Immigration Law
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From Mali to Philly: "Mrs. Goundo's Daughter" Spans Borders
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Hate Crime Victim Julio Maldonado Wrongfully Convicted, Now Being Deported
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Kuck Fights for Justice for Youssef Megahed
Ninth Circuit Hearing For CSPA Lawsuit Sparks Optimism
Published November 02, 2009 @ 12:12PM PT
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is getting set to hear an appeal from immigrant families regarding the Child Status Protection Act. Last month, Judge Selena from a federal district court in Los Angeles ruled against the petitioning families and upheld a strict USCIS re-interpretation of the law, but several sources are confident of winning this appeal.
Attorney Carl Shusterman justifies his optimism by discussing a prior INS regulation that restricted waivers for eligible physicians under the National Interest Waiver (NIW). Congress enacted the law to provide that "all physicians" working in medically-underserved areas were eligible for NIWs, but INS regulations limited this immigration benefit to only primary care physicians. A federal district judge upheld this re-interpretation but upon going to the Ninth Circuit, the judges were incredulous at the arguments put forth by the government. The Appeals Court judges overturned the decision of the district judge and ruled in favor of the plaintiff physicians.
Since the CSPA lawsuit is equally straightforward, Shusterman is confident that "the Judges on the Court of Appeals will not let an administrative agency unlawfully restrict who benefits from a law passed by Congress and signed by the President." Additionally, the Ninth Circuit has a good record on immigration cases, most recently ruling against the widow penalty, which spark a nationwide revoke of the law. The CSPA case has the backing of legal statutes enacted by Congress and it would not require mental gymnastics to overturn the USCIS re-interpretation.
USCIS - More Fee Hikes On the Horizon
Published October 22, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
Immigration officials requested 206 million dollars for fee structure reform but the immigration bill sitting on President Obama's desk has only allocated 55 million.
Officials now say that the agency is either going to hike fees or reduce expenditures. USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas admitted in a press briefing yesterday that:
We will as an agency potentially have to make cuts, and we will potentially have to raise certain fees to meet the financial challenge brought about by a decline in revenue.
The agency increased fees for citizenship filing from 400 to 675 dollars in 2007 (a 69% increase) when a record number of filings for naturalization came in from people wanting to acquire citizenship to vote in the 2008 elections.
In 2008, the number of applications fell possibly due to the fee increases. As a consequence, USCIS fell short of initial forecast by 345 million dollars. It is likely that increasing fees would deter more filings, leading to another budget shortfall.
Already, filing an I-485 takes close to $2000 for immigrants wanting to adjust their status to legal permanent residency. And that is not including attorney fees.
Achieving legal residency and gaining citizenship in the United States is fast becoming a lucrative exercise that only more financially privileged and educated can undergo.
(Photo: Photobucket Stream)
Immigrants Need Protection ... From Their Lawyers
Published August 22, 2009 @ 08:59PM PT
Check out my guest post today over at Nezua's place about notarios, scamming of immigrant families, and long overdue regulation of immigration attorneys.
Update on Herta Llusho: Call Senator Stabenow Today!
Published August 14, 2009 @ 09:03AM PT
[Ed. I found the following message in my inbox this morning from Mo at Dreamactivist.org. Herta Llusho would be eligible for the Dream Act but it is stalled in Congress. Meanwhile, she is due to be deported next week, on August 19. Sign the petition to help her stay in the U.S. and find out other ways to take action here.]
Senator Stabenow, Levin and Rep. Kilpatrick all have information on Herta and we are in contact and working with all three asking that they provide a letter to DHS and also call DHS directly asking that they defer action.
We need to continue to put pressure on all of them, however Stabenow should get an extra push. The local office that deals with immigration is not so local to Herta, however it is where the calls need to be going.
Call (517) 203-1760 and leave a message of support for Herta.
If no one picks up and you need to leave a voice message then you really need to leave your name (say it slowly) and address (say it slowly) and / or your phone number (repeat number twice).
Call now, get your family and friends to also call. If you have already called it does not matter, call again!!!
Use the call script posted on the page BUT if you know Herta personally then make the call personal and let them know why they need to step up and stop your friends deportation.
Call now and call often - (517) 203-1760
LGBT Rights Are Immigrant Rights
Published August 11, 2009 @ 08:18PM PT
I am blogging from a Motel 6 outside of Pittsburgh tonight in advance of the New Organizing Institute's pre-Netroots Nation blogger summit tomorrow on online advocacy and the intersection of immigration/LGBT issues. It looks to be a good group of bloggers and activists in attendance.
As I have learned through my immigration legal work over the past few years, LGBT immigrants tend to fall through the cracks of the immigration system much more frequently than hetero immigrants. Many of the available immigration remedies and defenses against deportation are predicated on traditional hetero nuclear family relationships. Under the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the federal government is bound by law not to recognize gay families for the purpose of legal obligations or benefits, and immigration is almost entirely a federal body of law. LGBT asylum law has come a long way since the '90s, but still leaves too many in the shadows. A while back, I had the unpleasant experience of advising a gay would-be asylum seeker that his chances of experiencing the thing he feared most--deportation to his homophobic home country--would actually significantly increase if he applied for asylum.
The first U.S. immigration case I ever worked on was a pro bono asylum case during my first year as an associate attorney at a corporate firm in New York. The basis for the claim was my client's transgender identity. Her predicament opened my eyes to the struggles undocumented immigrants face, but also to the harassment and persecution that trans people endure right here in the States. At one point in the course of representing her, I had my first "Oh my god, I can't believe I am in the United States" moment that every nonprofit immigration attorney has experienced. I was horrified.
Getting recognized legal status didn't solve my client's problems in getting decent health care, a place to live free from harassment, an employer that would hire her, or law enforcement that offered her protection. The immigration judge believed my client would be attacked or killed in her home country on the basis of her gender and sexual orientation--I firmly believed it as well. But what was not discussed at any hearing or in discussions with opposing counsel was the risk of serious injury or death that trans people face in the U.S. as victims of hate crimes.
I hope tomorrow's NOI meeting advances the conversation about LGBT rights and immigrant rights, two areas in which the U.S. falls far short of its stated ideals.
(I'll take this opportunity to make a pitch for readers to support the excellent work Immigration Equality continues to do on LGBT immigrants' rights. Thanks to their efforts, the HIV travel/immigration ban is entering its final days.)
[Image: murder victim Angie Zapata]
Kris Kobach Appears on Colbert Report
Published August 10, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
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Restrictionist attorney and activist Kris Kobach appeared last week on the Colbert Report. As when Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio appeared on the show, I felt like Colbert’s humor ended up not putting the guest on the spot, but rather allowing a deft operative to dodge tough questions and take refuge behind the jokes. (Stephen Lemons from Feathered Bastard had a different take on Arpaio’s appearance.) Perhaps this is Colbert’s MO and the reason why conservatives continue to appear on the show—I don’t have cable and don’t watch the show enough to know.
But Kobach was able to get off shots like this pretty much uncontested:
For all of the 11 million illegal aliens currently in the United States, you have to remember there are 5-6 million people waiting in line outside the United States trying to come in legally and doing it the right way.
There will always be people willing to come to this country legally, we should reward those people.
First of all, for most of the undocumented migrants here already, there is no line.
It makes sense that there should be a line, and we hear stories about family members waiting for ten years or more to reunite here in the U.S. So people assume there actually is a line where people can apply and eventually come into the country if they are patient and stay out of trouble.
There isn't! It's a fantasy. In a reasonable world there would be such a line, but in this world there’s not.
The whole concept of a specific “line” in which people can wait is designed to mislead people about how immigration policy actually works. Some of the undocumented immigrants currently present might now qualify for some kind of visa based on family relationships, but if they leave now, penalties implemented by President Clinton’s 1996 IIRIRA law will bar those people from returning to the U.S. for at least ten years, in most cases regardless of whether the person has immediate family members who are U.S. citizens.
Kobach isn’t interested in talking about family separation, lengthy detention for civil immigration violations or even for the “crime” of seeking asylum, or the ballooning costs of immigration enforcement. He talks about "doing things the right way,” but won’t talk about the continued efforts of the Tanton network (of which his employer, Immigration Reform Law Institute, is a part) to reduce legal immigration and restrict channels for people to enter lawfully. (Read more about Kobach from Jill Garvey at Imagine2050.)
Colbert didn’t ask Kobach about the reforms of the Board of Immigration Appeals which he designed and implemented under former Attorney General John Ashcroft to purge the Board of liberal members and cut the number of immigrant-favorable asylum decisions in half. He didn’t ask Kobach about his ongoing efforts to enable local mayors and law enforcement officers to racially profile nonwhite residents and create a climate of fear more suited to a totalitarian state than the United States.
Kobach specializes in making unreasonable policies sound reasonable, and in my estimation, last week on the Colbert Report, he succeeded.
Shades of Gray in Trafficking, But It's Still Slavery
Published August 09, 2009 @ 11:02PM PT
From time to time, my office represents victims of trafficking in their immigration matters. In the U.S., the T Visa is available to victims of trafficking who meet certain conditions. The government estimates that 14,500 to 17,500 people are trafficked to the U.S. annually.
Amanda Kloer covers this issue daily at change.org's Human Trafficking blog. She is very good--I encourage readers of this blog to check out Amanda's blog when you get the chance. Here is a basic primer on the topic.
Recently she wrote about the common misconception that trafficking victims must have been coerced at every step of the process or they have not been trafficked.
It's also important to note that many women who are trafficked knowingly and willingly enter prostitution. While the most publicized stories are about women who thought they would be waitresses or nannies, some take a job in the Netherlands or Germany in what they expect will be legal, safe prostitution on their own terms. Even after making that choice, women can be trafficked one their freedom is removed or their labor stolen and exploited. A woman who took a job as a prostitute and one who took a job as a waitress are equally trafficked once they loose their ability to leave or control their situation. The women from Eastern Europe thought they were taking a number of different kids of jobs, jobs that all turned into slavery.
It is simply not always the case that trafficking victims are always coerced, and this misconception frequently leads to further punishment of trafficked individuals by the governments that are supposedly committed to protecting them.
[Image: humantraffickingproject.blogspot.com]
