Cannabis Culture: "US Immigration Officials: Pot Smokers Get Out; Rapists You Can Stay"

Cannabis Culture, which is not exactly required reading for most immigration attorneys, notes a report suggesting that "a suspected undocumented immigrant convicted of possessing pot may be more likely to face immigration detention than one who’s been convicted of rape." The report is from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a non-profit and non-partisan organization whose mission is to reduce society’s reliance on incarceration as a solution to social problems.  The center reviewed data on requests by ICE to law enforcement agencies to detain adult suspected undocumented immigrants. Salon has a take here including a response from ICE:

...ICE told Salon that because the report “only focuses on detainers issued on convicted criminals,” it “fails to recognize the issuance of ICE detainers on other public safety threats such as transnational criminal street gang members, international fugitives, human rights violators, national security threats and those who repeatedly violate our immigration laws.” The agency argued that the report “does not take into account detainers placed on immigration law violators charged with serious crimes who have not yet been convicted of a crime in the United States,” and noted that some people detained are ultimately released.

You can read the report in PDF here. The report also notes that "traffic offenders are more likely to be booked into ICE detention (75.8 percent) than violent offenders (67.5 percent)."

NYC Immigration Rally

Thousands rallied for immigration reform this past Saturday, October 5, 2013, in Brooklyn. This rally (one of many across the nation) formed at Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn and ended in a march over the Brooklyn Bridge. Holding such signs as "El Momento Es Ahora," "No More Death at the Border," and "I heart Immigration Reform," protestors listened to such speakers as Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio. Speaking of the undocumented in the US, he said, "They deserve a chance too. Eleven million people who make this country work." He added, "We are the city of immigrants." Attorney Elizabeth Brettschneider and I were on hand to capture a few shots from the rally and march.   

Ashley Emerson: The DLG-Proust-Actors Studio Questionnaire*

Associate Attorney Ashley Emerson grew up in Ashford, Connecticut, a town, she says, that “has more cows than people.” She first became interested in law during high school. “I had an amazing teacher,” she says. “He had this elective law class. It was so interesting, ethically and morally. Everything about it was fascinating. Before that I wanted to be a vet. But I realized you couldn’t just specialize in one type of animal, you had to be a vet for all animals. I didn’t want to deal with creepy animals like snakes and other things.” She went onto undergraduate studies at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. “I was looking for a school that was small and liberal arts,” she says. “I also wanted to be somewhere I could be really involved in campus life. It was a Division III School, so I could play volleyball and sing a cappella. Being a student was my first priority, of course, but I wanted to find a balance.”

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Yahoo News!: "Court: Applicants Wrongly Denied US Citizenship"

What happens if despite your claims that you're a US citizen, you are deported four times and at one point detained for nearly two years? Yahoo News! has the story of Sigifredo Saldana Iracheta who was born to an American father and a Mexican mother in a Mexican city south of the Texas border. After a prison sentence for a drug conviction, he was deported, and denied his applications for a certificate of citizenship.

In rejecting Saldana's bid for citizenship, the government sought to apply an old law that cited Article 314 of the Mexican Constitution, which supposedly dealt with legitimizing out-of-wedlock births. But there was a problem: The Mexican Constitution has no such article.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this month ruled that Saldana had been a citizen since birth. Saldana's key to success? He was "persistent."

Immigration Reform News

US News says that while many believe immigration reform would effectively take away jobs from Americans, "a new report by the conservative-leaning American Action Network, is evidence that the bill might just be the stimulus Congress has been looking for to put the stagnant economy into overdrive." Immigration reform could also mean a $2 billion a year increase in state and local tax revenues." Meanwhile Salon says "Immigration reform just got punched in the gut" as they report that Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and top GOP immigration bill writer, says: "''I would not give what I call a special pathway to citizenship to anyone who’s illegally in the United States.'"

The Nonimmigrant Consular Process

Once foreign nationals receive an I-797 approval notice for the I-129 petition from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), many assume they are done. Many think that this I-797 approval notice is a “visa.” It is not. For most nonimmigrant categories, there are three distinct stages that foreign nationals must go through in order to be admitted to the US in a valid nonimmigrant status:

1. Obtain an I-797 approval notice for a nonimmigrant visa petition from USCIS, confirming a foreign national’s eligibility for a specific visa classification;

2. Attend a visa appointment at a US Embassy/Consulate abroad to obtain a visa stamp in their passport; and

3. Gain admission to the US by passing through Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the port of entry.

This post focuses on the second stage—the consular process.

 

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THE WAll STREET JOURNAL: "For Small Firms, Visas Are a Big Headache"

The Wall Street Journal suggests H-1Bs are more difficult for smaller companies to obtain:

Kelsey Falter, founder of New York startup Poptip, says the headaches of immigration paperwork have put her venture in limbo.
Last year, Ms. Falter hired an Arizona-based software developer who had helped create a program that she used to get her startup—a website that analyzes real-time social media surveys—off the ground.
But there was a hitch: The developer, 25-year-old Rolando Fentanes, was a Mexican citizen who needed to apply for a separate immigration status before Ms. Falter could file the paperwork for an H-1B visa—a temporary work permit the U.S. issues to highly skilled foreign workers. That separate application wasn't approved until June, two months after the annual cap for H-1B visas was reached. Now, Ms. Falter and Mr. Fentanes will have to wait another year to apply.

Will the H-1B cap increase? Will April 1, the first day H-1B cap cases can be filed, become just an ordinary day at immigration law firms across the country? We await the results of immigration reform.

[Read on The Wall Street Journal] 

USCIS'S New ID Requirements

There is sincere concern at immigration about identity fraud. I can only imagine the stories that Immigration employees must tell about twins attempting to switch identities for immigration benefits or people masquerading as someone else at a green card interview. Now, however, any impersonations will be much more difficult (if not impossible) since in an effort to combat identity fraud during the immigration process, USCIS has implemented a new program called Customer Identity Verification (CIV).

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