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Just In | The Hill 

The White House on Tuesday said it will hold Southwest Airlines accountable to ensure it reimburses customers who qualify after a wave of cancellations around Christmas left thousands stranded.

“Southwest Airlines failed its customers, point blank,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Tuesday.

Jean-Pierre said the Department of Transportation will monitor to ensure Southwest makes its customers whole by covering the cost of rebooking, hotel rooms, meals, and transportation to and from hotels in cases where those costs apply. Those costs are covered under the airline’s prior commitment to its customers.

“The Transportation Department is watching,” she said. “They’re monitoring this very, very closely to ensure that this all happens. And we’ll see fines for Southwest if it doesn’t cover a cost.”

Thousands of Americans had their holiday travel upended because of widespread flight cancellations last week in the aftermath of a massive winter storm that has affected much of the country.

Southwest Airlines was by far the biggest source of trouble for travelers, canceling more than 60 percent of flights last Monday to Wednesday. The airline said the winter storm that brought frigid temperatures to nearly every state had upended its schedule, but union representatives argued long-overdue changes to the scheduling system also contributed to problems.

Jean-Pierre noted that every major airline faced the same challenges from the pre-Christmas storm but that all except Southwest were able to quickly recover without mass cancellations.

U.S. officials have said over the past week that Southwest could face fines if it does not follow through on its commitments to reimburse customers.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg last week wrote to Southwest Airlines CEO Robert Jordan, telling him he expects a “prompt update on Southwest’s efforts to do right by the customers it has wronged.”

​Administration, Policy, Transportation, Southwest Airlines Read More 

Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories 

The United States is coordinating with South Korea to respond to a number of scenarios from North Korea, including the possibility of North Korea’s using nuclear weapons, the White House said on Tuesday.

President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol told their governments to plan an “effective, coordinated response to a range of scenarios, including nuclear use by North Korea,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Jean-Pierre said at her briefing. But, she added: “We’re not discussing joint nuclear exercises,” noting that South Korea is a state without nuclear weapons.

Jean-Pierre’s remarks followed apparently contradicting accounts from Biden and his South Korean counterpart this week. Yoon was quoted in a newspaper interview published on Monday as saying the two governments were discussing joint nuclear exercises; speaking to reporters later on Monday, Biden denied any such activity, Reuters reported.

“The United States is fully committed to our alliance with the ROK, and providing extended deterrence through the full range of U.S. defense capabilities,” Jean-Pierre said of the Republic of Korea on Tuesday.

North Korean state media reported on Sunday that the nation’s leader, Kim Jong Un, has planned an expansion of his nuclear arsenal, following a series of nuclear tests last year. Last month, South Korea’s Defense Ministry warned that any attempt to use nuclear weapons by North Korea “will lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un government.” The U.S. military has previously made similar warnings.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Just In | The Hill 

The Biden administration on Tuesday proposed a new fee structure for visas and naturalizations, raising costs on business-related applications while maintaining or reducing costs for humanitarian visas.

The proposed rule, announced by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), would boost the agency’s fee revenue from an estimated $4.5 billion a year on average to around $6.4 billion a year.

“In addition to improving customer service operations and managing the incoming workload, USCIS must continue to fulfill our growing humanitarian mission, upholding fairness, integrity, and respect for all we serve,” USCIS Director Ur Jaddou said in a statement. 

“This proposed rule allows USCIS to more fully recover operating costs for the first time in six years and will support the Administration’s effort to rebuild the legal immigration system,” Jaddou added.

The agency receives a majority of its revenue from application fees, although the Biden administration and Congress over the past two years appropriated funds to help USCIS deal with its application backlogs.

“USCIS had asked for significant amount of backlog reduction funding [for 2023],” said Shev Dalal-Dheini, director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

“This year, Congress didn’t give it to them. And part of the rationale was that ‘Oh, you have some carryover.’ But that’s where the agency got in trouble in 2020 is that they had a carryover balance previous to 2020, but that was spent down before the pandemic hit,” Dalal-Dheini said.

USCIS lost staff to attrition during a hiring freeze due to the pandemic, and application processing woes were accentuated by Trump administration policies that shifted the agency’s focus away from immigrant services in favor of investigating alleged fraud in visa and naturalization applications.

According to USCIS, the new fee structure would allow it to hire nearly 8,000 personnel to more quickly process both new applications and the growing backlogs.

But the spikes in processing fees for some applications are steep, a reality that could discourage some applicants.

The application for one class of investment visa, for instance, is already one of the most expensive on the books at $3,675.

Under the new rule, that application cost would skyrocket to $11,160.

“These decisions are taking three, four years to adjudicate,” Dalal-Dheini said.

“These are people who are coming to the U.S. to invest money in the United States, not just a little bit of money. They’re coming to invest hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. And then they have to pay a lot of money to do that. They’re willing to do it, but then they also have to wait four years to get approved,” Dalal-Dheini said.

The situation is similar with institutions such as companies, nonprofits and universities that want to sponsor immigrant workers and could soon find the fees prohibitive.

But USCIS is stuck in a chicken-or-egg situation. Its chronic short funding slows down applications, which in turn discourages the potential applicants who could pad the agency’s bottom line with fees.

Like other immigration agencies, USCIS is unlikely to benefit from any legislative reform package that could grant it more funds through the federal budget, taking pressure off the fee structure.

Still, immigrant advocates and service providers want USCIS under Jaddou to be even more aggressive in reassigning resources toward application processing and away from investigations, further reversing the Trump administration’s restructuring of the agency.

“I think they’re doing a great job of trying to get over the mess that was created. I mean, they had a herculean task,” Dalal-Dheini said.

“I think that they are making strides in getting there. But no one’s ever going to be satisfied. It’s not coming fast enough when there are pieces that are waiting years to get adjudicated,” Dalal-Dheini said.

​Latino, News, DHS, immigration, Ur Jaddou, USCIS Read More