By Kimberly James; WBAP and KLIF News, Dallas, Texas.
DALLAS – (WBAP/KLIF) – A Metroplex immigration attorney says he’s already seeing a broken U.S. immigration system get worse with significant hikes in fees for renewal of visas and work permits for those migrants already in Texas and around the nation legally; often, already here for years.
Attorney Omar Ortiz with the Jaime Barron Immigration Law Offices says some fees renewing work permits have more than doubled; some visa renewal fees are also up significantly, making it extremely difficult to afford even when a migrant has been in this country legally for years. Ortiz says the fees were raised because the U.S. Citizen and Immigration operations come from the fees themselves; the idea was to boost the coffers to train and put more personnel in place so migrant asylum claims could be processed more quickly. The goal is to decide cases within months or weeks instead of the current three to five years the process can take.
But Ortiz says he’s already seeing problems with clients working lower paying jobs being unable to afford the fee hikes; he says he expects as much as 30-35% of migrants may have difficulty, dumping them into illegal status. Should Texas Senate Bill 4 take effect, a law allowing police statewide to arrest anyone suspected of illegal entry, and Texas-wide magistrate judges to order deportations within a matter of weeks, the problem will compound the initial problems America now faces. Under Texas SB4, magistrate judges would be able to order deportations placing migrants at the border in Mexico, regardless of their country of origin. Mexico has already told the United States it will not accept Texas “castoffs” related to SB4.
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