Gulliver's Gate

A mix of our old and new neighborhood.

A mix of our old and new neighborhood.

Gulliver's Gate, located in Times Square, is a fascinating new $40 million miniature exhibit featuring scenes from fifty nations around the world. The miniatures include iconic landmarks, monuments, and world wonders, all brought to life with a blend of modern technology that includes self-driving cars, trains, and moving trams, coupled with stunning attention to old-fashioned model craftsmanship. Top artists from around the world came together to create the buildings and scenes that include 1,000 trains, 10,000 cars and 100,000 tiny people. The New York City section, titled "Metropolis," took nearly a year to make.

"Gulliver's Gate is both tiny and fascinating and overwhelming all at the same time," Jason Hackett, the attraction's chief marketing officer, tells CNet. "A big theme for us is this idea of reveal and how scale can help you understand the world better." While not geographical correct, we enjoyed the part of the New York City scene that mixed buildings from our old neighborhood in the Meatpacking District (hello, Standard Hotel and Whitney Museum!) with our new neighborhood (hello, Penn Station!). Also check out the rooftop party and that one hotel room in the Standard which may or may not feature exhibitionists! 

Meena Roldan Oberdick: The DLG-Proust-Actors Studio Questionnaire

Meena, a paralegal at the firm, is a big fan of memes. She is very pleased to let me know that she was watching the Dr. Phil Show when the “Cash Me Outside” girl first uttered her now infamous words. “I was actually in a laundromat when it first aired,” Meena says. “I saw it live! I didn’t realize though what an internet sensation it was going to be at that moment.”

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Washington Post: “A ‘dreamer’ claims he was secretly deported. The government claims it never happened.”

Juan Manuel Montes Bojorquez, a twenty-three-old Mexican man living in California, is one of the first “DREAMers” to be deported by President Trump, immigration advocates and lawyers are claiming; a removal that would contradict the stated policy by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that does not prioritize DACA recipients for removal. The US government and lawyers for Montes have differing versions of the story surrounding Montes’s removal from the US. The US government is claiming that Montes voluntarily left the US and illegally tried to reenter, thus violating the conditions of his DACA status, and lawyers for Montes allege that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents removed him from the US despite his valid DACA status.

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USCIS: Change of Filing Addresses and Workload Transfers

Every so often, US Citizenship & Immigration Service Centers—located in California, Nebraska, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia—experience lengthy backlogs and delays in processing cases. To balance workloads and “promote timely processing,” USCIS occasionally changes filing addresses for certain petitions to direct cases away from the service centers experiencing these significant delays, as well as transfers cases from center to center. USCIS announced this week they are doing both.  

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Tulips in Springtime

St James's Park in London.

St James's Park in London.

Back in London I was finally convinced that it's springtime when I found these lovely tulips in St James's Park. The park, which also has many daffodils, is only a short walk away from three palaces (St James's, Westminster, and Buckingham Palaces) and is in the heart of historical London. They even have deck chairs to rent! Beautiful flowers and lawn furniture, what more could you ask for?

Don’t Try This at Home: 5 Reasons Why Foreign Nationals Shouldn’t File E-3 Visa Applications On Their Own

The E-3 is a nonimmigrant visa that allows Australian citizens to temporarily come to the US to work for a US employer in a professional capacity. To qualify for this visa, Australian foreign nationals must have a legitimate offer of employment in the US with a salary that complies with Department of Labor requirements, fill a position that qualifies as a specialty occupation (i.e., a professional job that requires a bachelor’s degree or higher in a specific field of study), and hold at least a bachelor’s degree (or the equivalent work experience) in a field related to the position.

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New York Times: "Border Officers Nearly Double Searches of Electronic Devices, US Says"

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers at the border and airports have almost doubled their searches of electronic devices for individuals entering the US in the last six months, according to data released last week by CBP.

The data shows that CBP searched the electronic devices of 14,993 arriving international travelers since October of fiscal year 2017, with only 8,383 devices searched during the same period of the previous fiscal year. CBP notes that while the number of searches did increase, it only affects 0.008 percent of the approximately 189.6 million travelers arriving to the US. CBP process more than 1 million travelers arriving in the US every day.

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