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As the Trump administration expands its immigration crackdown nationwide, President Trump is simultaneously creating new pathways for wealthy noncitizens to obtain U.S. visas. Earlier this week, Trump officially launched a program allowing affluent visitors to fast-track permission to live and work in the United States. For a $1 million payment, applicants can receive a so-called Trump Gold Card, which promises to speed up U.S. residency applications "in record time." The administration says it will also soon offer a $5 million "Trump Platinum Card" that would allow participants to avoid paying some U.S. taxes. The announcement comes as new rules published this week would require visitors from 42 countries in the visa waiver program to submit up to five years of social media history, along with phone numbers, email addresses and biometric data.
Shev Dalal-Dheini, director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, says the changes show that "if you're wealthy, if you can pay to play, then you're welcome to come to the United States. But if you're not — if you're coming as a tourist, or you're coming to seek humanitarian protection — then we're going to make it much tougher for you to come here and really put a lot of hurdles along the way in the guise of security and vetting."
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The U.S. seizure of a vessel off Venezuela is likely to squeeze the country's government, but do little to counter the tankers that secretively move oil from sanctioned countries.
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(First column, 7th story, link)
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U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said the government could not indefinitely detain Kilmar Abrego García, a 30-year-old immigrant from El Salvador who is fighting his deportation.
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The Office of Government Ethics told senators that Bryan Bedford, the F.A.A. administrator, did not divest from the airline he previously ran as he had agreed.
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During a controversial Oval Office meeting last week, President Trump defended Mohammed bin Salman when a reporter asked about the Saudi crown prince's involvement in the 2018 murder of Washington Post opinion columnist Jamal Khashoggi. "The man sitting in the White House next to President Trump is a murderer," says Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of DAWN, an organization founded by Khashoggi in 2018. To Whitson, Trump's main motivation for cozying up to Saudi Arabia is financial. "The U.S. government [is] promising to deploy American men and women soldiers to defend the Saudi crown prince … in exchange for profits for U.S. companies, U.S. businesses and U.S. officials."
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