Lourdes Sierra: The DLG-Proust-Actors Studio Questionnaire

Lourdes Sierra is no stranger to the world of immigration law. Though she is currently our part-time bookkeeper, Lourdes has many years of experience as a paralegal at immigration law firms. She previously worked at Avirom & Associates, where Protima, Lizzie B, and Matt Bray also started their careers, and Spar Bernstein Lewis LLP, a large firm in Manhattan. Even now, along with her bookkeeping duties, she works two days a week at a small firm in White Plains where she focuses on family immigration.

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LA Times: "The loaded term 'anchor baby' conceals complex issues"

Donald Trump began his presidential campaign calling Mexicans "rapists" and drug dealers and now he and other presidential contenders have moved onto decrying so-called "anchor babies"—a term that has been denounced by many as offensive—and have advocated for changing the fourteenth amendment to repeal "birthright citizenship."

The Reason for Undocumented Immigration

In his policy paper, Trump claims that birthright citizenship "remains the biggest magnet for illegal immigration." While the paper does not provide further explanation, as the Los Angeles Times noted, the "impulses driving immigrants to have children in the United States vary widely, as do the economic circumstances of those who drop 'anchors.'"  

While there are some instances of “birth tourism”—when legal but usually temporary immigrants travel to the US to give birth in order to provide the child US citizenship—Louis DeSipio, a professor of political science at UC Irvine, said that “the notion that parents have children in the U.S. to protect themselves from deportation is a departure from reality,” and observed that US-citizen children must be twenty-one-years-old to begin the process of sponsoring a parent who is in the country without legal status. He said in the Los Angeles Times: "It would take an amazingly tactical or Machiavellian parent to somehow think that the child's status protects the parents...They are not thinking 25 years in the future."

Zenen Jaimes, a policy analyst with United We Dream, which advocates for the rights of young immigrants, was born in Chicago to undocumented Mexican parents who came to the US because of the economic crisis in Mexico. He said in the Los Angeles Times that his parents did not intend to have children to protect themselves from deportation. “Once they got here they just went through the normal process of starting a family," he said. While his mother obtained legal residency after his older brother sponsored her, his father was deported. "That's the case for thousands of kids who grew up like me[.]”

What Would Happen if US Changed Birthright Citizenship?

The results could be very problematic, argues the Huffington Post, since changing the fourteenth amendment would create second-class and a large number of stateless individuals with limited rights. Citing examples from Germany, where it has historically struggled to integrate their Turkish population due in part to their citizenship policies, the Dominican Republic, which retroactively stripped Haitian-Dominicans of citizenship despite international condemnation, and Japan, which had previously denied citizenship to Koreans living in Japan, changing the fourteenth amendment would have a vast impact on not only immigrants but US citizens as well. 

The US would need a whole new government bureaucracy, argues Margaret D. Stock, a 2013 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and attorney with the Cascadia Cross-Border Law Group:

America has no national birth registry, no squads of skilled government lawyers who can determine whether a person’s parents hold a particular immigration status at the moment of a baby’s birth. We’d need a whole new government bureaucracy to make birth adjudications. Americans would have to pay for this new bureaucracy, which would be tasked to decide the citizenship of some 4 million babies born in America each year.

David Baluarte, a law professor at Washington and Lee University and the director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic, said in Mother Jones that ending birthright citizenship would be “a disaster.” Creating a class of stateless migrants, he says, “would be a humanitarian crisis within the United States."

AILA: Delays in Production of Work Authorization and Green Cards

The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) is reporting that there are delays in the issuance of employment authorization and permanent resident cards (aka Green Cards) after approvals of I-765 and I-485 applications. US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) has confirmed through AILA that because the card production facility in Corbin, KY is undergoing maintenance, all card production work has been transferred to the facility in Lee's Summit, MO, resulting in a production backlog. Recipients may therefore not receive their cards until two to three weeks after application approval. USCIS anticipates that the backlog will be resolved in September 2015.

The American Bazaar: "F1 visa students may be allowed to work in the US for 6 years after February 12, 2016"

A District of Columbia judge recently ruled that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must vacate a 2008 rule that granted F-1 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students Optional Practical Training (OPT) extensions for seventeen months beyond the normal twelve months of OPT. Meanwhile, in an unrelated move, as part of President Obama’s executive actions the DHS has proposed regulations that would potentially allow STEM students to stay in the US for a total of six years.

The ruling on the seventeen-month STEM extensions by US District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle was partially in favor of the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, who had pursed a case against F-1 STEM students to reduce their STEM extension to twelve months from seventeen, arguing that the STEM OPT extensions generated unfair competition by creating a cheaper category of workers. Judge Huvelle ruled that the DHS must vacate the rule since it did not provide the necessary public notice and comment.

Since invalidating the rule effective immediately would create a "major labor disruption” for technology-related industries as well as "substantial hardship" for thousands of international students, Judge Huvelle imposed a six-month stay until February 12, 2016, a move that should allow DHS to correct and implement the necessary public notice and comment.

In the end, this ruling may not have much impact because of the White House and DHS’s plans to expand and extend the OPT program for students in STEM fields. While the White House or DHS have not released further information about their plans, a letter from earlier this summer from Senator Charles Grassley, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, expressing concerns about the DHS plans, arguably reveals the proposed STEM changes.

Based on their briefing with Grassley, the DHS may be proposing regulations that would lengthen the OPT STEM extension period from seventeen to twenty-four months and allow students to take advantage of the STEM extension at two different times in their academic careers instead of only once, potentially “for a total of up to six years of postgraduation employment in student status[.]” STEM students could potentially be eligible for three years of OPT after undergraduate studies in a STEM field and three additional years after postgraduate studies in a STEM field.

Grassley, in his June letter to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, said that the proposed change to OPT STEM would permit “foreign graduates of non-STEM U.S. degree programs to receive the 24-month extension of the OPT period, even if the STEM degree upon which the extension is based is an earlier degree and not for the program from which the student is currently graduating (e.g. student has a bachelor’s in chemistry and is graduating from an M.B.A. program).”

"The proposed new regulations, while still being internally discussed, are irresponsible and dangerous considering the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report issued in March 2014 finding that the program was full of inefficiencies, susceptible to fraud, and that the department was not adequately overseeing it,” Grassley writes.

A spokesperson for Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division said in a statement in Inside Higher Ed that it could not elaborate on its OPT plans. “ICE is in the midst of drafting proposed rules for notice and public comment regarding foreign students with degrees in STEM fields from U.S. universities. Due to rule-making requirements, we cannot discuss the content of that proposed rule at this time,” the statement said.

Extending the OPT period for STEM students would be a welcome move within the international student community, the technology and science industry which employs many STEM workers, and among immigration practitioners, as the extended time would allow more opportunity to file H-1B petitions when the cap has been reached. At this point, however, we can only wait and see what if any changes will be enacted.

UPDATE DECEMBER 3, 2015: The US government has received nearly 35,000 comments on its plan to extend the OPT for STEM students from twenty-nine months to thirty-six months. The comments period closed last month. As was true with the initial ones, the majority of comments received support extending the program, which is not surprising given that as of September this year over 34,000 students were in the United States on a STEM OPT extension, many of whom would be forced to leave if the US government doesn't continue to bring the program into compliance with the law.
 

Secession 2015

We have a lot of very talented people working at our firm. One of these is Alexis Roblan, a legal writer who is also a playwright. She is one of seven writers who worked with Brooklyn-based Exquisite Corpse Company on Secession 2015, a collaborative immersive theater event which opened this past weekend on Governors Island (where Joseph found his lost umbrellas). Taking its name and inspiration from the Vienna Secession of the early 1900s, an Austrian multi-disciplinary art movement led by Gustav Klimt, the show is a series of seven short plays (one of which is by Alexis!) inspired by six artists from that movement, woven together and performed in a house that’s been turned into an art gallery and performance space for the summer. 

What I particularly enjoyed was how each of the plays was a kind of feminist re-imagining of the period and the art movement. Alexis’s piece, “Marietta,” profiled a female artist of the era arguing with her subject, Marietta, about her place in the art movement, and humorously (and tragically) illustrated the unique “arranged marriage” she entered into as a way to maintain her artistic (and financial) independence. Other pieces explored the relationship between many of the famous artists of the day and their female “muses.” The muses—all of whom were dressed the same—guided the audience through the house (each scene performed in a different room), and even performed group musical numbers that were somber and funny all at once. I really appreciated the show’s creativity and surprising cohesion, and I highly recommend it.

Secession 2015 will be performed twice a day on Governors Island (accessible via ferry) at Nolan Park House #17 every Saturday and Sunday until September 20.