This year instead of our usual cooking event at the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), we held an in-office potluck. We each brought a favorite holiday food or a food celebrating our heritage. Food included kugel with cornflakes from Liz, Scandinavian cardamom bread with candy cane icing (yum!) from Alexis, salpicão (Brazilian chicken salad) and pão de queijo (cheesy bread) from Daniele, sufganiyot (filled doughnuts) and matzo ball soup from Michal, lentils from Matt, Hungarian potato salad and coconut/date cookies from Carolyn, deviled eggs from Olivia, pasta salad from Ashley, miniature Italian pastries from Dana, cookies and cream cake from Briana, cinnamon rolls from Joseph, rosemary potatoes from Alla, brownies from Gaby, and Pio Pio along with the addictive green sauce from Protima. After eating (and drinking), we played several spirited rounds of "Immigration Taboo" (which we created) and then took our own "Immigration, Citizenship, & Geography Quiz." Yes, we do know how to have fun.
The New York Times: “Trump Recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital and Orders U.S. Embassy to Move”
President Trump reversed seven decades of American foreign policy last week when he formally declared Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and announced that the US Embassy will move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In making the announcement, President Trump said: “Today we finally acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. It’s something that has to be done.” Despite this announcement, Trump signed another six-month waiver to delay the Embassy’s move as part of the Jerusalem Embassy Act, a law put in place in 1995 that initiated the process of moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem but allows presidents to sign a waiver. Trump administration officials explained that the waiver was signed in order to plan for the move. To that end, President Trump directed the State Department to begin preparing for the move by hiring architects, engineers, and planners so that the new embassy in Jerusalem can be a “magnificent tribute to peace” once completed.
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16th Annual Holiday Train Show at Grand Central
The New York Transit Museum Gallery Annex and Store at Grand Central Terminal is back with its annual 16th annual Holiday Train Show. The layout features Lionel trains chugging along through a two-level, thirty-four-foot-long miniature New York City, which includes a tiny Grand Central and not so tiny Empire State Building, all the way to the North Pole. (I know, that's quite a commute!) The exhibit features vintage trains from the museum’s collection, including New York Central models as well as Lionel Metro-North and the Polar Express train sets. The trains are on display through February 4, 2018.
Gabriella Jassir: The DLG-Proust-Actors Studio Questionnaire
When Gabriella was seven years old, her family moved from Barranquilla, Colombia, to Tampa, Florida. This experience sparked her first interest in learning about immigration law. As a junior in high school, she attended her naturalization ceremony along with her father and sister at the Tampa Convention Center. “It was really exciting because everyone was so happy,” she says. “The ceremony itself was cool. There was probably around 200 to 300 people, but they called out all the different countries that had people nationalizing: Colombia, Brazil, and many more. It was interesting seeing how diverse everyone was.”
Read moreProPublica: “Extreme Digital Vetting of Visitors to the U.S. Moves Forward Under a New Name”
At a tech industry conference hosted by the Government Technology & Services Coalition last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) invited software providers to begin the process of creating algorithms that would monitor the social media accounts of visa holders deemed to be a high risk in order to assess potential threats to the US. The agency announced that they would need tools equipped with “risk-based matrices” that would continue social media surveillance throughout these visa holders’ stay in the US so that ICE may predict any threats. These requests are the first clear plans showing ICE’s intent to augment tougher visa vetting with the monitoring of social media through a program now named “Visa Lifecycle Vetting.”
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Dream
Each year since 2013, illustration students along with select alumni and professors at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) have created beautiful and colorful murals along Seventh Avenue. The seventy-seven murals painted in acrylic on the three by six foot blocks of limestone are only a couple blocks from our office. This year the theme is “Dreams," a reference to the uncertain future of recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. “It’s really a new experience to them,” Dan Shefelman, an assistant professor of illustration at FIT’s School of Art & Design, tells Chelsea Now about the students. “Most of them haven’t worked this big, on-site, with people watching. In the painting process, it’s as much of a performance as a piece of art. It’s amazing to watch the students realize how much people like what they do.” Student Melissa Cicero tells NY1: "I'm used to canvases and paper. It's a challenge. But I accept challenges." The murals will be up until spring.
Diplomats and Their Special Privileges
Over 100,000 representatives of foreign governments, including their dependents, are in the United States, and many of these foreign representatives are entitled to some degree of diplomatic immunity and certain privileges. We have written about a variety of immigrant and nonimmigrant visa types for foreign nationals, but diplomats are, in a word, special. We thought we’d take a closer look at visa types for diplomats as well as their privileges while in the US and, importantly, whether they are really responsible for those unpaid parking tickets!
Read moreBusiness Insider: "A judge permanently blocked Trump's order that threatened federal grants to 'sanctuary cities'"
Last week, Judge William Orrick, a federal district judge for Northern California, permanently blocked President Trump’s executive order cutting federal funds to sanctuary cities that refuse to comply with federal efforts to detain and deport undocumented immigrants. In his ruling, the judge writes that the executive order violates the US Constitution’s principles of federalism and separation of powers. This decision is the result of a lawsuit brought by the city and county of San Francisco and Santa Clara County challenging the executive order issued in January this year that aimed to cut federal funding for cities which did not comply with a statute that prohibits state and local governments from refusing to relay information about the immigration status of those in their jurisdiction to federal immigration authorities. In his decision, Judge Orrick states: “The Counties have demonstrated that the Executive Order has caused and will cause them constitutional injuries by violating the separation of powers doctrine and depriving them of their Tenth and Fifth Amendment rights.”
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