Visa Lawyer Blog

by

Due to limited resources the government is using private contractors to secure and run immigration jails. The abuse and terrible conditions in these jails is beyond unreasonable. Many detainees from California are being sent to Arizona and Washington state jails for lack of detention space. Federal authorities are taking a second look at security guards at the Northwest Detention Center, a privately run immigration lockup in Tacoma, after finding that some were hired without preliminary background checks, The Associated Press has learned.

“Clearly this is a cause for concern,” said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Read more here

by

As a lawyer focusing on hospitality immigration, I often educate my clients on immigration issues relating to this industry. The number one concern from most employers is how to hire much needed hospitality workers legally. The often feel that the government is ignoring their needs. I came across this interesting article about a restaurant owner from San Antonio not afraid to raise his voice.

Louis Barrios says that his biggest fear as an employer, a small businessman and an American is that Congress will continue to avoid dealing with immigration reform. Any society with an aging population like ours that doesn’t have a steady stream of immigrant labor is in trouble, he said. By 2016, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of workers between the ages of 16 and 24 will decline, while the number between 25 and 54 will rise only slightly.

That means the only significant growth in the American labor pool over the next eight years will be among those 55 and older. Unless Washington, D.C., expects 60-year-olds to pick crops, wash dishes in restaurants and pound nails in the construction industry, something has to give.

Continue reading

by

The process of International Adoptions has become more complex since the passage of Hague Intercountry Adoption regulations. USCIS released questions related to the new Hague intercountry
adoption process and the orphan adoption process since the implementation of the Hague Adoption Convention on April 1, 2008.

We link to the questions below.

Continue reading

by

Here is an interesting video one of my readers emailed me yesterday. This is another example how anti immigrants across the country are trying to show that under Obama administration all hell will break loose as it relates to immigration.

by

Recently, the DOS announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) with Korea regarding the WEST (Work, English Study, Travel) Program. The exchange program, to be launched in 2009, will allow up to 5,000 university students and recent graduates from the to enter the U.S. for a period of 18 months on J-1 exchange visitor visas.

The WEST program is an innovative exchange program that will allow up to 5,000 qualifying university students and recent university graduates from the Republic of Korea to enter the United States for a period of 18 months on J-1 exchange visitor visas that will allow them to study English, participate in internships, and travel independently. Participants will devote at least 450 classroom hours to structured English language training and coursework focusing on American business practices and business procedures, U.S. corporate culture, and general office management issues.

Read more here

by

It seems that the current H1B visa shortage is not enough for the anti immigration groups. Critics of the H-1B program have long argued that it has created unfair competition for jobs in America. A recent lawsuit claims that the administration’s extension of the time that foreign nationals who graduate from U.S. colleges with science or technology degrees can work on their student visas from one year to 29 months is unfair and illegal. They challenged this in court.But U.S. District Judge Faith Hochberg, who is hearing the case in New Jersey, is pushing back.

The student-visa extension is intended to take some of the pressure off of the annual H-1B cap. Demand for H-1B visas greatly exceeds the total of 65,000 visas that are available each year. The plaintiffs argued that increasing the number of job seekers in the same fields as plaintiffs will limit the opportunities open to U.S. tech workers. We will let the court decide.

Read the ComputerWorld article here

by

As we are coming close to the elections, with talk of a possible immigration reform, scams targeting immigrants will be on the rise. The latest is from my own city, San Diego. A Chula Vista man who posed as an immigration official, telling people he could quickly process their citizenship papers for a fee, was sentenced Friday to five years in state prison. He got lucky, people like that must be sentenced to longer jail time and be forced to pay back the fees.

If you were a victim of this scam, please let me know.

Read more about this story here

by

How many times in the past few months HAVE i been getting calls from clients tired of waiting for their employment authorization cards (EAD)? If I could get a penny for each call, I could retire tomorrow. Seriously, USCIS caused major delays in the processing of such work permits, and by doing so caused hardship to all the pending immigrants wishing to start working.

Pursuant to 8 CFR § 274a.13, USCIS must adjudicate EAD applications within 90 days from the date of USCIS receipt of the application.

The CIS Ombudsman has been receiving numerous inquiries from customers about EAD applications pending more than 90 days. Click on this link and see what the USCIS can offer to make things right. I can only hope it will help.

Continue reading

by

Jim Harper reports on the latest new Bills from Congress. A new stupid new bill introduced this week. H.R. 6975 would require aliens to attest that they will not advocate installing a Sharia law system in the United States as a condition of their admission to our country. What can we expect next, attesting to not having met any Muslims in the past 10 years of your life?
Read the article here

by

As the political debates between both candidates heat up, so does the vision on the core issues. A recent excellent article by Prof. Wayne A. Cornelius, touches on a very important point relating to the immigration debate. The McCain-Palin campaign has embarked on an effort to court Latino voters by trashing Barack Obama’s record on immigration reform.

Prof. Cornelius points out:

Beginning with his speeches to La Raza and other Latino groups last summer, McCain has also been trying to diminish Obama’s role in the crafting of comprehensive immigration reform. That’s another serious distortion of the record. Obama largely drafted the crucial Title III (work-site enforcement) section of the 2006 bill, which was the foundation for the same component of the 2007 comprehensive immigration reform bill.

Continue reading