For people seeking work or an escape to a better life in the United States, it's going to cost about two times the current amount, following a move by the Trump administration to hike fees on various immigration applications.
Michelle Mendez, director of defending vulnerable programs at the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC), calls the move an assault on immigration.
"This rule, these fees that have increased will make it extremely difficult for individuals to become legal immigrants, specifically to become naturalized immigrants, to become citizens," Mendez told Cheddar.
The new fees, which are set to be increased in October, will also gravely impact the world's most at-risk populations seeking asylum in the U.S., Mendez added.
"$50 may seem to be a small fee for many of us. We have to understand that asylum seekers leave their countries, they flee their countries with practically nothing," she said.
While news of the increased fees may be looked on as damning, Mendez said the move is on par with the Trump administration's previous moves to eliminate "access to the legal immigration process."
"During the [presidential] campaign, the rhetoric was very much focused on illegal immigration. We knew that that actually meant they were going to attack illegal and legal immigration," she said.
For Mendez, the idea of increasing fees and making the process even more difficult for people who want to become American is a jab at the foundation upon which the country was built.
"When we limit the opportunity for people to be engaged in the process by being citizens, that really undermines our democracy. That really undermines our democratic process," she stated.
Political fixer-turned VC Bradley Tusk doesn't think it's sufficient to just bring voters to the polls ー he wants to bring the polls to them. "We know, fundamentally, democracy works when a lot of people vote, and it really doesn't work when very few people vote," Tusk told Cheddar on Tuesday.
The nation may get greener on Tuesday night. "There's a lot more senate and congressional races in which marijuana has become an issue than ever before," Cannabis Voter Project Director Sam D'Arcangelo told Cheddar's CannaBiz on Tuesday. "Marijuana now more than ever has become an issue that politicians are talking about."
Although the much-anticipated blue wave wasn't the tsunami Democrats had hoped for, the Party still managed to wrestle the House from Republican control and score victories in gubernatorial races. As expected, Republicans maintained their grip on the Senate. Read below for more on Election Night.
It's midterms day in America! After a whopping 36 million people voted early, many are predicting record voter turnout for this midterms election. Rapper Fat Joe joins Cheddar to talk about his efforts to get young voters to the polls as part of MTVs '+1 The Vote' campaign. And, we dig into reports that Amazon is splitting its second headquarters, also known as HQ2, between two different cities.
Adam Cancryn, healthcare reporter at Politico, said the Republicans have hinted at attempting to dismantle the ACA even if they lose the House. That won't be easy.
As Americans head to the polls for the 2018 midterm election, some are concerned about outside actors hacking voting systems, which would be different from the misinformation campaigns that proliferated on social media in 2016. Rob Marvin, associate features editor at PC Mag, explains the different levels of vulnerabilities.
No matter how different Congress may look after Tuesday's vote, the markets ー especially the S&P ー will be up a year from now, Securities America investment adviser John Grace told Cheddar Tuesday.
The bitter midterm election season is coming down ー as it always does ー to who turns out to vote. With control of both chambers of Congress and dozens of statehouses up for grabs on Tuesday, and a polarizing president at the center of it all, the 2018 midterm election will be seen as one of the most consequential in modern U.S. history.
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South Florida's agriculture community is in tremendous economic pain. The open markets and opportunities afforded to Mexico in the NAFTA era steadily put farmers out of business in the region of pristine farmland between Miami and the Florida Keys. J.D. Durkin writes about meeting with those struggling farmers as news of a would-be pipe bomber dominated the news cycle just miles away.
