Party under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,
Alejandro Mayorkas, and numerous other dark money groups and
NGOs, made it their mission to flood this country with tens of
millions of unvetted immigrants and people who wish to do us
harm.
Terrorists like Egyptian National Mohamed Sabry Soliman,
who used a homemade flame thrower and Molotov cocktails in
Boulder, Colorado, to attack pro-Israel demonstrators who were
advocating for the release of hostages.
This man, who was admitted into the U.S. in 2022 on a
Tourist Visa, and was then given a 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.
Ms. Vaughan, thank you so much for being here today. I
really appreciate your testimony. If you had a magic wand that
could create any policy to prevent tragedies such as we saw in
Boulder, Colorado, a few weeks ago, what would it be, ma'am?
Ms. Vaughan. Well, unfortunately, there is no machine that
can read people's minds to know what their intent is when they
are coming here.
One of the most important improvements that we could make
would be to require mandatory interviews for nonimmigrant visa
applicants and also people who are applying for Green Cards and
immigrant visas.
Mr. Hunt. OK. Thank you.
MS. Vaughan. We should have eyes on and personal contact
with everyone who is applying.
Mr. Hunt. Can you say that again please? We should have
personal contact with every single visa holder of every single
individual that wants to enter this country.
Am I right or wrong?
Ms. Vaughan. Right. At a minimum for their first
application. Some renewals are not high-risk once you can
examine their travel history.
Mr. Hunt. Of course.
Ms. Vaughan. Every new applicant, with very few exceptions,
should have a personal interview.
Mr. Hunt. 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 done to our country and people that are
literally maiming our fellow Americans, while we have done
nothing and we stood by idly. We are now acting and behaving in
a way that enforces the law.
This is not xenophobia. This is the way and the process
that it takes to enter a sovereign Nation. 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. Then, when we do something about it, we then
cry xenophobia. It would never happen.
When I was stationed in Saudi Arabia, you had to have a
diplomatic passport just to enter Saudi Arabian airspace. 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.
Mr. Fry. The gentleman yields. The Chair now recognizes the
gentlelady from Texas, Ms. Crockett.
Ms. Crockett. Thank you so much. It is interesting that we
are 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 meetings and appointments.
The last time I checked, there are 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 in the mayoral ended up being arrested,
because he decided that he was actually going to escort people
that are actually showing up to their meetings.
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 are going into their meetings, because the
reality is that, what they are claiming what they want to do,
versus what they are actually doing, the actions don't match
up.
WShile we are supposed to be talking about visas, somehow
we continue to cherry-pick and talk about one criminal act and
another criminal act.
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.
Let me get to what this hearing is supposed to be about.
The 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 posts
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.
Since we are talking about integrity, I am 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 you all that Melania, the First Lady, a
model, and when I say model, I am not talking about Tyra Banks,
Cindy Crawford, or Naomi Campbell level, applied for and was
given an EB-1 Visa. What that stands for is an Einstein Visa.
Now, you don't know, let me tell you how you receive an
Einstein Visa. You are supposed to have some sort of
significant achievement, like being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize
or a Pulitzer, 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.
Nevertheless, 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.
I am not going to mess up your name, so I am not doing
that. I am with you. OK? In your experience, do individuals on
J or M Visas typically improve or impair our economy?
Mr. Nowrasteh. They generally improve the economy. I can
give a brief example. My wife is a very successful woman. She
makes a ton of money, which I am grateful for.
The reason why we are able to do that while having three
children, is because of the au pair visa, somebody who is here
on a J Visa.
Ms. Crockett. OK.
Mr. Nowrasteh. Who is here and able to supply this for us.
I also want to defend Melania really quick. Not everybody
could marry Donald Trump. That is quite an achievement.
She deserves credit for that. Nobody up here could have
done it.
Ms. Crockett. You, sir, are right. I couldn't do it.
Anyway, in fact, J Visa holders contribute $43.8 billion to the
U.S. economy, and support more than 300,000 jobs.
Make no mistake, immigrants improve the health of U.S.
citizens too. Despite 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. Most of these folks are in Red States.
Wouldn't you know that in 2023, Kaiser Family Foundation
estimated that almost 30 percent of long-term care providers or
home care caretakers were immigrants. It is 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, and kidnaping,
to help law enforcement with their investigation or
prosecutions of these crimes. These folks are risking their own
security for broader safety of Americans and our communities.
Thank you so much. I will yield.
Mr. Fry. The gentlelady yields. The Chair now recognizes
himself for five minutes. I think it is important to realize
how we got here. Right?
I have served in Congress for 2\1/2\ years, and one of the
first hearings that we ever had, the Ranking Member of this
Committee, not this one, said that we were imagining,
Republicans were imagining a border crisis, right?
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.
One of the concerns of that, not only from the illegal side
that Mr. Knott talked about, but the legal side too, Ms.
Vaughan, 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?
Ms. Vaughan. I would agree with that. They implemented
through Secretary Mayorkas, a get-to-yes culture. We were
instructed to minimize vetting, and to approve, as a default,
and discouraged from referring cases to fraud. They were not
allowed to issue notices to appear for failed benefit
applicants.
They sort of took away the consequence of filing a
frivolous application by letting people who were here illegally
apply for a visa and the few that were denied nothing happened
to them.
That created a huge impetus to apply for some of these visa
programs that people really wouldn't even claim to qualify for.
They knew by just filing the application, they could get a work
permit and protection for deportation.
That just destroys the integrity of the system, and it
makes legal applicants have to wait longer for the benefits
that they deserve.
Mr. Fry. Correct. Now, we are forced with figuring out
whether people are categorized in the right place, right?
Whether they were even lawfully allowed to get the visa
that they were supposed to receive.
Ms. Vaughan. That is right. There have been people whose
lawful status has been held back by all these frivolous
applications. People who have either received them already
fraudulently, or who are on waiting lists and who have work
permits, who shouldn't have them at all.
Mr. Fry. When it comes to vetting, obviously the Biden
Administration rescinded Trump's prior Executive Order from his
first term that kind of strengthened the visa process.
The new Executive Order under President Trump called for
maximum vetting, and ordered reviews of countries with poor
screening, and ergo travel suspensions, of course.
Mr. Hankinson, can a restriction on a country be lifted?
How would that look?
I guess when they comply and have adequate background
checks of their own citizens, that would be a reason why a
country that is on that list could now be allowed into the
country.
Mr. Hankinson. If they would take all their citizens back
when we asked them to, it was one factor. The overstay rate in
some of these countries, for Chad, it was 50 percent.
Out of every two people issued a visa, one doesn't come
back. Maybe it is time to rethink that one. 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. Fry. Mr. Hankinson, would you agree that our foreign
adversaries exploit our immigration system?
If you do agree with that, how so?
Mr. Hankinson. Absolutely. Well, we know that the Chinese
have spied on American companies, American universities, and
the American government. Obviously, it is not all of them. It
is just a small percentage, but that is all you need.
We know that the Russians have done the same, the Cubans.
It is a very easy country to get into, or at least it has been.
Mr. Fry. Mr. Brown, does the current Executive Order by
President Trump, do you believe that this closes security gaps
more effectively than the previous administration did?
Mr. Brown. Maybe. That what the Trump Administration has,
is some wonderful statutes that you all have already passed.
It gives them wide latitude to enforce some of these laws.
You 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 applications that went through.
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 I-130
petitions based on fraud.
That is something they can implement right now. There is no
other statute that needs to be done.
Mr. Fry. Thank you for that. Ms. Vaughan, regarding
President Trump's Executive, current Executive Order, do you
believe that if we had had this in place during the Biden
Administration that ICE would not have had to apprehend 11
Iranian nationals this past Sunday? One of them being a former
Army sniper for the IRGC.
Ms. Vaughan. Well, it is hard to know. I do believe that
there would have been, the ones who came over the border are
more likely to have been stopped. The ones who came on visas
are less likely to have been able to get those visas.
Since we don't have a machine that can read people's minds,
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 threats, as well as the
people who are committing fraud or simply don't qualify.
Mr. Fry. I agree with you. Including a look at the purview
of their social media, which would have shown at least with the
Boulder, Colorado, individual--
Ms. Vaughan. Yes, yes.
Mr. Fry. Sharing Muslim Brotherhood propaganda.
With that, I see my time has expired.
Mr. Raskin. Mr. Chair?
Mr. Fry. The gentleman is recognized.
Mr. Raskin. I have a UC request.
Mr. Fry. Go ahead.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you. A UC requests that further to the
colloquy between Mr. Nowrasteh and the Congresswoman from
Texas. This is in the Pew Research Center, ``A Majority of
Americans say Immigrants Fill Jobs U.S. Citizens Do Not Want.''
Mr. Fry. Without objection.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you.
Mr. Fry. That concludes today's hearing. We thank the
witnesses for appearing before the Subcommittee today.
Without objection, all Members will have five legislative
days to submit additional written questions for the witnesses
or additional materials for the record.
Without objection, the hearing is adjourned. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 4:12 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
All materials submitted for the record by the Members of
the Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and
Enforce-
ment can be found at the following links: https://
docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/ByEvent.aspx?EventID=118426.