U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has responded to frequently asked questions about the new enforcement policy announced by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on August 18, 2011.
On Thursday, August 18, 2011, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that the department is going to begin reviewing all 300,000 pending deportation/removal cases in federal immigration courts to determine which individuals meet specific criteria for removal and to focus on the agency’s “highest priorities.”
Click here to read the letter Secretary Napolitano wrote to Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), announcing the new DHS policy.
Sen. Durbin’s website lists how the new process will work.
This announcement does NOT create any new immigration laws! Beware of anyone who says otherwise.
Also, the DHS’ announcement should not be viewed as Obama Administration’s amnesty program! American Immigration Lawyers Association (“AILA”) has issued a warning to be aware of people possibly trying to take advantage of the announcement to defraud immigrants by promising to apply for work permits or green cards.
According to the AILA warning:
Do NOT believe anyone who tells you they can sign you up for a work permit (Employment Authorization Document or “EAD”) or get you legal status based on the Secretary Napolitano’s August 18, 2011 announcement! Anyone who says that is not to be trusted! There is NO “safe” way to turn yourself in to immigration and there is NO guarantee that your case will be considered “low priority.” ANY person who comes into contact with immigration authorities may be arrested, detained or even removed.
Only a QUALIFIED IMMIGRATION LAWYER can evaluate your case and tell your about your rights.
Do NOT seek legal advice from a notario or immigration consultant.
Click here to read the warning issued by AILA (in English and Spanish), which explains what the DHS’ announcement means, what it does not mean, and who will be affected by the new policy.
Click here to read the American Immigration Council’s news release concerning the DHS’ announcement.
Click here to access American Immigration Council’s Prosecutorial Discretion and Executive Action: A Resource Page
The State Department has issued its September 2011 Visa Bulletin. Check to see whether your priority date is current for any petition your relative or employer may have filed for you, or if it has retrogressed.
It is always advisable to check the priority date(s) before filing an application for permanent residency to ensure that your case will be adjudicated in a timely manner.
Below is an e-mail we received today from the sister of a detained client, for whom we are filing a motion to reopen:
Just finished reading the brief, may I say that irrespective of my limited knowledge of legal proceedings and attendant documentations, my 10 year plus career as a professional microbiologist/public health specialist/child protection consultant with UNICEF/Executive of both not for and for profit organizations,means I know a well prepared document when I see one. This exceeds that baseline. It is comprehensive, well-written and easy for even a lay person to understand. You took a complicated sounding case and made (human) sense of it. I can read your expertise and (com)passion in the transcript. Thank you both for putting what reads like your best into this.
Nothing makes us happier than to read messages like this, because regardless of the outcome, we know we did our best and we know that the client and his/her family knows we did our best!
We thank all of our clients who have supported us with kind words over the years and THEY are the reason why we continue to do what we do!
The State Department has issued its August 2011 Visa Bulletin. Check to see whether your priority date is current for any petition your relative or employer may have filed for you, or if it has retrogressed.
It is always advisable to check the priority date(s) before filing an application for permanent residency to ensure that your case will be adjudicated in a timely manner.
Today, our firm enjoyed another tremendous victory, this time, through a proposed joint motion to reopen, which was joined in by the Department of Homeland Security in New York.
Our client, a Nigerian woman and a single parent of three United States citizen children, came to us in the spring of 2010 to discuss her case, which had a very complicated procedural history. She had been in deportation proceedings since early 1996. She first lost her suspension of deportation case in immigration court. She then lost her appeal at the Board of Immigration Appeals. She also did not succeed with her motion to reopen with the Board. She then took her case to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 2005, and she also lost there. She consulted with other lawyers, and no one gave her any hope.
When she came to see us with all the documents she had in her case since 1996, it was indeed overwhelming at first. We first told her something no other lawyer had ever told her. She had accepted a grant of voluntary departure from an immigration judge after her suspension of deportation case was denied. What that meant was that she was granted an opportunity to leave the United States voluntarily instead of being deported (either forcibly or through self-deportation if she left the country at any time after being subject to a deportation order). Voluntary departure is a good idea if you are ready and willing to leave in the time frame a judge grants. However, our client had three young United States citizen children, and it was impossible for her to leave with them or without them. When the Board dismissed her appeal, it re-instated the immigration judge’s voluntary departure order and gave her 30 days to leave.
Our client did not leave the country under voluntary departure. So by law, when she failed to depart, she became subject to an automatic deportation order. Under the law that existed for people in deportation proceedings, she became subject to a five year bar from applying for any benefit in the United States. This means, even if she became legally eligible for a form of relief while being subject to the deportation order, her case could not be reopened for at least five years regardless of the fact that she was eligible for a new form of relief from deportation.
Our client remained unaware of this important five year ban because her previous attorneys did not inform her of it. Thus, the motion to reopen that was done during the five year bar was a waste.
When she came to consult with us, the five year ban had expired, but her cases still needed to be reopened before she could apply for adjustment of status based upon her adult United States citizen son’s approved visa petition. We informed her of the option to seek the consent of the Department of Homeland Security to join in a motion to reopen. We advised her that due to the complex procedural history, and the fact that she ignored the privilege of voluntary departure, it would be extremely difficult to convince ONE lawyer at the Department of Homeland Security that she deserved to have another chance to legalize her status.
In addition to the legal writing we did for the motion, we worked very closely with our client in preparing numerous important documents in support of her motion. We also worked with her friends and family members, as well as community leaders, to gather more support for her case through intensive document collection. Though there were numerous obstacles in the way, working with our client, we helped her tackle those issues in order to properly present her case to the Department of Homeland Security. After all, since we would be essentially “begging” the Department of Homeland Security to join in our request to have her case reopened, we wanted to make sure everything was as clear and perfect as possible, so that there would not be too many questions about our client and her life in the mind of the one lawyer from the DHS who would be reading our motion.
Less than one month after we filed our proposed joint motion to reopen with the DHS in New York, we received a personal phone call from the Acting Chief Counsel of the DHS, who told us that he would join in our request to reopen our client’s case! He had no questions about our client’s worthiness to apply for adjustment of status at this point, since everything was clearly explained to him in our motion (as to why she was legally eligible and why she deserved to have her case reopened).
The best part of our day was the phone call we made to our client to give her the good news. She simply could not believe that what she had been trying to achieve with other attorneys since 1996 was achieved through our office in less than one year after she hired us to prepare the joint motion to reopen.
It makes our hearts happy to see our clients this happy. While to us, working on cases for each client is a “normal” routine, it never ceases to amaze us the impact felt by our clients and their families. To hear a mother say “Thank you for giving me the chance to stay with my kids here in America” is music to our ears.
We hope to continue this amazing journey with all of our clients to try to help them achieve their immigration goals!
In our September 22, 2010 blog post, we discussed the Supreme Court’s grant of certiorari in the case of Flores-Villar v. United States (09-5801), where it agreed to decide the question of whether children born overseas who have one U.S.-citizen parent can obtain U.S. citizenship if the citizen parent had been physically present in the U.S. for a certain period of time before the child’s birth. Specifically, under the applicable federal immigration law, if the citizen parent is the father, the period is five years; if it is the mother, the period is one year. The Court was to decide whether this differentiation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. The lower court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, had concluded that the differentiation did not violate the Equal Protection Clause.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case in November of 2010.
On June 13, 2011, the Supreme Court issued a PER CURIAM split decision (4-4) in the case, in which it affirmed the Ninth Circuit’s decision finding no violation of the Equal Protection Clause. Justice Elena Kagan did not participate in the decision.
The State Department has issued its July 2011 Visa Bulletin. Check to see whether your priority date is current for any petition your relative or employer may have filed for you, or if it has retrogressed.
It is always advisable to check the priority date(s) before filing an application for permanent residency to ensure that your case will be adjudicated in a timely manner.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in which it backed Arizona immigration law that seeks to punish employers for knowingly hiring undocumented workers. The case is Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting, 09-115. The Court’s decision applies only to business licenses.
Arizona passed the Legal Arizona Workers Act in 2007, allowing the state to suspend the licenses of businesses that “intentionally or knowingly” violate work-eligibility verification requirements. Companies would be required under that law to use E-Verify, a federal database to check the documentation of current and prospective employees. That database had been created by Congress as a voluntary, discretionary resource. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed a lawsuit against the state, arguing federal law prohibits Arizona and other states from making E-Verify use mandatory.
By a 5-3 vote, the court said that federal immigration law gives states the authority to impose sanctions on employers who hire unauthorized workers. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said: “[The State of Arizona] relies solely on the federal government’s own determination of who is an unauthorized alien, and it requires Arizona employers to use the federal government’s own system for checking employee status.”
Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor disagreed and dissented. Justice Sotomayor noted that the E-verify program was voluntary and not mandatory. “Permitting states to make use of E-Verify mandatory improperly puts states in the position of making decisions … that directly affect expenditure and depletion of federal resources,” she wrote. Justice Breyer noted that employers “will hesitate to hire those they fear will turn out to lack the right to work in the United States.” Justice Elena Kagan did not participate in the case because she worked on it while serving as President Barack Obama’s solicitor general.
This decision is the first high court challenge to a variety of recent state laws cracking down on illegal immigrants. It remains to be seen how the Supreme Court will view a larger, more controversial state immigration law from Arizona.
Click here to read the Supreme Court’s decision in its entirety.
Keep checking back on our blog for more updates and information!
Sources: CNN, Washington Post and Supreme Court
On May 17, 2011, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano announced the re-designation of Haiti for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and extended the country’s current TPS designation for 18 months—through January 22, 2013.
Secretary Napolitano first announced that she was designating Haiti for TPS on Jan. 15, 2010, after major earthquakes devastated the country. Following consultations with other federal agencies, Secretary Napolitano has determined that current conditions in Haiti support extending the designation period for current TPS beneficiaries and re-designating Haiti for TPS in order to re-establish the continuous residence date as Jan. 12, 2011.
Under the 2010 designation, TPS applicants needed to show that they had continuously resided in the United States since Jan. 12, 2010. Under the new re-designation, eligible individuals who arrived up to one year after the earthquake in Haiti may now apply for TPS. Many of these individuals were authorized to enter the United States immediately after the earthquake on temporary visas, humanitarian parole and other measures.
Later this week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will post a Federal Register notice and provide additional guidance on:
For more information, visit the USCIS website or check back on our blog for updated information as it becomes available.
Source: USCIS
Thursday, May 17, 9:58 pm
