Immigration Law
Bucking the CW on Immigration Reform
Published July 14, 2009 @ 07:20PM PT
Your thought-provoking links for today:
Detained Crime Victims Running Out of Time
Published July 13, 2009 @ 09:28PM PT
We know that undocumented immigrants are targeted by criminals because they are more likely to be paid in cash and are often afraid to contact the police.
That's why the U Visa, which can provide lawful status to undocumented victims of serious crimes who cooperate with law enforcement, is so important. If undocumented crime victims know they won't necessarily be deported if they go to the police, they will be more likely to take action to protect themselves. (Note: The U Visa is more likely to work in truly secure communities that haven't drafted local law enforcement into enforcing federal immigration law under 287(g) agreements. In many places around the country, the U Visa is useless if when you call the police, they come and arrest the victim, not the perpetrator.)
The U Visa cases I've seen up close are heartbreaking. Very bad things can happen to people when the protections of the criminal justice system don't fully apply.
So how is the U Visa process working these days? Maybe not so well for U visa applicants in removal proceedings:
Veronica Lopez called her grown children in Los Angeles in early February to say goodbye. She had spent nine months in immigration detention and was scheduled for deportation to Guatemala.
Lopez felt scared. Her abusive ex-husband had already been deported and she was worried he would track her down. She had applied for a special visa for undocumented crime victims who cooperate with police, but a decision hadn't been made. Despite the pending application, immigration officials were moving forward based on an outstanding deportation order.
On Feb. 12 -- just one day before her scheduled flight -- she got word that her so-called U-visa was approved and she could stay in the country. She was released from a detention center in Arizona a few days later.
"It was a miracle," Lopez said recently from her Los Angeles apartment. "I cried, I was so happy."
Roughly 50 applicants for U-visas are being held in immigration detention centers around the country, racing the clock to get their visas granted before they are deported. Hundreds more who are not in detention are involved in removal proceedings in Immigration Courts. Immigration attorneys said detention and the threat of deportation undermine the law that Congress passed in 2000 creating the U-visas, which are designed to bolster law enforcement's ability to investigate and prosecute certain crimes while offering protection to undocumented victims and their families.
USCIS, ICE, and local law enforcement could do a lot better than they are doing to fulfill Congress's intent in making the U Visa available to crime victims. We'll hope to see improvement on this score in the coming months.
Widow Penalty Fix Passes in Senate
Published July 10, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
One bright spot in a largely flawed DHS appropriations bill that passed in the Senate this week was a provision introduced by Senator Hatch (R-UT) to eliminate the widow penalty. This came on the heels of a recent decision by DHS to suspend enforcement of the widow penalty and grant surviving spouses deferred status for two years. But as anyone languishing in TPS or waiting for a U Visa can attest, deferred status is a limbo that is far from ideal. The Hatch Amendment will allow surviving spouses to get the permanent legal status they have waited so long for.
Surviving Spouses Against Deportation has more on the amendment as well as a copy of the language. The bill must still be reconciled with the House version, but this is a very good development. Congratulations to Brent Renison and the surviving spouses and families who have worked to make this happen!
Americans Surprised That Borders Apply to Them, Too
Published July 07, 2009 @ 07:53PM PT
Following up on the last post, three unfortunate American Youts recently got the cold shoulder that the U.S. often extends to would-be travelers, as their planned backpacking trip to Europe was thwarted by zealous border officials in Ireland.
According to the men, immigration officials said they couldn't enter Ireland because they lacked an address where they planned to stay in Dublin and bank statements to prove they could afford to travel.
"If they want us to go to their country, they shouldn't do this," said Colin Zwirko, 21, who sold his Volkswagen to help pay for the trip. "They should step up and apologize or help."
It tends to come as a shock to most Americans to be told they can't travel somewhere they want to go. But this is the normal state of affairs for most people in the world.
The friends, who all quit their jobs to make the trip, said they don't understand why immigration officials forced them to return to the U.S. They didn't have printed financial statements, as the agents requested, but they told the agents they had thousands of dollars in their bank accounts. Zwirko said he offered to show them his bank balance online, but they refused to look at it.
The thought of a U.S. immigration official "looking something up" online in lieu of required paper documentation is bizarre.
The friends said they probably need to get reimbursed for the return flight in order to restart their trip.
I'll give you one guess whether the U.S. government reimburses flight expenses to travelers to whom it denies entry.
Every year, young Americans overstay visas, work without permission, and otherwise flout the immigration laws of their host countries.
It looks like that was what these backpackers had planned:
The three friends from high school landed last Friday in Dublin to begin a yearlong backpacking trip across Western Europe.
Both Ireland and the EU permit U.S. citizens to enter without a visa for no more than 90 days. Perhaps the travelers had planned to renew their visas in accordance with the laws of the EU. Given the minimal effort they put into learning about Ireland's visa laws, I doubt it.
As a former backpacker myself, I'm not pleased with Ireland's decision to mimic the counterproductive border policy we now take for granted in the U.S. And I feel sorry for these three young dudes. Young dudes, it sucks that your Europe trip got scuppered by some vengeful bureaucrat.
I don't support Ireland's and the EU's discriminatory visa laws (Africans, Asians, and Caribbeans not welcome), just as I oppose them in the U.S. Those laws are carefully designed to maintain wealth disparities between the rich world and the developing world. Like a semipermeable membrane, they keep poor people out while letting rich people in.
But sometimes these laws keep the "wrong" people out, and then hometown newspapers write angry articles. It often comes as a surprise to Americans abroad to find themselves on the wrong side of stupid laws stupidly applied. One hopes it would make them more likely to rexamine immigration policies back home.
(Via BIB)
“Illegal Immigrant” Is the Real Euphemism
Published July 02, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
illegal, n. A term used by descendents of European immigrants to refer to descendants of Indigenous Americans.
Is Senator Chuck Schumer taking his talking points on immigration from far-right anti-immigrant websites?
Last week, Schumer (NY-D) gave reporters an indication of the administration’s rhetorical strategy as Congress prepares to draft immigration reform legislation. From the Washington Post:
Schumer said legislation should secure control of the nation's borders within a year and require that an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants register with the government and "submit to a rigorous process to convert to legal status" or face immediate deportation. Rejecting the euphemism "undocumented workers," he said: "Illegal immigration is wrong -- plain and simple."
McClatchy described Schumer’s comments in similar terms:
Schumer said Democrats no longer can afford to use soft, euphemistic language about illegal immigration.
"When we use phrases like 'undocumented workers,' we convey a message to the American people that their government is not serious about combating illegal immigration, which the American people overwhelmingly oppose."
So either Senator Schumer himself used the word “euphemism” to describe the phrase “undocumented workers,” or two media outlets did in describing his comments. Regardless, his message is clear. According to Senator Schumer, “undocumented” is a misleading term, and he intends to be straight with the public by using accurate language.
But Senators and their speechwriters rarely construct their own arguments from scratch. So where did this meme come from?
The top result in a google search for “undocumented” and “euphemism” right now is a blog post about Schumer’s recent remarks. But the second and third results go to far right-wing nativist websites VDare and 24Ahead (formerly Lonewacko). From 24Ahead:
Is “undocumented immigrant” a euphemism?
Yes, it's just a politically-correct way of saying the legally correct term: "illegal alien". They're "aliens" - people who are citizens of some other country - and they're here illegally.
The post goes on to quote a thinly-sourced portion of the nativist site illegalaliens.us (scroll to the bottom) which argues that "illegal alien" is a more accurate term than “undocumented” or “out of status,” but doesn’t bother to cite to any case, statute, or legal document.
I’ve often seen in comment threads on immigration stories or blog posts the assertion that the terms “undocumented” or even “illegal immigrant” are politically correct euphemisms for the legally correct term: "illegal alien." This is the meme that Schumer picked up on last week.
Unfortunately for Schumer and the nativists, the meme is wrong. “Illegal alien” and “illegal immigrant” are not recognized terms of immigration law.
Immigration Courts Under Strain
Published July 01, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
Andrew Becker and Hugo Cabrera have written a very good story for TruthDig about the detention/deportation system that is stacked against immigrants:
While the nation’s understaffed immigration courts strain under a backlog that has grown to more than 200,000 cases, thousands of new border agents have been hired and the number of government attorneys who argue for deportation has increased by 35 percent, pushing more cases onto an already overburdened system.
As a result, cases often take months if not years to complete, leading to more immigrants being held in a growing network of detention facilities and jails. On any given day there are more than 30,000 people in immigration lockup.
This article is best read in conjunction with the recent study from UC San Francisco on the effects of stress and burnout on immigration judges resulting from sky-high caseloads and traumatic subject matter.
A new study finds that many immigration judges adjudicating cases of asylum seekers are suffering from significant symptoms of secondary traumatic stress and job burnout, which, according to the researchers, may shape their judicial decision-making processes.
. . .
The researchers found, through a quantitative data analysis of the 96 immigration judges who responded to a survey, that the judges’ burnout levels were higher than those suffered by hospital physicians and prison wardens.
. . .
The study notes that mental health clinicians have been interested in the occupational effects among those who work with trauma victims, such as immigration judges, since some victims, including asylum seekers, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The researchers note that the occupational hazards of the immigration judges may include “compassion fatigue” and “secondary traumatic stress” (STS). Sufferers of STS may manifest physical symptoms as significant and frequent as victims of trauma themselves do.
. . .
“I am concerned that the stress and trauma in judges may make it hard for them to recognize trauma in the refugees whose cases come before them in the courtroom,” said Lustig. Lustig said that this can affect their future caseloads in one of two ways: they may become particularly lenient and grant asylum at a higher rate than they would otherwise, or they may just shut down and become desensitized to those applicants whose stories of persecution are genuine.
The distinction between DHS (immigration enforcement) and the DOJ (immigration courts) is often flimsy--both are executive branch agencies answerable to President Obama. These two articles indicate that the Obama administration's priority is not to secure just outcomes through the court system but to deport as many people as quickly as possible.
Also, Lena Graber has a good post about conveyor-belt justice for migrants charged in criminal court.
Who Will the U.S. Deport Next to Iran?
Published June 22, 2009 @ 10:00PM PT
Even for Iranians who are not gay or part of an interfaith marriage, how does deporting those who came to the U.S. for a better life promote democracy in Iran?
Angelo Paparelli has a better idea:
Harken back to the fallout from the Chinese Communists' quelling of democracy with tanks and bloodshed in Tieneman Square. The Congress and the first President Bush took two-and-a-half years to protect the Chinese citizens who feared return to the Peoples Republic by passing the Chinese Student Protection Act of 1992. That law allowed a generation of primarily young Chinese to obtain permanent residence in the U.S., and probably contributed significantly to the decade of innovation and prosperity that followed. However President Obama decides to respond to events on the ground in Iran, the Congress should immediately hold hearings and speedily enact legislation, much like CSPA '92, that would allow the thousands of Iranian citizens now in the U.S. to apply for permanent residence.
I'd hope that's a proposal both major parties in the U.S. could support.
[Image: Ben Curtis -- Associated Press]
