"Birth tourism house" is quite illegal

From PIX11:

An unlicensed day care facility where three infants and two adults were stabbed allegedly catered to Asian mothers lured to the United States by laws granting citizenship to anyone born on American soil, a New York law enforcement official said Saturday.

Investigators believe the foreign women would give birth at the facility before returning to their home country and applying for US citizenship, the law enforcement official said. The return allows them to remain in good standing with authorities back home and, at the same time, claim to have a direct relative in need of care in the United States.

"If they're playing it right, they go back so that they don't get a negative status," the official said. "Then they come back."

An underground "birth tourism" network stretching from the United States to China has sprung up in recent years to cater to growing numbers of Chinese mothers who travel stateside to give birth, according to affidavits filed by federal law enforcement officers.

Federal agents have carried out "birth tourism" raids as part of larger criminal investigations targeting US companies that have netted millions helping pregnant Chinese women fraudulently secure visas and other services.

The residential facility in the Flushing section of Queens was used mostly by Chinese women who give birth and stayed there before returning to China, a law enforcement source said Friday.

Following ICE on patrol

From PIX11:

ICE agents went to the Bronx Criminal Courthouse a few weeks ago to arrest Aboubacar Dembele, following the African immigrant's court hearing to contest an assault charge.

“The media does not focus on all of these criminals that we’re going after," Genalo said, "Rather than focus on the criminals that we’re trying to remove, and that we’re arresting in the community, they’d rather take and focus on the small percentage of the cases that you just mentioned."

In Jersey City, Genalo’s team made its final arrest of the day – cuffing a multiple drug offender from the Dominican Republic with two deportations on his record.

“I know I made a mistake," he said.

Jamaican immigrant Andrea Stibo, a legal resident, has mixed feelings about the direction of the nation's immigration policy.

“You're not supposed to overstay your visa,” she said.

Like so many legal, documented immigrants, Stibo wonders if there is room in some cases, for compassionate policy enforcement.

“If you coming, and you stay over your welcome, and you don’t commit no crime – no, you got the right to stay,” Stibo said.

When confronted with her contradiction, Stibo responded, “I don’t have no sympathy for criminals.”

EB-5 under fire

From DNA Info:

A Manhattan-based immigration lawyer and real estate broker wants to connect wealthy Chinese investors looking for green cards with small developers and nonprofits to build affordable housing, recreation centers, assisted living facilities and other projects across the city.

Min Chan hopes to tap the controversial federal immigration program known as EB-5, which grants visas to foreigners who invest $500,000 in U.S. projects that create 10 full-time jobs within 2 years. The program also gives visas to their families and children.

Roughly 85 percent of applicants last year were from China, thanks to the county's soaring number of millionaires in recent years, according to a report from commercial real estate firm Savills Studley. The State Department announced this month that the U.S. already reached its quota for its 10,000 EB-5 visas to be given out this fiscal year because of demand from China — marking the second year in a row the program hit its limit.

The program, which enables developers to tap low-interest funding, is intended to be a job-generator for high-poverty and high-unemployment areas.

In reality, EB-5 is helping fund some of the city's swankiest projects from some of the top developers like Silverstein Properties' towering, ultra-luxurious Four Seasons Hotel New York Downtown rising at 30 Park Place, the Durst Organization's Danish-desinged glassy pyramid-shaped high-end rental rising on West 57th Street and Kushner Real Estate Group's NoMad tower at 281 Fifth Ave.

The EB-5 program — which is up for review in Congress this September — has come under fire for lax regulations that have led to shadowy transactions and scams. Some watchdogs have raised national security concerns since the fast-tracked EB-5 visas aren't required to have the same background checks as other visa applicants.

Meanwhile, in California...

From the Daily News:

Shortly after sunrise, dozens of federal agents swarmed an upscale apartment complex in the Orange County city of Irvine, where authorities say a birth tourism business known as You Win USA Vacation Resort marketed to pregnant women who were then charged $50,000 for lodging, food and transportation.

Investigators said women were coached to lie about their travel plans when applying for tourist visas and to wear loose clothing to hide their pregnancies, and they were promised Social Security numbers and U.S. passports for their babies before returning to China.

In one instance, a trainer in China helped fabricate employment and income information for an undercover federal agent posing as a pregnant client to secure a tourist visa. The undercover agent was encouraged to fly through Hawaii, where customs officers were believed to be more lenient than in Los Angeles, according to a copy of an affidavit in support of a search warrant.

The business netted its owners hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past two years and helped Chinese tourists deliver more than 400 American babies at just one Orange County hospital, the court papers said.

Result of rezoning Queens Blvd

From Curbed:

The 69-unit building is being developed by Steve Cheung (based in Bayside) and will be designed Michael Kang (an architect based in Flushing). It will entail 55,000 square feet of residential and 5,500 square feet of commercial space. There will also be a small communal space and an asymmetric rooftop that will form penthouse terraces, plus a garage with room for 59 cars. According to YIMBY, about a quarter of the development was backed by foreign money (probably Chinese) under the EB-5 visa program, which grants green cards to foreign investors whose projects will produce American jobs.

Above is a screenshot from Google Street View of the site. The lot is across the street from the former St. Mary's elementary school. I'm not sure why there's a pedestrian bridge depicted where the Entenmann's outlet store is in the rendering. I wonder what kind of prices they'll get being a block away from the Metro Motel (hot sheets/family homeless shelter).

Although Curbed & YIMBY made a big deal about this being in Elmhurst (and Curbed actually linked back to this blog, thanks) the project is actually in Woodside which was rezoned along with northern Maspeth in 2006. (Elmhurst wasn't rezoned at all.)

Our stupid immigration policy, perfectly summed up

From Forbes:

My cousin’s friend Phillip is a bright web designer with a knack for product. In 2013, he launched a mobile app with his friends called Tinypost which allowed users to rate restaurants quickly and easily on mobile devices. The app was well designed and garnered press from top technology blogs and eventually, Tripadvisor acquired Tinypost and hired the founding team which included Phillip.

Phillip went to Santa Clara University and earned a degree in Computer Science — he was in the top of his class and worked hard to assemble a team to create a great mobile product. It is impossible to tell, but Phillip is German. He grew up in Germany and decided to come to America to study because he felt he could build great products with other great people in Silicon Valley.

After Tinypost was acquired, Phillip applied for an H1B visa to stay in the US and work on the project at Tripadvisor. His temporary visa runs out in August and the US immigration service rejected his application to stay in the US and continue to work on Tinypost. In August of this year, Phillip will be deported to Germany.

Phillip is arguably in the top decile of Germany’s talent pool and eager to learn, work, and thrive in America. He made a choice to build his career and his company here over anywhere else in the world. Phillip has given us an opportunity and our response is to send him home.

Meanwhile, if you have no skills whatsoever but were able to make it here without authorization, you are welcome to stay as long as you like, you may seek refuge in "Sanctuary Cities" like NYC and asshole pols will bend over backwards to make sure that you can get a whole bunch of free services, courtesy of people who were actually born here and are so stupid that they keep returning these losers to office time after time.

Queens: Home to vibrant and diverse terrorists!

From the Queens Courier:

A Queens man was arrested for allegedly attempting to detonate what he believed was a real bomb at the New York Federal Reserve Bank in Lower Manhattan this morning, said the FBI.

Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, 21, of Jamaica, traveled to the U.S. this January specifically to take part in a terrorist attack, said the agency.

The Federal Reserve Bank was one of several targets Nafis was considering, and in a written statement said he wanted to “destroy America” and, according to the FBI, believed the most efficient way to accomplish this goal was to target America’s economy.

The Bangladeshi national, who reportedly has overseas connections to Al-Qaeda, tried to recruit individuals to help him in the attack. One of those men was an FBI source.

Countries won't take back their criminals

From Fox News:

Long after they were ordered out of the country, thousands of criminal aliens from places like China, Cuba, Vietnam and Pakistan remain free in the United States to commit new crimes because their home countries refuse to take them back.

For years, this unique problem percolated under the political radar. But recent crimes by immigrant felons have lawmakers scrambling to punish nations that refuse to repatriate their own citizens. The Obama administration and many Democrats in Congress, however, are blocking punitive legislation, preferring to let the State Department handle the issue diplomatically.

Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, is leading the charge in Congress to change the law, pushing to withhold visas to nations that refuse to take back their own.

"I don't know why the State Department seems to take the side of foreign countries over our own American interest in the United States," Poe said, urging the U.S. to tell those countries: "Look, you take these people back or the consequence is going to be no visas for your nation."

Under a 2001 Supreme Court decision, U.S. immigration officials are only permitted to hold someone for six months after their incarceration. So when a home nation refuses to take back their national, the U.S. is required to release them -- no matter what they've done.

The issue recently came to Poe's attention after three especially heinous crimes were committed by men ordered deported years ago.

Crowley concerned about Queens tourism

From the Daily News:

Travel procedures to the United States would be streamlined from three South American countries to boost tourism in Queens under a proposal by a local lawmaker.

Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-Queens, Bronx) unveiled a proposal Tuesday to expand the Department of Homeland Security’s Visa Waiver Program, which allows visitors from select countries to visit for 90 days without a visa.

Crowley hopes to convince the government to add Brazil, Argentina and Chile to the list.

“It is simple,” Crowley said at a news conference at the Queens Chamber of Commerce in Jackson Heights. “The easier it is for foreigners to enter the United States, the more likely they’ll come here.”

Tourists spent over $6 billion in the outer boroughs in 2010, Crowley said, including 70% on shopping and dining combined.

“We have to keep that number growing,” he added.

Developers & tweeders gerrymander for visas

From the NY Times:

Affluent foreigners are rushing to take advantage of a federal immigration program that offers them the chance to obtain a green card in return for investing in construction projects in the United States. With credit tight, the program has unexpectedly turned into a mainstay for the financing of these projects in New York, California, Texas and other states.

The number of foreign applicants, each of whom must invest at least $500,000 in a project, has nearly quadrupled in the last two years, to more than 3,800 in the 2011 fiscal year, officials said. Demand has grown so fast that the Obama administration, which is championing the program, is seeking to streamline the application process.

Still, some critics of the program have described it as an improper use of the immigration system to spur economic development — a cash-for-visas scheme. And an examination of the program by The New York Times suggests that in New York, developers and state officials are stretching the rules to qualify projects for this foreign financing.

These developers are often relying on gerrymandering techniques to create development zones that are supposedly in areas of high unemployment — and thus eligible for special concessions — but actually are in prosperous ones, according to federal and state records.

Mobsters busted for human smuggling

From NY1:

Immigration and law enforcement officials have arrested and charged 20 people, including five Queens residents and three Brooklyn residents, in connection with a human trafficking operation that allegedly brought women from Russia and Eastern Europe and forced them to dance in various strip clubs in the city.

The charges, which were unveiled today at Federal Plaza in Downtown Manhattan, allege that four members of the Gambino crime family and three members of the Bonnano crime family worked with Russian collaborators to bring the victimized women into the country on work and travel visas.

Once the women were brought into the country, they were forced to work as exotic dancers.

Visa rules forbid employment in adult entertainment.

Authorities conducted raids for evidence early this morning at clubs where the women were allegedly forced to strip, including Cheetah's Gentlemen's Club on 43rd Street in Midtown and Gallagher's in Long Island City, Queens.

Other women were forced to marry men in Binghamton, N.Y.

The 20 defendants are facing varying charges, including visa fraud, marriage fraud, racketeering, extortion and transporting, harboring and inducing the entry of illegal aliens.

Chuck calls for crackdown on phony colleges

From CBS:

Five U.S. senators are calling for a federal crackdown on what they say are phony colleges handing out student visas to potential criminals and terrorists.

Sens. Diane Feinstein of California, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jon Tester of Montana, Bill Nelson of Florida and Charles Schumer of New York say the colleges are fronts for people who pay to illegally enter the United States.

The Democrats are calling on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Homeland Security to share information that could help identify the fake colleges.

The senators note several of the Sept. 11 terrorists entered the United States on student visas. They also cite recent incidents in California and in Florida where schools have been accused of being involved in the illegal visa scheme.

The senators will ask the federal departments to determine “high-risk factors” within 90 days and conduct site visits at schools that show a high risk factor through data — or the lack of data — that legitimate schools must provide to the federal government. The senators also seek stiffer penalties for “sham universities” that engage in student visa fraud.

Another Queens resident to make the rest of us proud

From Gothamist:

A Romanian man staying in Queens on a tourist visa was indicted for trying to commit identity theft after he allegedly placed skimming devices and cameras at ATMs. The Westchester County DA's office charged Razvan Apostal, 31, with eight counts of criminal possession of a forged instrument and one count of unlawful possession of a skimmer device. The police got involved after a customer at a Greenburgh Chase bank noticed the additional camera!

More details released in Flushing rape

From the Daily News:

The young woman was returning from grocery shopping in downtown Flushing around 9:30 p.m. Saturday when a drunken Queens man smashed her in the head with a pipe and dragged her into an alley, authorities said.

Once inside the alley along 41st Road, Carlos Salazar Cruz, 28, removed the woman's clothing from the waist down and raped her with the pipe, according to court papers.

Two months ago, the young woman, who dreamed of becoming a lawyer, traveled from her native China on a student visa. She moved in with a distant uncle in Flushing.

"She was working in a nail salon, saving up money. She was going to start attending school," said Assemblywoman Grace Meng (D-Flushing). "She had good grades in China. That's why her parents wanted her to come and expand her horizons."

Now, the woman who once dreamed of a better future is in the intensive care unit at New York Hospital Queens. She suffered a fractured skull, bleeding on the brain and trauma to her vaginal area.

Meng said she and Rep. Gary Ackerman (R-Bayside) are working to expedite a visa for the woman's mother. Cops collared Cruz a few blocks from the crime scene after a witness, who saw him drag the woman into the alley and then emerge alone - called 911. Police later recovered the pipe about a block from the alley.

Cruz, who did not have a criminal record, emigrated from Mexico two years ago and found work at a Manhattan fish market.

He was arraigned late Tuesday on a slew of charges, including a top count of attempted murder. Prosecutors vowed to upgrade charges if the woman is removed from life-support.

Cruz's family said he claims he blacked out drunk and doesn't remember the incident.

Schumer wants to limit visas

From NY1:

Senator Charles Schumer wants to make it harder for international travelers from 14 countries to get what he calls "revolving door" visas.

He proposes stricter limits on tourist and business visas for people from countries the United States considers dangerous, including Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran.

Currently, people can come and go as they please for the length of the visa.

The change would require visitors to get a visa every time they wanted to enter the United States, something the senator says would have prevented alleged terrorist Umar Farouk Abdumutallab from boarding a U.S. bound plane with explosives on Christmas Day.

"If the proposal we're making here today were adopted, the odds are very high Abdulmutallab wouldn't be allowed to get on that plane in Nigeria and the terrorist scare would never have happened," said Schumer.

The senator also said seven of the September 11th hijackers entered the United States using open-ended visas.