After Nashville, Congress confronts limits of new gun law
Legal Events
Nine months ago, President Joe Biden signed a sweeping bipartisan gun law, the most significant legislative response to gun violence in decades.
“Lives will be saved,” he said at the White House.
The law has already prevented some potentially dangerous people from owning guns. Yet since that signing last summer, the tally of mass shootings in the United States has only grown. Five dead at a nightclub in Colorado. Eleven killed at a dance hall in California. And just this past week, three 9-year-olds and three adults were shot and killed at an elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee.
A day after that school shooting, Biden’s tone was markedly less optimistic than it was the signing ceremony.
“What in God’s name are we doing?” he asked in a speech Tuesday, calling for a ban on so-called assault weapons like those that were used to kill at The Covenant School in Nashville. “There’s a moral price to pay for inaction.”
Biden and others had hailed last year’s bipartisan gun bill — approved in the weeks after the shooting of 19 children and two adults at a school in Uvalde, Texas — as a new way forward.
Several months in, the law has had some success: Stepped-up FBI background checks have blocked gun sales for 119 buyers under the age of 21, prosecutions have increased for unlicensed gun sellers and new gun trafficking penalties have been charged in at least 30 cases around the country. Millions of new dollars have flowed into mental health services for children and schools.
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USCIS Adjusting Premium Processing Fee
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today it is adjusting the premium processing fee for Form I-129, Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker and Form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Workers beginning on Oct. 1, 2018 to more effectively adjudicate petitions and maintain effective service to petitioners.
The premium processing fee will increase to $1,410, a 14.92 percent increase (after rounding) from the current fee of $1,225. This increase, which is done in accordance with the Immigration and Nationality Act, represents the percentage change in inflation since the fee was last increased in 2010 based on the Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers.
“Because premium processing fees have not been adjusted since 2010, our ability to improve the adjudications and service processes for all petitioners has been hindered as we’ve experienced significantly higher demand for immigration benefits. Ultimately, adjusting the premium processing fee will allow us to continue making necessary investments in staff and technology to administer various immigration benefit requests more effectively and efficiently,” said Chief Financial Officer Joseph Moore. “USCIS will continue adjudicating all petitions on a case-by-case basis to determine if they meet all standards required under applicable law, policies, and regulations.”
Premium processing is an optional service that is currently authorized for certain petitioners filing Forms I-129 or I-140. The system allows petitioners to request 15-day processing of certain employment-based immigration benefit requests if they pay an extra fee. The premium processing fee is paid in addition to the base filing fee and any other applicable fees, which cannot be waived.