The Trump administration has made promises to those seeking to migrate to the United States legally, and has even collected vast sums of money to process their applications. However, those documents continue to sit idle, completely untouched by federal authorities who are supposed to provide the documentation.
The Cato Institute did a deep dive into what’s transpiring inside the administration, and what they found sounds like a criminal enterprise that would made the mafia blush.
“The US government is taking fees from immigrants and US sponsors for services that it has no plans to provide. The government took their money, and now it won’t even adjudicate their applications—in many cases, it refuses even to issue denials. The State Department is actually telling consular officers not to notify future applicants that the government has banned them.”
Who is behind the policies? None other than Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and the head of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Joseph Edlow.
Using a blanket ban on migration from certain countries, including Jamaica, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Colombia, Nepal, Egypt, Ghana, and Guatemala, the administration has enacted a freeze on all application reviews, meaning that thousands of people are stuck in limbo and without the money they paid, which is being held by the administration instead of refunded.
“The two policies—the 40-country presidential proclamation entry restriction and this indefinite immigrant visa ‘pause’—mean that citizens of 92 countries (including Palestine) are completely banned from receiving immigrant visas and immigrating permanently to the United States. These nationalities account for half of all legal immigrants to the United States entering from abroad. Over 320,000 immigrant visa applicants—based on 2024 flows—are now blocked. Once accounting for the immigrants in the United States, the number of potential legal permanent residents blocked rises to 561,000.”
How much money is now being kept locked in place by the feds?
“To immigrate to the United States or to obtain authorization to work or travel internationally, noncitizens must usually pay a fee to have their applications processed. USCIS’s immigration fee revenues were nearly $7 billion, and the Consular Affairs budget was about $6 billion.”
Running a $1 billion surplus by grifting off people who simply want a chance at a better life in the United States. What will they think of next? Charging children for fresh air inside their school classrooms?
Ironically, Cubans represent the largest group of affected applicants, with nearly a million applications being held hostage. Marco Rubio’s family immigrated to the US from Cuba decades ago.
The entire enterprise sounds like the sort of bunko operation Trump ran for decades with entities such as Trump University, which was forced to pay millions in a civil settlement for ripping off those who enrolled in his worthless “classes” on real estate.
Trump and his family even stole from charities they set up, including a cancer charity that was established to benefit kids who contracted the dreaded disease. It doesn’t get any lower than that.
So, while the Trump administration continues to proclaim that they aren’t opposed to immigration as long as immigrants “follow the rules,” they’re blocking tons of applications from even being considered by federal workers who are being paid to do that job.
It’d be tempting to call Trump and his cronies scumbags, but that’d be an insult to lowlifes everywhere.
