https://thinkprogress.org/baltimore-skilled-immigrant-teachers-trump-crackdown-h1b-visas-6a0cba008557/



Nearly 25 Baltimore public school teachers will see their visas expire at the end of June, when they will be forced to return to the Philippines and Jamaica, where they’re from, compounding Baltimore’s already severe teacher shortage.

According to the Baltimore Sun, the teachers came to the United States in the mid-2000s on H-1B visas, which allow employers to hire skilled foreign workers in a range of fields like technology, research, and education. Baltimore City Public Schools hired the teachers to fill positions in the math, science, and special education fields. While the district applied to extend the teachers’ visas months ago, the federal government has moved slowly, Jeremy Grant-Skinner, the district’s chief human capital officer, told the Sun.

“We are at the mercy of the federal government in terms of securing the extension of their visas,” he said.

But it’s not likely the extension will come. Over the past year, the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda has spread to those on H-1B and H4 visas, which allow the spouses of those on H-1B visas to also live in the United States (although the Obama administration allowed certain H4 visa-holders to obtain employment, President Donald Trump plans to end that policy, which also affects some teachers).

In April 2017, Trump signed the “Buy American, hire American” executive order, which demanded a review of H-1B visas, resulting in an increase in the number of “requests for evidence” notices sent by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to applicants, dragging out the process.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-country-has-lost-its-mind-its-time-for-some-game-theory/2018/06/12/f8863076-6e77-11e8-bd50-b80389a4e569_story.html?utm_term=.64fa083a1043



By Megan McArdle
Columnist
June 12 at 6:22 PM
There are some stories that just make you want to send everyone involved to their rooms to have a good long think about their behavior. The saga of the Trump T-shirt That Shook Houston is definitely one of those.

The shirt was worn to a local shop by a 14-year-old girl in March. While she and her friends were standing in line, a woman waiting behind them started shouting, “Grab ’em by the p---y!” and “MAGA!”

This being 2018, the girl’s mother went straight to social media. It soon emerged that the woman who had harassed the girls was a local City Council member, Kellye Burke.

Thus far, it’s a wearily familiar story: the obnoxious initial offense, followed by an outpouring of social-media hate onto the target-of-the-moment. Then some of the parents decided Burke had not been avid enough in proffering a private apology. That’s when they called the police.

Now things were wildly out of control. There were lawyers. There was a public apology by Burke, which managed to sound remarkably unapologetic. A council meeting was disrupted. Houston, as Texas Monthly recently put it, had lost its mind.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/11/politics/republican-new-jersey-diversity/index.html

Washington (CNN)A Republican running for New Jersey's 2nd Congressional District thinks diversity is "a bunch of crap and un-American," according to comments he made in a video posted to YouTube by a progressive super PAC.

"In my view, the best way to bring diversity to the Republican Party is for Republicans to openly say that the whole idea of diversity is a bunch of crap and un-American," Seth Grossman can be seen saying in the video uploaded on June 6 by American Bridge 21st Century, which monitors GOP candidates.

In the video, Grossman goes on to quote the Declaration of Independence and says, "the Constitution was designed to incorporate that idea of the Declaration of Independence that everybody is treated equally under the law. Now, what diversity has become, it's been an excuse by Democrats, communists and socialists, basically, to say that we're not all created equal, that some people, if he -- if somebody is lesser qualified, they will get a job anyway, or they'll get into college anyway because of the tribe that they're with, what group, what box they fit into."

Grossman's campaign did not immediately return a request for comment. He won the Republican primary in New Jersey, and the National Republican Congressional Committee endorsed his bid for Congress on June 6.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/11/investing/stock-buybacks-sec-report/index.html

Corporate America, flush with cash from President Trump's tax cuts, is buying back stock at a record pace.
Wall Street loves that. It signals that CEOs believe their shares are cheap, and stocks typically spike after buybacks are announced.

Yet an SEC official has uncovered what he calls a disturbing trend: In the days after executives unveil buybacks, they quietly cash out their own shares.

An analysis released Monday by SEC Commissioner Robert Jackson Jr. found that the percentage of insiders selling stock more than doubled immediately after buyback announcements.

And the amount of stock being unloaded is not trivial. Daily stock sales spiked from an average of $100,000 to more than $500,000 per executive, researchers found.

"Right after the company tells the market that the stock is cheap," Jackson said in a speech on Monday, "executives overwhelmingly decide it's time to sell."

The report studied 385 buybacks in 2017 and during the first three months of 2018. Thanks to the reliable stock bounce, insiders gained a total of $75.1 million on their stock sales, the SEC researchers calculated.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/10/investing/stocks-week-ahead-ben-bernanke-recession-economy/index.html

1. Don't look down: Ben Bernanke fears that the American economy will soon look like a Looney Tunes episode.
The former Federal Reserve chief questions the wisdom of Congress for waiting until the economy looked healthy and then hitting the gas with massive corporate tax cuts and a burst of spending.

"What you're getting is stimulus at the very wrong moment," Bernanke said last week at an event hosted by the American Enterprise Institute.

He's got a point. The unemployment rate is 3.8%, matching the lowest in half a century. Stimulating the economy further could overheat it, ending the recovery prematurely. And by expanding the federal deficit, Congress has left itself less room to borrow money to fight the next recession.

The other challenge is avoiding a nasty crash when the sugar rush fades from tax cuts.

"It's going to hit the economy in a big way this year and next," Bernanke said. "And then in 2020, Wile E. Coyote is going to go off the cliff and look down."

http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/08/news/economy/immigrant-doctors-green-card-backlog/index.html

Dr. Raghuveer Kura is the only kidney specialist that the town of Poplar Bluff, Missouri, has had at its hospital for the past nine years. He sees nearly 3,000 patients, including 80 who need life-saving dialysis treatments.
"Some of my patients drive from an hour away to see me," said Kura, who is also chief of medicine at Poplar Bluff Regional Medical Center. "There is no other big hospital in town. This is it."

But now, a possible decades long wait for his green card has forced him to consider leaving Poplar Bluff and the United States behind.

"I have roots in this community. My children are growing up here. I'm paying my taxes and I've built long-lasting relationships with my patients," said Kura, who has also helped set up a dialysis treatment center in town. "But my time spent waiting for a green card seems to be never ending."

'I can't wait another 10 years'
Originally from India, Kura has been in the United States for 17 years, and has temporary worker status through an H-1B visa.

The government approved Kura's application for a green card back in 2014, but he still must wait in line behind hundreds of thousands of other applicants to actually get it. That's because Kura must first transition from his non-immigrant H-1B visa to an immigrant visa before he can receive his permanent resident status.

The United States issues 140,000 employment-based immigrant visas each year. And it limits how many of these visas it doles out to people from individual countries or with certain skills.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/05/news/economy/ceos-trade-war-trump-economy/index.html

America's leading CEOs are scaling back plans for hiring and spending because of President Trump's aggressive trade policy.
The Business Roundtable said on Tuesday that its CEO economic outlook index declined this quarter from a record high. It was the first drop in two years.

The powerful lobby, chaired by JPMorgan Chase (JPM) boss Jamie Dimon, blamed the more cautious attitude on "increased uncertainty" about the direction of US trade policy.

Backing up his campaign promises, Trump has attacked existing trade relationships with China, Europe, Canada and Mexico. He has imposed tariffs on close allies and threatened tariffs on China, raising the specter of a costly trade war that would dent economic growth.

Sixty-three percent of CEOs polled last month by the Business Roundtable said it was a "serious" risk that foreign trade retaliation would hurt American exports. Another 32% called it a "moderate" risk.

"Uncertainties about trade policy are a growing weight on economic progress — especially amid escalating trade tensions," Joshua Bolten, CEO of the Business Roundtable and a former chief of staff to President George W. Bush, said in a statement.

CEOs dialed back their US hiring plans for the next six months by 13% and their business spending expectations by 4%. The outlook for sales also dimmed.