The White House released a detailed Hawaii birth certificate in an attempt to put to rest the issue of President Barack Obama’s legitimacy to hold the office of president. Shortly after the unexpected release, the president spoke live on national television, explaining, “We do not have time for this kind of silliness.”
President Obama noted that the issue of his birthplace began during his campaign. “I have watched with bemusement, I’ve been puzzled at the degree at which this thing just kept on going,” he said, and blamed media culture for perpetuating the controversy. The president did not answer reporters’ questions nor explain why the document was not released until now.
By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
The number of foreigners willing to invest $500,000 to $1 million in a U.S. business in exchange for a visa roughly tripled in the past fiscal year, as dozens of cash-strapped enterprises and local governments scrambled to attract wealthy foreign backers through a previously obscure provision of immigration law.
Under the EB-5 visa program, immigrants who can demonstrate that their investment created or preserved at least 10 U.S. jobs after two years are granted legal permanent residency along with their spouses and children.
According to a cover story of the latest issue of The Nation magazine, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is holding an untold number of people in secretively maintained detention facilities all over the United States. The report alleges that ICE agents regularly impersonate civilians and rely on other illegal tricks to arrest longtime US residents who have no criminal history. Below is an interview with with the author of the two-part investigation, Jacqueline Stevens:
JUAN GONZALEZ: The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, is holding an untold number of people in secret detention facilities all over the United States. That’s according to an explosive report that’s the cover story of the latest issue of The Nationmagazine.
Marcus Kosins Jr. at the USCIS Application Support Center in Garapan, CNMI.
On December 2, 2009, David Gulick, District Director of USCIS, announced that henceforth the USCIS would on a case-by-case basis grant two-year parole status to four groups of individuals in the CNMI.
The four groups are (1) CNMI permanent residents, (2) immediate relatives of CNMI permanent residents, (3) spouses and children of deceased CNMI permanent residents, and (4) immediate relatives of citizens of Freely Associated States (the later being citizens of Palau, Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia, including Yap, Chuuk, Kosrae and Pohnpei).
