It seems that every time you breathe in and breathe out, there is a new immigration story or event which may affect you. A new law is introduced in Congress, another Visa Bulletin is published, the USCIS has yet again updated its processing times, the Courts have decided an important immigration case, the H-1B cap has been reached, etc., etc. […]
With USCIS filing fees spewing higher than the BP oil spill, you’d think the President and Congress would be holding press conferences to propose a legislative fix. But, alas, immigrants cannot vote, so who cares? Perhaps their U.S. citizen spouses, parents, sons and daughters, siblings, and employers who have sponsored them for green cards and temporary […]
Tam Ngoc Tran died on May 16th in a car accident. She was a doctoral student in American Civilization at Brown University. I had a brief encounter with this intelligent and lovely young lady in 2006 when I visited UCLA to assist foreign-born students in finding solutions to their immigration problems. Each of the students told me his or her story. […]
What part of “illegal” don’t you understand? This question is the traditional refrain of the anti-immigrant crowd. What they don’t seem to understand is that, in the same family, one spouse may be illegal while the other spouse is a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident. Their children may also be U.S. citizens. In such cases, does it make […]
As everybody knows by now, recently, Arizona’s Governor signed a law requiring local law enforcement officials to take into custody persons when they have a “reasonable suspicion” that they are present in the U.S. illegally. The person would be turned over to the Immigration Service, and be released from jail if they could demonstrate their legal status. Last […]
Tomorrow, on May 13, the Senate Finance Committee will take up the nomination of Alan Bersin to be the Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), an agency with a staff of 57,000 and a budget of $11 billion. As the nation’s “border czar”, Bersin would be responsible for enforcing our immigration laws. As a matter of […]
Today’s New York Times featured an article revealing that New York Governor David Paterson is establishing a state panel to review pardon applications for legal immigrants who may face deportation because they were convicted of minor crimes in the distant past. Governor Paterson, in a speech to judges, called some of our immigration laws “embarrassingly […]
On April 28, Democratic Senators began circulating a 26-page comprehensive immigration reform proposal which may soon be introduced in the Senate in bill form. Some of the ideas in this proposal are good, some bad, and a few are ugly. In this post, we discuss what we like about the proposal, in particular, some much needed reforms in the legal […]
Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) must be rolling in his grave. The conservative Republican senator from Arizona ran for President in 1964 on a platform condemning “Big Government”. As a kid, I read Goldwater’s “Conscience of a Conservative” and came away with a strong conviction that America was founded on the principle of individual freedom, and that no […]
Thanks to a healthy dose of jet lag (My wife and I just returned from walking on the Great Wall of China a few days ago!), I finally found the time to read the Supreme Court’s new decision in Kentucky v. Padilla. Although I was impressed that Justice Stevens, in the majority opinion, found that criminal […]
