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Published by the Law Offices of Carl Shusterman, 600 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 1550, Los Angeles, California, 90017. Phone: (213)623-4592, Fax: (213) 623-3720, E-Mail: carl@shusterman.com, WWW Home Page: http://www.shusterman.com
To subscribe to SHUSTERMAN'S IMMIGRATION UPDATE, fill out the brief online form at http://www.shusterman.com/subscribe.html#subscribe or send an e-mail message to majordomo@ls.shusterman.com, with the words "subscribe visalaw" in the body of the message.
To unsubscribe, fill in your e-mail address at http://www.shusterman.com/subscribe.html#unsubscribe or send an e-mail message to majordomo@ls.shusterman.com, with the words "unsubscribe visalaw" in the body of the message.
For back issues of SHUSTERMAN'S IMMIGRATION UPDATE, see
Disclaimer: This newsletter is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship. All information contained in this newsletter is generalized. Any reliance on information contained herein is taken at your own risk.
1. June 2000 State Department Visa Bulletin
2. Latest INS/State Dept/Labor Dept Processing Times
3. H-1B Update: INS Processing and Legislation Action
4. INS Delays: Congressional Irritation Produces A Pearl
5. Registry: A Time-Tested Part of Our Immigration Laws
6. Immigration Trivia Quiz: Help Keep Our Website Free!
7. Chat Schedule and Online Transcripts
8. NIF: For Doing Her Civic Duty Immigrant Faces Deportation
9. Visa Reciprocity and Country Documents Finder
10. Answers to the Trivia Quiz: Asian-American Congressman
Kudos to Warren Leiden and Marc Van Der Hout, two of the lawyers who brought the lawsuit.
To read a copy of the permanent injunction in PDF, see
The application period for the DV-2002 lottery will begin in October 2000. We will post the official instructions for the DV-2002 lottery on our web site as soon as they are released by the State Department, hopefully sometime this August.
For additional lottery information, see
(Excerpted From AHA News)
For the Family categories, the movement of priority dates has slowed to a crawl. Worldwide numbers advanced either not at all (1st Preference) or up to four weeks. India 4th moved ahead five weeks while the Philippine 4th remains frozen at August 1, 1979, a wait of over 20 years! In fact, for most persons born in Mexico and the Philippines, the dates did not advance at all. The one remarkable exception was Mexican 3rd preference which jumped ahead four months.
The EB-2 category for persons born in India and mainland China moves forward two months each to June 1 and September 1, 1997, respectively. In what could be a sign of things to come, the EB-3 category failed to advance at all.
The priority dates for unskilled workers advanced two months to October 1,1994.
The June Visa Numbers can be found at
Our web site contains the waiting times of each center and enumerates each state served by the center and any foreign offices within the center's jurisdiction.
The service centers periodically issue lists of their processing times for various types of applications. Our web site contains the latest list issued by each service center.
Warning: Processing times may appear faster on the official lists than they are in reality.
To see how fast (or slow) your service center is processing a particular type of petition or application, see
We list selected Consular Post Processing Times at
Today, the INS instructed all four service centers to process H-1B petitions subject to the cap which were received on or before February 25, 2000.
Does this mean that persons whose H-1B petitions were submitted after February 25, 2000 are out of luck until October 1st? Not at all. It just means that INS is being careful not to repeat the counting errors that have subjected the agency to so much criticism over the past few months.
When all H-1B petitions which were received on or before February 25th are adjudicated, the INS will recalculate how close the total of approved petitions is getting to the 115,000 cap, and advance the date forward as appropriate.
Legislative Action
The House Judiciary Committee has "marked-up" Representative Lamar Smith's bill (H.R.4227) to eliminate the H-1B cap for the next three years. Eliminating the cap sounds like a dream come true to the visa-starved IT industry. Unfortunately, Mr. Smith, whose sole purpose as the Chairman of the House Immigration Subcommittee seems to be to diminish the number of immigrants and nonimmigrants coming to the U.S., does not have the interests of either the IT industry or U.S. and H-1B workers at heart.
He managed to have his bill approved by his subcommittee just a couple of days after he introduced it, and most observers expect a quick approval by the full committee. See
It is a virtual certainty that both H.R.4227 and S.2045 will be approved soon.
The difficulties will surface when a Joint Senate-House Conference Committee is named to work out the differences between the two bills. Trying to combine the competing bills into one harmonious whole is like trying to mix oil with water.
S.2045, although far from perfect, would raise the H-1B cap, satisfy the concerns of the IT industry, and help H-1B visaholders by relaxing the rigid per-country quotas and allowing for extensions of status beyond the present six-year cap. It also provides from additional funds to educate and train U.S. workers to qualify for highly-paid IT careers.
H.R.4227 eliminates the cap entirely for a three-year period. However, it contains a number of provisions which are opposed by the IT industry. It fails to provide extra funds for training and educating U.S. workers, and it does not contain provisions to ease the burdens of beleaguered H-1B visaholders.
How the Senate, the House of Representatives and the Administration can work together to turn Fool's Gold into Real Gold promises to be one of the most delicate and entertaining legislative feats in recent history.
We promise to keep you posted as events unfold.
Almost 20 years and numerous INS filing fee increases later, it now takes 2-3 years (plus lives in being ;-) to get an I-485 interview, over a year to have an I-140 adjudicated, etc., etc.
I'm positive that each one of my hundreds of gray hairs that have sprouted up on my head during the past few years is due to stress caused by governmental delays. (Incidentally, some of my old friends at the INS seem to be experiencing similar problems.)
Things have gone from bad to worse lately, prompting some Members of Congress in Silicon Valley to hold a public hearing on "INS delays and mismanagement" on February 25, 2000. Read the testimony at
The legislation states that its purpose is to provide the INS "with the mechanisms it needs to eliminate the current backlog in the processing of immigration benefit applications within one year...and to provide for regular congressional oversight in the performance of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in eliminating the backlog and processing delays in immigration benefits adjudication."
Kudos to AILA Board Member Ellen Ma Lee who, during our meeting with Senator Feinstein urged the Senator to consider an important subject not mentioned in the backlog bill: the "recapture" of the 500,000 immigrant visas lost during the past three years due to bureaucratic delays. See
Section 249 of the Immigration and Nationality Act provides permanent residence may be granted at the discretion of the Attorney General to any alien who
(a) entered the United States prior to January 1, 1972;
(b) has had his residence in the United States continuously since such entry;
(c) is a person of good moral character; and
(d) is not ineligible to citizenship and is not deportable as a terrorist.
* What is the historical background of registry?
Registry originated in 1929, just eight years after the first quotas were placed on immigration to the U.S. It allowed persons who had arrived in the U.S. before the Quota Act of 1921 to legalize their status, and to facilitate their becoming naturalized citizens. Congress reasoned that because the statute of limitations precluded their being deported (How's that for an idea from the past which should be revived? A statute of limitations on deportation!), they should instead be allowed to regularize their immigration status.
Registry was codified by Congress in the Nationality Act of 1940 which changed the date to January 1, 1924. The Senate Judiciary Committee studied registry in 1952 and recommended that it be retained in the law. In 1958, Congress advanced the registry date to June 24, 1940. The 1965 law advanced the cutoff date to June 30, 1948 while the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 fast forwarded the date to January 1, 1972.
Registry allows persons who have resided in the U.S. for a long period of time to regularize their status. It is the combined wisdom of every Congress during the past 70 years that persons who have somehow managed to live and work in the U.S. for many years, and who are not criminals, should be allowed to obtain permanent residence.
The current bill (S.2047) updating the registry date was introduced in the Senate by Senators Kennedy (D-MA) and Reid (D-NV) on April 12. This legislation would be a distinct improvement over earlier registry bills. The bill would establish a "rolling registry" which would advance the registry date annually until 2006. In other words, on January 1, 2002, the registry date would automatically advance to January 1, 1987. In 2003, it would advance to January 1, 1998 and so on.
Registry should not be confused with amnesty:
There are numerous other differences between registry and amnesty. It is important to remember that while the amnesty law enacted in 1986 was unusual if not unprecedented, the concept of registry as a means of allowing long term residents of the U.S. to regularize their status has been a part of U.S. immigration law for generations.
Given these distinctions, it would seem that simply advancing the registry date from 1972 to 1986 in order to restore the 14-year time period for qualification contained in the 1986 law should be far less controversial than would be the passage of a blanket amnesty law.
I have been maintaining this website since 1995 and writing SHUSTERMAN'S IMMIGRATION UPDATE since 1996. Contrary to popular opinion, this is a one-person operation. The sole author and webmaster of this site is Yours Truly, Carl Shusterman. True, I get by with a little proofreading help from my wife and some free technical advice from my good friend Jacob.
Even though web hosting, mailing 32,000+ newsletters each month, audio, chats and the like take a lot of time and expense, everything on our site is free. There are no passwords or subscription charges, and I'd like to keep it that way!
We have attracted a lot of advertisers who allow us to recoup our expenses and add new features to our site. Everytime you click on one of their banners, we earn a few pennies and you help keep our page free. Thank you.
This month's Trivia Quiz winner will be the person (1) who identifies all of our advertisers and (2) who specifies which of our advertisers offers a free program that pays you to read e-mail. Please provide me with the names of each of our advertisers and the URL of the e-mail program by sending your entry (one entry per person) to me at carl.shusterman@gte.net
Since the number of advertisers on our web site changes periodically, this month you may not want to be the first subscriber to answer the quiz. (In fact, for the next couple of days, you may actually see some white rectangles where you would normally see an ad banner. Not to fret - Engage Business Media, our advertising agency, is simply making some modifications in its ad server.) The expiration date for submission of your list is June 7th. The longer you wait to submit your answers, the greater your chance to include additional new advertisers on your list. However, in case of a tie, the first person to submit the longest and most accurate list of advertisers to me (and to correctly answer the second portion of the quiz) will be this month's trivia quiz winner.
The prize will be a free legal consultation to be used during the month of June 2000.
The transcript of our extremely popular recent chat "Priority Dates: How to Get One, How to Change One, How to Keep One" which occurred on May 8 will soon be online.
Upcoming chats include:
Don't miss our major chat on H-1B Cap Legislation on June 12!
If you have an idea for a chat topic, please send me an e-mail message at carl@shusterman.com and we (My chat sponsors at About.com, CareerPath.com and I) will take it under consideration.
For a list of upcoming chats and transcripts of past chats, see
Unfortunately, as she later found out, she is not a U.S. citizen. Immigrant children adopted by U.S. parents are not automatically citizens. In Ms. Parker's case, her father died before completing the paperwork, and so she is technically not an American. An innocent mistake, except that in 1996, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA), a sweeping law that contains many harsh provisions that are now wreaking havoc with American families.
One of those provisions makes it a felony for non-citizens to vote. There are no exceptions for innocent mistakes like Ms. Parker's. She faces the prospect of being deported to Eritrea, where she was born. Her plight was featured in two-parts on the CBS News segment "Eye on America" in April.
According to the CBS reporter, the sponsor of this provision of the 1996 law, Charles Canady (R-FL) suggested that the Immigration and Naturalization Service should "look the other way" when faced with a situation like Julia Parker's. However, putting the onus on a law enforcement agency to decide in which situations it should or shouldn't enforce the law breeds cynicism and disrespect for the law.
The 1996 Immigration Act should be fixed. It is overly harsh and inflexible. It treats someone who makes an innocent mistake the same as a hardened criminal. Congress must act to change the law.
Julia Parker's story can be found on the CBS website in two parts, at:
Also, how do you learn how certain documents (e.g., birth certificates, adoption decrees, marriage certificates, divorce degrees, death certificates, police clearances, military records, etc.) required for the issuance of an immigrant visa may be obtained?
Finally, how can you determine which U.S. Consulates in a particular country issue immigrant and/or nonimmigrant visas, and which consulate has jurisdiction over your place of residence?
Since at least 1976, the year that I started practicing immigration law, one had to consult the State Department's Foreign Affairs Manual and a number of other publications to find answers to these questions.
Now, you can easily find all of this information online. See
* How does the site work?
Suppose you are a native and citizen of India. You click on the letter "I" on the top of the page, and click again on "India". Under "Reciprocity Schedule", you will be able to see an alphabetical list of all nonimmigrant visas from A-1 to TD. You will see that a "B-2" tourist visa costs $75, is good for multiple applications for admission to the U.S. and has a maximum validity period of 120 months (10 years). An "F-1" student visa also costs $75, will permit multiple applications for admission to the U.S. and has a maximum validity period of 60 months. An "H-1B" professional worker visa costs $75, is good for multiple applications for admission to the U.S. and has a maximum validity period of 60 months or the period of validity of the H-1B petition (Maximum: 36 months), whichever is less.
Below the Reciprocity Schedule, there is detailed information regarding how to obtain a Birth Certificate, Police Record, Prison Record, Military Record, Death Certificate, Record of Burial, Marriage Certificate, Divorce Certificate or Adoption Certificate.
There is a list of visa issuing posts in India. The list indicates that the Embassy in New Delhi and the Consulates in Mumbai and Chennai issue all categories of visas, that the Consulate in Calcutta issues nonimmigrants visas and only certain types of immigrant visas. There are links to the websites of all four posts, and a list of geographical areas serviced by each consulate.
The same information is available for all countries.
Congratulations to the State Department for putting the "Visa Reciprocity and Country Documents Finder" online!
The topic of our quiz was: Who was the first Asian-American to serve in Congress? Some guessed Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI) while others thought it was Congressman Daniel Wu (D-OR). In reality, Daniel Wu, who was born in 1955, was sucking on his pacifier when the first Asian-American was elected to Congress!
The first subscriber to provide the correct answers was Elil Shunmugavel, and here is her letter to me:
Dear Mr. Shusterman:How exciting! I was hoping I would be able to win one of these times. After seeing the trivia question, I vaguely remembered an article I had read a few years ago about Dalip Singh Saund. I remembered that he had been a Congressman in the 1950's. I also thought that perhaps the first Asian congresspeople might be from Hawaii.
To check my guesses, I went to Yahoo!, searched under Congress, went to the first category, saw
http://bioguide.congress.gov/biosearch/biosearch.asp (Link is no longer operational.) went to that site, searched through Hawaii and noted when each of their Congressmen entered Congress. I then checked in California for Mr. Saund. At that point I was pretty sure he was the one, but then checked a couple of other sites just to be sure.My parents immigrated to the US 30 years ago. I was born and raised here, so I might not be able to use your consultation for advice on immigration. However, I will be attending Law School this fall, and I would love to ask you for any advice in that regard. I began subscribing to your newsletter in September in order to kind of get a feel for what I might be getting into. You have a great site, I look forward to talking to you soon,
Elil
Here are the correct answers as provided by Ms. Shunmugavel:
A. The congressman's full name was Dalip Singh Saund.
B. He was born on September 20, 1899 in Amritsar, India.
C. He was first elected to Congress in 1956.
D. His district was located in Westmoreland (Imperial County), California.
For a brief bio of Dr. Saund, see