Visa Lawyer Blog

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A couple weeks ago, Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, a Democrat from Illinois who has become a perennial thorn on immigration for President Obama, was arrested Tuesday afternoon along with about a dozen activists in a protest outside the White House.

The protesters were arrested peacefully after they sat down on the White House sidewalk, following a rally where demonstrators denounced the Obama administration for deporting more than one million immigrants in the last two years.

In a letter to Mr. Gutierrez on Monday, Mr. Obama rejected his proposal to suspend deportations of illegal immigrant college students with clean criminal records. Last week, Mr. Gutierrez and three other House Democrats had sent a letter to the president requesting the suspensions and also asking him to take executive measures to make it easier for illegal immigrants married to American citizens to remain in the United States.

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Here we go again. A federal grand jury has indicted a former Sacramento immigration consultant and 13 other individuals alleging they participated in an elaborate immigration fraud scheme in which foreign nationals from Eastern Europe and Russia paid to enter into sham marriages with locally recruited U.S. citizens.

For foreign nationals, marriage to an American citizen is one means of obtaining lawful permanent residency in the United States. To initiate that process, aliens who are outside the country must apply for a fiancé visa, which enables them to travel to the United States to marry the citizen spouse. Alternatively, foreign nationals who are already in the United States and entered the country legally, may wed here and apply for lawful permanent residence based upon the marriage.

According to court documents, the scheme involved foreign nationals from Eastern Europe and Russia who paid fees of up to five figures to enter into sham marriages with U.S. citizens. U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced the unsealing of the multi-count indictment charging former immigration consultant Sergey Potepalov, 55, of Citrus Heights, Calif., and the other defendants with conspiring to commit marriage fraud, defrauding the United States, making false statements, and inducing aliens to enter and remain in the United States.

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Attorney Ekaterina Powell from our office has prepared this article about the recently approved I-601 waiver case handled by our law firm.

Our client in this case, John, got married to his U.S. citizen wife, Mary, in San Diego, California. They started the application process for adjustment of status. At the adjustment interview, the immigration officer let them know that a green card cannot be granted to John because he was found to be inadmissible on the grounds of misrepresentation and fraud in connection with his previous visa application.

The couple was devastated. They came to our office to see if we can help them with I-601
Application for waiver of grounds of inadmissibility. We took the case, and we started working with the couple in preparing I-601 waiver petition.

I-601 cases are very unique. Each of them has its own story, a story of a family with lives of many people dependent on the result of the waiver process. The success of the case, often times, means whether the family is going to stay together. Sometimes, if such case is denied, it is a heartbreaking story of a family that used to be happy once but now they have to separate and live apart in different countries for the rest of their lives. It is especially devastating when minor children are involved who would be raised without a parent if the waiver does not succeed.

I-601 cases are very complex and require extensive legal analysis. We are particularly happy if we can assist our clients with I-601 waivers to save their families from falling apart.

I-601 waiver can cure many grounds of inadmissibility, including unlawful presence and 3 and 10 year bars, health-related grounds, certain criminal grounds, fraud and misrepresentation, alien smuggling and certain other grounds of inadmissibility.

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The California DREAM Act is now law after Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 130 on Monday afternoon, but undocumented immigrant students’ say their fight for financial aid access is far from over in the state. The most important portion of the California DREAM Act has yet to pass, activists say.

Starting January 1 of 2012, undocumented immigrant college students will be eligible for privately funded non-state scholarships that they previously did not have access to at California community colleges, state colleges and public universities. The bill breezed through the Senate two weeks ago. AB 130 will cost taxpayers nothing, and so was widely seen as an easier political sell. Still, its passage is being hailed as a victory for immigrant communities. The California DREAM Act had been continually approved by the state legislature but was vetoed three times by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

You can access more information on the bill here.

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Discussions about immigration reform has often focused on the issue of “undocumented” or “illegal” aliens and national security. But fixing our broken immigration system is about more than the determining the fate of approximately ten million people currently living and working and studying in the United States without papers. In the words of President Clinton, “It’s the Economy, Stupid.” Immigration reform would allow us to create a legal framework for who we want to have remain in our country, who we want to exclude, and to do so in a way that reflects our values and our interests. Most important to Americans right now is that reform would benefit the bottom line. Reform would raise wages, decrease unemployment, and increase tax revenues. Who wouldn’t want that?

Currently, our immigration system hurts our nation’s economy. We want to invite and encourage investment in our economy, attract the best, the brightest and most talented people in our businesses, and to create a fair and level playing field for our workers. Our immigration system falls short of each of these goals.

Our current policies directly hurt American businesses. Congress limits the number of highly-skilled and college-educated workers allowed into the United States from other countries. When the economy was booming in 2007 and 2008, the visas for the entire year were gone in less than one day. Even in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, our country still ran out of visas with eight months left before a new foreign worker could start.

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While many gay couples in New York tie the knot on Sunday, when same-sex marriage becomes legal in the state, Ashley Abraham-Hughes and her wife, Corinne, will be watching the festivities from the other side of the Atlantic.

That’s because since U.S. federal law still does not recognize same-sex marriage, and since Corinne is British, the couple was forced to move to Britain, where their union — they wed in Connecticut in 2009 — is legal.

“While I do still love the U.S. and I always will, I am very resentful of the fact that I was effectively forced to become an expat,” said Abraham-Hughes, a 27-year-old who grew up in Pittsford in western New York and now lives in Manchester. “It’s absolutely ridiculous, and I just think the thinking on this whole issue is completely wrong.”
The couple’s plight is one likely facing many of the estimated 36,000 binational gay couples in the U.S., where the foreign partner in the relationship can face deportation and a 10-year ban from returning to America if they don’t already have or find a legal way to stay in the country.

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Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee approved to go forward HR 704, the “Security and Fairness Enhancement for America Act of 2011.” With a name like that, you would think the bill was many hundreds of pages and proposed changes to the court system or at least dealt with the huge backlogs in the immigration adjudication system that were the subject of recent hearings before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee. However, the bill, introduced by Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), is little more than a page, and does nothing but cut the number of new legal immigrants to the United States by eliminating a small program known as the Diversity Visa.

The bill, sponsored by Intellectual Property Subcommittee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), was reported favorably to the House floor by a vote of 19-11. According to the Subcommitte, “This program is plagued by fraud and is an open door for terrorists.”

For a little background information, The diversity visa program was created in 1990 to increase diversity in the United States immigrant population by providing up to 55,000 greencard visas per year. Since they were first issued in 1995, over 785,000 diversity visas have been issued. Individuals who receive a diversity visa are free to petition for greencard visas for their family members.

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We have recently won another incredible case under the National Interest Waiver Category for a renowned scientist in the field of neuropathic pain! Attorneys Ekaterina Powell and Andrew Desposito from our office did a great job in this case. Andrew provides another summary of the process for our readers.

In this second part of the National Interest Waiver series, we discuss another class of persons who qualify. As before, there are two types of individuals who may be granted a green card through the National Interest Waiver: an Alien that is a member of a profession holding an advanced degree, and an Alien that has commanded a salary, or other remuneration for services, which demonstrates exceptional ability. This article will discuss the Alien that is a member of a profession holding an advanced degree.

In order to be an Alien that is a member of a profession holding an advanced degree, one must show two things: That the Alien is a member of the professions holding an advanced degree and the Alien meets the requirements as discussed in Matter of New York State Department of Transportation, Interim Decision 3363, (Aug. 1998). If an Alien meets the requirements as set forth above, he will be granted a green card under the National Interest Waiver.

The Alien is a member of the professions holding an advanced degree

Our client that got his I-140 petition approved is a leading international expert and a pain specialist with special skills in Interventional Pain Procedures, Neuropathic Pain Management, Cancer Pain, and Palliative Cares. His research in the field of neuropathic pain treatments is unquestionably significant and is recognized on the international level. Our clients’ credentials include a medical degree from his home country, a two year study on Pain Management at a Pain Clinic, and another three years as Coordinator of that same clinic. In addition, we submitted our client’s curriculum vitae to outline their Education, Professional and Research Experience, Oral Presentations, Scientific Publications, Professional Association Memberships, Professional Development Courses, and Honors and Awards.

Another point discussed in our client’s case was the various organizations and places the individual has been invited to lecture. We demonstrated, through many exhibits, the organizations our client participated in as a member related to his field of work, as well as documents that show the various lectures and seminars our client spoke as an expert on his field of expertise.

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Ekaterina Powell from our office brings us up to date with this recent development. Aliens who have controlled substance convictions are generally deportable and ineligible for adjustment of status (with certain exceptions for simple possession of 30 grams or less of marijuana).

Whenever an alien enters a guilty plea or nolo contendere or admits sufficient facts to warrant a finding of guilt, for which the judge has ordered some form of punishment, penalty or restraint on the alien’s liberty, the alien becomes deportable and inadmissible. See definition of conviction in 8 U.S.C. section 1101(a)(48)(A).

This definition of conviction leaves most of the aliens with simple possession convictions out of luck. These individuals cannot apply for adjustment of status through their immediate relatives U.S. citizens and may be deported from the United States even after years of being in lawful permanent resident status. The length of time that has passed since the entry of judgment does not matter for immigration purposes. Thus aliens that had drug convictions adjudicated years ago would be treated the same way for immigration purposes.

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As Lawyers who specialize in I-601 extreme Hardship Waivers, we often hear of concerns form family members traveling to Ciudad Juarez for Visa Interview. An I-601, Application for Waiver of Grounds of Inadmissibility, is filed to permit an alien who has been denied admission to the United States to gain admission as a lawful permanent resident or fiancé(e) under certain circumstances. This waiver is based on extreme hardship to United States citizen or lawful permanent resident relatives of the alien which would result if the alien’s inadmissibility cannot be waived.

Today we have an alarming message from the Consulate that we wanted to share with our readers. The U.S. Consulate General in Ciudad Juarez is issuing this Emergency Message for U.S. citizens in the state of Chihuahua (“Emergency Messages” were formerly known as “Warden Messages”). The Consulate has distributed the following message to our staff:

Mexican authorities have captured key members of the cartels active in Juarez. These successes also bring with them the potential for an increase in violence. The cartels may seek to retaliate and increase their attacks against rival cartel members, Mexican law enforcement and/or the public in general.

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