March 2010 Visa Bulletin // With Comments and Discussion
February 7th, 2010
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February 2010 Visa Bulletin // With Comments and Discussion
January 19th, 2010
January 2010 Visa Bulletin // With Comments and Discussion
January 2nd, 2010
November 2009 Visa Bulletin // With Comments and Discussion
October 10th, 2009
October 2009 Visa Bulletin // With Comments and Discussion
September 10th, 2009
Family Detentions at Detention Center to Change
August 7th, 2009
To quote the American Bar Associaion Journal in an article dated Aug. 6, 2009:
The Obama administration plans to overhaul the much-criticized detention system for immigration violators so that detainees will be housed in more suitable facilities.
Critics say detainees have been mistreated and given substandard medical care in the detention centers. One Texas facility that housed children behind barbed wire, the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, will no longer receive new families under the plan, the New York Times reports.
As part of the changes, a new Office of Detention Policy and Planning will review and redesign facilities, programs and standards, according to the story. It will be assisted by two advisory boards on detention policies and health care. Twenty-three detention managers will be appointed to oversee the largest detention centers and promptly fix any problems.
Vanita Gupta, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who sued over conditions at the Hutto center, told the Times that ending family detention at Hutto “is welcome news and long overdue.” But Gupta criticized the White House’s refusal to depart from other Bush administration policies. The new administration, for example, has expanded a program to verify worker immigration status and has rejected legally binding standards for immigration detention.
“Without independently enforceable standards, a reduction in beds, or basic due process before people are locked up, it is hard to see how the government’s proposed overhaul of the immigration detention system is anything other than a reorganization or renaming of what was in place before,” Gupta said.
The full article can be found here.
Experts Believe Immigration Reform to Come by 2012 – 07-22-2009
July 22nd, 2009
Amidst hysteria among some groups that 2012 will be a year of chaos, and even Armageddon, there is a glimmer of hope that 2012 may not be all that bad (at least for those in favor of Comprehensive Immigration Reform or “CIR”). On a webinar hosted today by the CUNY Citizenship & Immigration Project called, “A Path to Citizenship for Undocumented Immigrants: Update and Advice,” Jeanne Butterfield and Allan Wernick gave their expert perspectives on a potentially forthcoming Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill. While they were sure to point out that right now is too early to know much of anything (pointing out that “it may never happen”), they predicted that if a bill passes, it will likely be sometime between 2010 and 2012. Specifically, Ms. Butterfield stated that the lion’s share of the action would take place during the early part of 2011.
For more information on CIR, check back here at TheVisaBulletin.com.
ICE Toughens Up On Workplace Immigration Practices – 07-01-2009
July 1st, 2009
As I was looking for the current events having to do with immigration, I ran across the following article which I thought would be of interest. According to Yahoo News, quoting the Associated Press, in an article released today:
WASHINGTON – Immigration officers are investigating workplaces in every state in the U.S. to check whether they are hiring illegal workers.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement told members of Congress in an e-mail Wednesday morning that it is beginning audits of documents that employees fill out when they are hired. The documents are known as I-9’s.
President Barack Obama has said his administration’s strategy for stemming illegal immigration is focusing on employers who hire illegal workers.
The Bush administration was criticized for raiding businesses and arresting workers but not doing enough to go after the employers who hire them.
For more information on workplace immigration laws or I-9’s, keep looking back to TheVisaBulletin.com.
Grounds of Inadmissibility
May 19th, 2009
Grounds of Inadmissibility -- http://TheVisaBulletin.com
Surrounding the immigration policy debate, it seems that many do not have a clear understanding of the United States (US) immigration system. For example, I was watching a news show the other day during which the anchor stat that he was “concerned that criminals, terrorists, and the poverty stricken are going to flood our immigration system.” Clearly, there are several people out there who have a misunderstanding of how our laws work, particularly concerning the immigration grounds of inadmissibility.
How do the grounds work? Well, let’s start from the very beginning. The US immigration system requires immigrants to qualify for a visa by falling into certain categories (e.g. various types of family-based or employment based categories). If the applicant doesn’t fall into these categories, then the general rule is that immigrating becomes virtually impossible (with a few exceptions). There are plenty of categories. So, people can often qualify for one category or another.
However, what makes the US immigration system acutely more forbidding is that (under Section 212 of the Immigration and Nationality Act) the US will preemptively disqualify certain applicants by referring to them as being “inadmissible.” This means that the U.S. will not even consider allowing certain people to apply to immigrate to the US for certain reasons. These “certain reasons” are called the “grounds of inadmissibility.”
What are the grounds? There are several, but they essentially fall into about 9 major categories (if we consider the most applied and enforced grounds). They are:
- Health Grounds – This includes persons with a communicable disease, certain threatening mental disorders, drug abusers and persons who fail to demonstrate that they have been vaccinated, etc.
- Criminal Grounds – This includes persons who have COMMITTED crimes involving moral turpitude, persons with 2 or more criminal convictions, certain drug offenders, etc.
- National Security Grounds – This includes terrorists, voluntary members of totalitarian parties, etc.
- Economic grounds – This includes persons who are likely to become a public charge, and more.
- Labor certification and Employment Grounds – This includes persons without approved labor certifications for certain green card applications, and more.
- Immigration Violation Grounds – This includes: a.) persons who entered the U.S. without inspection; b.) persons who were deported after a hearing and seek readmission within ten years; c.) persons who have failed to attend removal (deportation) hearings; d.) persons who made misrepresentations during the immigration process; e.) persons who a made false claim to U.S. citizenship; f.) persons who are subject to the unlawful presence bars; g.) persons who are smugglers of illegal aliens… etc.
- Document Violation Grounds.
- Draft Evasion and Ineligibility for Citizenship Grounds.
- Miscellaneous Grounds – This includes unlawful voters, and more.
Sometimes one may be able to avoid having a specific ground of inadmissibility enforced against them by getting what is called a “waiver.” For example, a waiver is available to a smuggler of illegal aliens if the applicant was 1) smuggling in people who were immediate family members (spouse, parent, son or daughter ONLY) at the time, and 2) the applicant either is a permanent resident or is immigrating under a family-based visa petition as an immediate relative
So, in the end, I assert that “Mr. Anchorman, the US immigration system is not as simple to circumvent as you suggest.”
June 2009 Visa Bulletin // With Comments and Discussion
May 8th, 2009
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