The Washington Independent

Posts Tagged visa

Immigrants, Jobs and the Recession

By | 09.20.10 | 10:18 am

The recession has been hard on almost everyone, but a report released today by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute found immigrants suffered higher job losses between 2007 and 2009 in health care, construction, information technology and hospitality. Construction jobs, which previously employed a huge number of Latino men More…

Compromise Reached on Debit Card Fees

By | 06.22.10 | 9:08 am

Yesterday afternoon, House and Senate Democrats reconciling the two versions of financial regulatory reform announced a compromise on debit card fees — an issue of contention and the subject of fierce lobbying by companies like Visa and MasterCard. The compromise on the provision, initially authored by Sen. Richard Durbin More…

Durbin to Visa and MasterCard: Check Yourselves!

By | 05.28.10 | 12:24 pm

In a letter to the chief executives of Visa and MasterCard, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) lambasted the companies for misconstruing his reforms of credit card interchange fees to small banks and small businesses. He also threatened that he might consider some card issuers’ practices anti-competitive, and requested a reply More…

The Week in Immigration News

By | 03.05.10 | 2:40 pm

A roundup of the top immigration stories of the week:

- Yesterday, President Obama met with members of the Domestic Policy Council to talk strategy on immigration reform, focusing on ways to advance the efforts of Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who have been working on More…

Bankers Even Obama Could Begrudge

By | 02.11.10 | 10:40 am

Yesterday, everyone got worked up over President Obama’s comments to Business Week that he didn’t begrudge Chase CEO Jamie Dimon or Goldman Sach CEO Lloyd Blankfein their bonuses — despite the many reasons those bonuses aren’t as out-of-line as the headlines would have Americans believe. But are they More…

Your Near-Daily Visa Facepalm Moment

By | 01.22.10 | 2:56 pm

Mark Hosenball reports that no one checks the visas of U.S.-bound air travelers until they’re in the air. On the one hand, checking visas alone won’t necessarily keep a dangerous person out of the country. There wasn’t a single problem with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s visa before he boarded Northwest More…

2008 FBI Audit Flagged Failure to Place Terror Suspects on Watchlist

By | 12.31.09 | 12:06 pm

While the State Department is fending off questions about why it didn’t revoke Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s visa and points fingers at the National Counterterrorism Center, it’s worth noting that the FBI last year was told, following an in-depth audit by its inspector general, that it More…

State Department: Don’t Blame Us for Not Pulling Abdulmutallab’s Visa, Blame NCTC

By | 12.28.09 | 9:06 pm

Finally, some explanation for the State Department’s role in not invalidating Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s visa. Recall that after CBS reported State had two opportunities last month to revoke the visa, after Abdulmutallab’s father told officials in the U.S. embassy in Abuja that he was alarmingly radicalized, Newsweek’s Mark Hosenball More…

Teaching Financial Literacy in a Credit Card Nation

By | 11.13.09 | 10:28 am

The subprime crisis certainly highlighted the need for American consumers to become more financially literate. But who defines financial literacy? And what makes someone an expert? Mike Konczal at Rortybomb asks these and other questions regarding financial literacy education — a subject TWI has also been looking into More…

Credit Monitoring Rip-Offs More Proof of the Need for Financial Literacy

By | 11.03.09 | 9:40 am

Just as we wrote about the pressing need for financial literacy among consumers as credit tightens, The New York Times reports on the government’s efforts to combat those “free” credit report firms, which charge people for a service they are entitled to get for free.

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