The Department of Homeland Security is announcing a new artificial intelligence road map that includes multiple programs to better train immigration officers, plan for hazards and tackle child exploitation and fentanyl smuggling -- as the use of the technology grows within the federal government. The agency announced on Monday three pilot programs that will use AI in three agencies: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The New York Times reported that the programs will be launched in partnership with OpenAI, Meta and Anthropic -- an American AI startup. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is expected to face a House impeachment vote. ICE's Homeland Security Investigation (HSI), which primarily deals with transnational crime, will develop a system to improve summaries that investigators rely on.

In this paper, we consider the problem of organizing supporting documents vital to U.S. work visa petitions, as well as responding to Requests For Evidence (RFE) issued by the U.S.~Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Typically, both processes require a significant amount of repetitive manual effort. To reduce the burden of mechanical work, we apply machine learning methods to automate these processes, with humans in the loop to review and edit output for submission. In particular, we use an ensemble of image and text classifiers to categorize supporting documents. We also use a text classifier to automatically identify the types of evidence being requested in an RFE, and used the identified types in conjunction with response templates and extracted fields to assemble draft responses. Empirical results suggest that our approach achieves considerable accuracy while significantly reducing processing time.

A'Help Wanted' sign hangs on a window in New York City, May 4, 2018. U.S. unemployment has fallen to a near historic low of 3.9 percent and is even lower for computer professionals and engineers. The premise of the Trump administration's "Buy American and Hire American" executive order, which has unleashed numerous measures to restrict high-skilled immigration, is that U.S. professionals can't get jobs because of immigrants. This raises a legitimate question: Has anyone in the administration making U.S. immigration policy checked the government data on unemployment – or do they simply choose to ignore it? The unemployment rate among people with at least a bachelor's degree in "computer and math science" occupations was only 2% for the first quarter of 2018, according to estimates from the Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Population Survey.

The Trump White House has devoted much of its first year to putting America first, cracking down on who can come into this country--from promising a wall along the US-Mexico border and the deportation of thousands of undocumented immigrants, to numerous attempts at a travel ban blocking entrance for people from several Muslim-majority countries. But under the America First banner, the administration has been quietly but vastly increasing hurdles in another area: for foreign nationals looking to live and work legally in the US. Since the spring, the Trump administration has introduced a number of administrative changes aimed specifically at increasing scrutiny on work visa applications. Issued through policy memoranda from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency tasked with handling and adjudicating work and citizenship applications, the revisions have largely flown under the radar, as many of them have been incremental or seem innocuous on the surface. What's more, because a large number of the changes are adjustments to existing department policies or guidance, many have been able to go into effect immediately, without needing to undergo a formal rule proposal process or public comment period.

Comcast is introducing its new wireless service, Xfinity Mobile, later this year. Xfinity Mobile is trying to personalize wireless. How do you feel about Comcast as your wireless carrier? Comcast customers will soon have that option. The cable TV powerhouse spilled the beans on Xfinity Mobile, a new service launching mid-year that leverages Wi-Fi, as well as Verizon's 4G LTE cellular network.

The first week of April is always a frantic time for technology companies. It marks the start of the hyper-competitive period when firms seeking to hire foreign workers can apply for the limited number of H-1B visas, which are awarded to high-skilled applicants in fields such as software development, architecture and academia. But this last week was more frantic than usual after federal agencies signaled they would place increased scrutiny on the visa program and the companies that utilize it. The Department of Homeland Security and its immigration processing branch issued a memo establishing a more rigorous vetting process for computer programmers. United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced it will conduct more site visits to catch H-1B visa fraud, while the Justice Department warned employers seeking visas to not discriminate against American workers.