Temporary Protected Status: Current Immigration Policy and Issues

[Excerpt] The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) provides that all aliens (i.e., persons who are not citizens or nationals of the United States) must enter pursuant to the INA. The major categories of aliens are immigrants, refugees and asylees (all admitted for or adjusted to legal permanent residence), and nonimmigrants (admitted for temporary reasons, e.g., students, tourists, or business travelers). Foreign nationals who lack proper immigration authorization are generally of three kinds: (1) those who overstay their nonimmigrant visas, (2) those who enter the country surreptitiously without inspection, and (3) those who are admitted on the basis of fraudulent documents. In all three instances, the aliens are in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and subject to removal. As a signatory to the United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (hereinafter, U.N. Protocol), the United States agrees to the principle of nonrefoulement, which means that it will not return an alien to a country where his life or freedom would be threatened. Nonrefoulement is embodied in several provisions of U.S. immigration law. Most notably, it is reflected in the provisions requiring the government to withhold the removal of aliens to a country in which the alien’s life or freedom would be threatened on the basis of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion

Apprehensions of Unauthorized Migrants Along the Southwest Border: Fact Sheet

[Excerpt] According to the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP), the number of illegal alien apprehensions between southern ports of entry (POE) in the United States has generally declined from about 1.6 million in FY2000 to nearly 420,000 in FY2013. Much of this downward trend has occurred since FY2005. Apprehensions of unauthorized migrants by the USBP along the U.S.-Mexico border fell from about 1.2 million in FY2005 to a 41-year low of 328,000 in FY2011, before climbing to 357,000 in FY2012 and 414,397 in FY2013

Immigration Enforcement Within the United States

[From Introduction] An estimated 11 million unauthorized aliens reside in the United States, and this population is estimated to increase by 500,000 annually. Each year, approximately 1 million aliens are apprehended trying to enter the United States illegally. Although most of these aliens enter the United States for economic opportunities and family reunification, or to avoid civil strife and political unrest, some are criminals, and some may be terrorists. All are violating the United States’ immigration laws

Two sword lengths apart: Credible commitment problems and physical violence in democratic national legislatures

Ideally, national legislatures in democracies should be venues for peacefully resolving conflicts between opposing groups. However, they can become places of physical violence. Such violence can be an indication that countries’ legislative institutions are functioning far from the democratic ideal of being venues for peaceful conflict reconciliation. In some cases, such as Ukraine prior to the 2014 outbreak of armed conflict in the country’s east and south, violence can indicate and possibly fuel deeper political divisions. In this first global study of legislative violence, I show that brawls are more likely when legislators find it difficult to credibly commit to follow peaceful bargains. Credible commitment problems are more acute in countries with new democracies and disproportionate electoral outcomes – that is, when electoral votes for parties do not closely correspond to the legislative seats they are given. I find robust support for this argument by first examining a case study of legislative violence in the antebellum United States Senate. Pro- and anti-slavery senators became increasingly unable to maintain credible commitments in the lead-up to the 1856 caning of Senator Charles Sumner as the allocation of seats in the legislative body became more disproportional. Second, I find further support for my argument in a new global dataset of contemporary instances of violence in national legislatures. In addition, I find strong evidence that violence is more likely in legislatures with small minority governments. Despite reasonable expectations, civil wars are not associated with more legislative violence

U.S. Customs and Border Protection: Trade Facilitation, Enforcement, and Security

This report describes and analyzes U.S. Customs and Border Protection's (CBP) role in the U.S. import process. The first section of the report describes the three overarching goals of U.S. import policy and the tension among them. Second, the report summarizes recent legislative developments and provides a legislative history of customs laws, followed by an overview of the U.S. import process as it operates today. Third, the import process and CBP's role in it are discussed

A reaction-diffusion heart model for the closed-loop evaluation of heart-pacemaker interaction

The purpose of this manuscript is to develop a reaction-diffusion heart model for closed-loop evaluation of heart-pacemaker interaction, and to provide a hardware setup for the implementation of the closed-loop system. The heart model, implemented on a workstation, is based on the cardiac monodomain formulation and a phenomenological model of cardiac cells, which we fitted to the electrophysiological properties of the different cardiac tissues. We modelled the pacemaker as a timed automaton, deployed on an Arduino 2 board. The Arduino and the workstation communicate through a PCI acquisition board. Additionally, we developed a graphical user interface for easy handling of the framework. The myocyte model resembles the electrophysiological properties of atrial and ventricular tissue. The heart model reproduces healthy activation sequence and proved to be computationally efficient (i.e., 1 s simulation requires about 5 s). Furthermore, we successfully simulated the interaction between heart and pacemaker models in three well-known pathological contexts. Our results showed that the PDE formulation is appropriate for the simulation in closed-loop. While computationally more expensive, a PDE model is more flexible and allows to represent more complex scenarios than timed or hybrid automata. Furthermore, users can interact more easily with the framework thanks to the graphical representation of the spatiotemporal evolution of the membrane potentials. By representing the heart as a reaction-diffusion model, the proposed closed-loop system provides a novel and promising framework for the assessment of cardiac pacemakers