Month: April 2009

According to an article on nytimes.com:  “While acknowledging that the recession makes the political battle more difficult, President Obama plans to begin addressing the country’s immigration system this year, including looking for a path for illegal immigrants to become legal, a senior administration official said on Wednesday.”

Tough road ahead but it does not look like our President is one to shy away from a good challenge!  In my opinion, it is best to address this issue early on and as far away from election time as possible because candidates, usually to their disadvantage, try to use the immigration issue as a wedge.

Even though anti-immigration candidates usually lose – immigration reform just becomes too hot as an issue and eventually and fizzles.  If CIR were to pass Congress and be signed by the President early-on, by election time the issue will be moot and congressional supporters and opponents will have done the right thing and could therefore focus their campaigns on productive issues.

The Department of State has released its Visa Bulletin for May 2009.  The EB-3 is unavailable for all countries.

According to a USCIS Press Release:  “USCIS announced it continues to accept H-1B nonimmigrant visa petitions subject to the fiscal year 2010 (FY 2010) cap.  USCIS will continue to monitor the number of H-1B petitions received for both the 65,000 regular cap and the 20,000 U.S. master’s degree or higher educational exemption cap.”

Given the economy and what many immigration lawyers have been saying about the deline in cases filed this year, the availaiblity of cap-subject H-1Bs omes as no surprise.   

According to an article on cnn.com:  “A gunman barricaded the back door of an immigration services center with his car and burst through the front door on a shooting rampage, killing 13 people and then, apparently, himself, police said.”

I am curious to see how this story develops – what was this obviously-unstable man’s motive for this murderous rampage at an immigrant center?  Could it be that anti-immigration television and radio shows that regularly blame immigrants for this nation’s ills played a role in motivating this heinous act?  We may never know for sure. 

According to a USCIS Press Release:  “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a reminder that the revised Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification (Rev. 02/02/09), goes into effect today for all U.S. employers. The revision date is printed on the lower right-hand corner of the form.”

According to an article on latimes.com:  “Federal authorities are violating immigrant detainees’ constitutional rights by holding them for weeks at a detention facility in downtown Los Angeles that was designed as a short-term processing center, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court.”

The tide seems is turning with regards to our holding immigration agencies responsible for their conduct.  Through vehicles such as the filing of class-action lawsuits, conducting DHS investigations and by this administration setting a new tone when discussing immigration – we seem to be getting on the right track.  We did not get into this mess overnight so it may take some time for this positive shift to take effect.

If it was not such a tragic reflection of our broken immigration system, it would almost be funny.

According to an opinion piece by Ruben Navarrette, Jr. that appeared on cnn.com:  “In one sense, I feel sorry for illegal immigrants. They make the decision to come here, even if it means breaking the law. I won’t defend that. But still, we play with their lives, and we play with their heads. They must think Americans are loco. We confuse them with mixed messages. It starts with the two signs at the border: “Keep out” and “Help Wanted.” We all but beg them to work for us, and then too often we abuse and exploit them as if we rue the day they punched in.”

Apparently some of the accused undocumented who were swept up in the Bellingham, Washington raid were released and given work authorization while awaiting the result of the government’s investigation and prosecution of their former employer, Yamato Engine Specialists.  This is an improvement over the Bush administration’s deportations without Due Process, however the mixed messages and the nonsensical adjudications we have been seeing even gets me thinking that the world of immigration law is at least a little “loco”.