Wall Street Journal: “What American Citizenship Makes Possible”

Immigration is a vital part of our nation because people come to the United States to not only make a better life for themselves and their family, but to become American citizens, according to General Colin Powell, the former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He says of his own immigration experience and his professional achievements:

Only in America could the son of two poor Jamaican immigrants become the first African-American, the youngest person and the first ROTC graduate from a public university to hold those positions, among many other firsts. My parents arrived—one at the Port of Philadelphia, the other at Ellis Island—in search of economic opportunity, but their goal was to become American citizens, because they knew what that made possible.

Saying that “America stands to benefit…as much as, if not more than, the immigrants themselves,” he goes onto refute common misconceptions about immigrants: neighborhoods with greater concentrations of foreign-born immigrants have lower rates of crime and violence than comparable nonimmigrant neighborhoods; foreign-born men between ages eighteen and thirty-nine are jailed at one-quarter the rate of native-born American men of the same age; immigrants today are learning English at the same rate or faster than earlier generations; first-generation immigrants are less likely to die from cardiovascular disease or cancer than native-born people, and experience fewer chronic health conditions, have lower infant-mortality and obesity rates, and have a longer life expectancy.

General Powell’s own parents met and married in the US while working in the garment industry, making $50 to $60 a week. General Powell was educated in the New York City public education system, from kindergarten through to Morris High School in the South Bronx and City College of New York—back when tuition was free—and experienced great success in his military career. He writes that while some countries including Japan and Russia worry that population decline threatens their economies, America benefits from immigrants’ energy, creativity, and drive. “We are all immigrants, wave after wave over several hundred years,” he writes. “And every wave makes us richer: in cultures, in language and food, in music and dance, in intellectual capacity. We should treasure this immigrant tradition, and we should reform our laws to guarantee it.”

For those interested in naturalization, US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) has a helpful guide titled “10 Steps to Naturalization: Understanding the Process of Becoming a U.S. Citizen.” In this guide, USCIS explains who is eligible to apply for naturalization, steps to file Form N-400, Application for Naturalization, information about the process when the N-400 is pending, and, of course, what happens after approval, including taking the Oath of Allegiance and the naturalization ceremony.

An Introduction to E-2 Treaty Investors

Megana, a rising second year law student at Fordham University School of Law, is one of our summer associates. A merit scholarship recipient, she will serve on the Intellectual Property Law Journal this coming year.

While not as well known as an H-1B or O-1, the E-2 Treaty Investor is at times a good option for certain individuals seeking to do business within the United States. The following Q&A will shed some light on the various conditions that must be met in order to qualify as well as general information for this type of visa.

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CNN: "Why we should expand the H-1B visa program"

Rosario Marin, the 41st US treasurer under President George W. Bush and current chair of the American Competitiveness Alliance, a coalition of organizations advocating for immigration reform, is calling for an expansion to the H-1B program. With an H-1B cap that is currently set at 65,000 per fiscal year with an additional 20,000 available to applicants who possess an advanced degree from a US educational institution, this year the government received over 236,000 H-1B petitions (about 3,000 more than last year), which means many presumably qualified applicants are forced to return to their home country or find other ways to remain in the US.

Describing herself as a proud and lifelong Republican, Marin says she is going against her party’s platform and calling for a “strong, sensible immigration reform” that includes expanding the number of H-1Bs issued per year. She says:

There is overwhelming demand from American companies—both large and small—for educated, skilled foreign workers to fill jobs in computer programming, coding, medicine and information technology. These are jobs that would be left largely unfilled if not for international workers, as our domestic workforce doesn't consist of graduates with these skills in the enormous numbers we require. This is why it will be critical for Congress and the next president to push for immigration reform that expands the H-1B program.

A naturalized US citizen herself, she argues that H-1Bs and immigrants are essential to the American economic system. “Without them, companies struggle to locate the specific people with the specific computer and science skills they need to grow, translating into an inability to expand, to create jobs, to scale up,” she writes. “The United States must work to address our shortage of students graduating with advanced science, math and technology skills, but until it does, American companies need high-skilled international workers, not only to compete, but to survive.”

Opponents of the H-1B claim American companies often use the H-1B program to replace higher paid American workers and “lease” out lower-paid foreign national H-1B workers through third-party companies. Another study reveals that the truth about STEM fields is more complicated. The Monthly Labor Review of the Bureau of Labor Statistics states there are both shortages and surpluses of STEM workers, depending on the particular job market segments and geographic location. The study shows that while there is no shortage in the academic job market, in the private sector, positions such as software developers, petroleum engineers, data scientists, and those in skilled trades are in high demand.  

In her opinion piece, Marin concludes: “Our power and influence is owed largely to having been the country that gave the world automobiles, personal computers, countless other inventions. And people—well-educated, highly skilled people, many of them immigrants—were behind each and every one.”

Happy Birthday, Emma!

“'Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'” —Emma Lazarus

“'Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'” —Emma Lazarus

On this day in 1849 Emma Lazarus was born into a wealthy New York family descended from Sephardic Jewish Americans. With a clear talent for poetry, she attracted the notice of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emma Lazarus’s famous poem was originally commissioned for a fund-raising campaign by artists and writers to pay for the statue’s pedestal. Only after her death did it become synonymous with the Statute of Liberty and transformed the statue into the “Mother of Exiles," welcoming new generations of immigrants from all over the world. In 1903, after determined lobbying by a friend of Lazarus who was descended from Alexander Hamilton, himself a famous immigrant, the poem was affixed to the pedestal.