In many instances immigrants charged with a crime are not warned of the immigration consequences of either a guilty plea or a finding of guilt. This can result in some devastating consequences when that immigrant takes a plea deal which on the surface seems harmless – a small theft offense rather than a larger one for example – and does so without any counsel regarding any possible impact with regards to immigration or, in even more egregious cases, being told that there will be no consequence at all.
Unfortunately in many instances there are consequences. For example, one small theft offense may not render a permanent resident removable from the United States but that same offense might render that permanent resident inadmissible. That means if they leave the US they might be put into removal proceedings even if they wouldn’t have been otherwise.
The courts have long recognized that deportation is a very serious consequence and that immigrants deserve due process when faced with banishment from the United States.
Today the Supreme Court of the United States took another step in protecting the due process rights of immigrants. They ruled that criminal defense counsel for immigrants must advise their clients of the potential immigration consequences of a sentence. If a plea carries a risk of deportation the defense attorney must advise their client of that fact. If the defense attorney does not do so they have rendered ineffective assistance and if the client can prove their case was prejudiced because of the bad or nonexistent advice they may potentially have their case reopened.
The case is Padilla v. Kentucky
April 2010 Visa Bulletin is posted. EB3 still way backed up. EB2 backed up for India and China.
The icert system isn’t great to say the least but to file for an H1B visa you must have an approved LCA. Many employers are not in the system and it can take up to or over a week to find that out, a week to fix it, and a week to get an LCA approved. So that potentially adds 21 days to the that didn’t used to exist before.
So what to do? Since it’s unlikely that the H1B cap will be hit on April 1 (the day that H1B visas can first be filed) it probably won’t be an issue.
But if one is worried about the cap being reached quickly it’s possible to file the LCA before April 1 using a date before October 1 (the first day new visa numbers become available) as the start date. You can do this even if you put the earliest date (10/1) on the I-129 petition. Only drawback is that the end of the I-129 will be the end of the LCA and that will be three years from the date you applied at the latest. That means the H1B visa might get shorted a little bit but better that than no H1B visa right?
Cap exempt petitioners don’t have to worry about all this silliness of course.
Undocumented immigration is a problem. It’s not a problem that people are migrating here. That’s normal. It’s a problem because it’s a sign that the system is not responding quickly enough to migrants and economic forces.
Right-wingers think it’s a problem because the undocumented are terrorists, job stealers, drug pushers, welfare cheats, or some other kind of “evil doer”.
And they scream about it. Loudly. They complain about the dilution of our “culture”. They buy guns and roam around the border threatening to shoot people. They profile and lock away.
They demand that the government do something.
So the government proposes an ID card for Americans which will show work authorization.
What do the right-wingers do?
They http://biggovernment.com/capitolconfidential/2010/03/10/national-id-card-being-considered-by-senators/ out.
Be careful what you wish for.
