The worm has turned at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that adjudicates applications for immigration benefits, such as legal permanent residence and citizenship.  Previously under George Bush and Barack Hussein Obama, USCIS simply ignored fraud.  It has a "get to yes" policy of approving benefits rather than professionally adjudicating applications.  USCIS decided that adjudicating meant approving.  Denying benefits was not their policy.  However,  that has changed, and the Treason Bar, used for years to getting everything approved, is hopping mad.

The Trump administration has quietly and unofficially made it significantly harder for people to legally immigrate to the United States, according to numerous immigration lawyers who have dealt with these matters for years.

“Some percentage are going to be deterred from bringing family here, which I think is probably the goal,” said Jason Dzubow, an immigration lawyer who blogs at The Asylumist. “I think the goal is to reduce overall immigration.”

[The Trump Administration Is Waging Guerrilla War on Legal Immigration, Attorneys Say, by Betsy Woodruff, The Daily Beast, December 26, 2017]

Adjudicating an application means approving the application if the alien in question legally qualifies for the benefit and denying that application if the aliens does not legally qualify for the benefit.  That is what USCIS should be doing.  The Treason Bar appears to think that properly adjudicating an application is mindlessly approving all applications.

And the Treason Bar is shocked to see that USCIS is taking fraud seriously now.

For this story, The Daily Beast spoke with a host of immigration lawyers about what they’ve seen over the past year. They all said USCIS has started demanding more evidence to authenticate people’s relationships. The process has become so much more time-consuming that many attorneys are raising their fees, giving their clients so-called sticker shock. For people whose finances are tight, these price hikes can keep them from affording legal services. And without legal help, the process can be extraordinarily difficult to navigate...

This is becoming an increasing typical practice, Castro said. USCIS is making more and more frequent requests for in-person interviews. In some cases, the interview sites are hours away from where her clients live, which means they have to pay for gas and childcare. Many clients also choose to pay for their own interpreters.

Documents and interviews make the Treason Bar upset.  The only reason that would make immigration attorneys upset is that documentary support of relationships and in-person interviews are tools used by USCIS to find fraud.  Previously,  USCIS rubber stamped tens of thousands of fraudulent applications where documents and interviews were not required.  So now the business of immigration lawyers is impacted by fewer clients running fraud schemes.  And the complaints by the Treason Bar show they were in on the fraud.

For example, in fraudulent marriages used to obtain legal permanent residency it is important to establish that the marriage is real.  If there are no children in a marriage, then fraud has most likely occurred.  One of the ways to discover a marriage in name only is to check the finances.  Generally the scheme runs like this: a marriage in exchange for pay is arranged, the two fraudsters do not consummate the marriage, don't live together, and don't mix their finances.

Of the three, there is little for USCIS to challenge in the consummation issue, but living together and the commingling of finances such as joint bank accounts, health insurance, life insurance, and joint investments are more  difficult to fake.  Nor do two people not really married want to mix their finances.  It makes one party vulnerable to exploitation by the other party.  The goal of a fake marriage is a generous one-time payment and no ongoing relationship, so joint finances complicate the scheme, especially if the two involved have developing lives and careers.

In particular, she said, USCIS agents have increasingly asked married immigrants to show proof that their finances are comingled [sic] with their American spouse’s. But many young couples choose not to mingle their finances, she added, and U.S. law certainly doesn’t require couples to share bank accounts.

“They’re imposing this burden on foreigners that’s greater than what the law imposes on Americans,” she said.

Well, commingling isn't required of Americans because there is no immigration benefit involved.  But lack of commingled finances is a significant lead for investigators to fraud.

And fraud is the issue that the Treason Bar wants to protect.  As evidence, they are angry that USCIS won't protect their clients from arrest.

On top of that, there are growing fears of ICE agents showing up for these interviews. A USCIS official told immigration lawyers at a November conference in Nashville that they couldn’t guarantee ICE officers won’t show up at interviews.

“The prospect of having to go to the interview, and then if they’re here without papers, having an ICE agent there to arrest you when you’re trying to get your green card—it’s not great,” said Andrew Free, a Nashville-based immigration attorney.

“This is their plan: to make legal immigration really hard,” he added.

The Treason Bar is angry that when their clients are caught breaking the law or for being in the U.S. illegally, they are getting arrested.  This shows how far we went under the Obama Regime Administrative Amnesty.

USCIS was part of the amnesty, protecting illegal aliens from arrest.  Let that sink in.  USCIS was protecting illegal aliens from arrest, and the Treason Bar is now angry that is no longer happening.

Now, part of this problem was that George Bush never told USCIS that they were a law enforcement agency when USCIS was created.  This allowed USCIS management, problematic as ever, to develop the culture of approving everything, Get to Yes, a culture of fraud and appeasement of the Treason Bar.   Now that is ending and the Treason Bar is angry.

To finish the issue, the head of USCIS must continue to change the culture at USCIS.  Your correspondent suggested a program of culture change, and it must start with USCIS announcing to the public that it is a professional immigration law enforcement agency and that when illegal aliens and fraud are encountered, it will not call ICE to make an arrest, but make the arrest themselves.  This will put the fear of God in the immigration fraud perpetrators, including the Treason Bar.