Visa Lawyer Blog

This Thanksgiving we have a lot to be thankful for, we live in a country is considered to be the symbol of Freedom and Prosperity. Yet, it seems that this country and the government running it, is doing a very bad PR job is welcoming visitors and immigrants to this country.

In my own practice, I often here horror stories from people that were treated poorly and very disrespectfully by our immigration officials. Tourists detained at airports for no reason, professionals coming to work sent back and barred from coming back, and I can go on and on.

Fareed Zakaria published an excellent article in this week’s Newsweek magazine. He states:

I often deal with government agencies as it relates to immigration, most of the officials we deal with are nice and professionals. Yet from time to time, we come across government officials that feel either they are above the law or that acting as a human being may not be part of the job description.

We often here about ICE agents abusing detainees, government agents acting unethically when investigating aliens and immigrants being deported and entire families torn apart. The recent deportation of a breastfeeding mother is one such story. The decision to separate a mother from her breast-feeding child drew strong denunciations from Hispanic and women’s health groups.

Read more here...

One of our Blog readers pointed out this morning that we are featured on the American Bar Associations National site. ABAJournal.com is the Web site of the flagship magazine of the American Bar Association and is the most exclusive publication for Lawyer in the US. We are fattered to be recognized by such an important authority and will continue to provide up to date information on our Blog as always.

Happy Veterans day to all of you out there!!
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From time to time I will be posting about local updates and important changes that will affect clients and local readers of the Blog. In the past few weeks, the local Immigration offices started scheduling Marriage based adjustment of status interviews in the Downtown office in addition to the Chula Vista location. The office in downtown is located at 880 Front Street.

The USCIS officials that I spoke to reported this to be an attempt to ease the pressure from the Chula Vista office and perhaps expedite interviews this way. Traditionally, the downtown office was used for Naturalization and Citizenship interviews.

In addition the Application Support Center on El Cajon Blvd, is now officially closed. The Application support Center is a location where clients go to process fingerprints and biometrics as part of the adjustment of status process.

Guess what, New I-9 form released. On November 7th, 2007, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), Citizenship and Immigration Services (“CIS”) announced that it has released a new version of Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, as well at the M-274, Handbook for Employers, Instructions for Completing the Form I-9.

The revision of the Form I-9 seeks to achieve full compliance with the document reduction requirements of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (“IIRAIRA”), which reduced the number of documents that employers may accept from newly hired employees during the employment verification process.

This is huge for employers that were waiting for some substantial revisions since the 1996 legislation.

I read this morning about a new anti-illegal immigration law that has some farmers and agricultural businesses scrambling for laborers. With excessive enforcement in Oklahoma, no farm workers are to be found to do the job.

Read the full story here…

House and Senate appropriators are tentatively scheduled to convene a conference on Thursday, November 1st to combine the Defense, Military Construction-VA, and Labor-HHS-Education appropriations into one single bill.

One of the issues with which legislators will have to contend is whether or not to remove the Grassley-Sanders amendment (H.ADMT. 3396) from the Labor-HHS appropriations bill (H.R. 3043) which would add an additional fee of $3,500 to the H-1B visa program.

Looming over any progress made during the conference is the veto threat President Bush issued over most appropriations passed in the House and Senate this year, often citing spending levels as the reason.

How many time have you heard people blame immigrants, especially illegal, for all the crimes in the country.

The U.S. has 11.5 million illegal immigrants, about 4 percent of the total U.S. population, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. There are cases where such immigrants get involved in criminal activity, still it is far less than our regular population.

Here is an interesting article from IL