Why Does the Biden Administration Fear Transparency in Immigration Data?
ICE's unpersuasive response regarding information on foreign student fraud
By Jon Feere on May 14, 2021
The Biden administration is likely to continue its assault on transparency in immigration data. This week, Bloomberg Law is reporting that “The types of visa data released to the public are likely to change now that the Biden administration has revoked former President Donald Trump’s ‘Buy American, Hire American’ executive order, particularly when it comes to employer participation in hiring visa workers.” Citing an online H-1B database and foreign student datasets, Bloomberg explains that the Biden administration “has already hinted that agencies will take a different approach to the release of visa program data.”
In April 2019, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) launched an H-1B Employer Data Hub to provide information to the public on employers petitioning for H-1B workers. Bloomberg notes that two other datasets that are a sign of this anti-transparency movement include “the most recent annual report on the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which omits previously public information on which companies are employing F-1 visa holders via the optional practical training program, and the demographic and educational data of selectees in the H-1B visa lottery that has been available in the past but has yet to be released by USCIS.”
We highlighted the problematic movement away from transparency on the Optional Practical Training (OPT) data in a recent blog post. The unit at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that has been producing the data on foreign student employment provided no explanation for its decision to not include the list of top employers in the OPT program at the time, but has now provided this quote to Bloomberg: “data sets may vary from year to year due to law enforcement sensitivities or other reasons.”
https://cis.org/Feere/Why-Does-Biden-Administration-Fear-Transparency-Immigration-Data
