It’s a common issue arising in the area of immigration law. A US citizen marries someone in the United States who is here unlawfully and because they entered without a visa they must return to their home country if they want to obtain a green card. In most instances that means that the foreign spouse would be subject to at least a 3 year bar to re-entry and possibly a 10 year bar based on the length of their unlawful presence in the United States. There is an application process through with the 3 or 10 year bar can be waived but it’s lengthy and requires the foreign national spouse to be outside of the United States for a prolonged time, sometimes many years.
That can mean serious hardship to the family, both financially and emotionally, and many simply choose to live in the shadows.
However, circumstances may be changing enough that some people may now choose to come forward.
As reported in today’s New York Times, the Obama administration is proposing a rule changes that would allow a provisional waiver to be granted while the foreign spouse is still inside the United States and also streamline the consular process so that the green card is granted in a matter of weeks rather than months.
“Citizenship and Immigration Services proposes to allow the immigrants to obtain a provisional waiver in the United States, before they leave for their countries to pick up their visas. Having the waiver in hand will allow them to depart knowing that they will almost certainly be able to return, officials said. The agency is also seeking to sharply streamline the process to cut down the wait times for visas to a few weeks at most.
“The goal is to substantially reduce the time that the U.S. citizen is separated from the spouse or child when that separation would yield an extreme hardship,” said Alejandro Mayorkas, the director of the immigration agency.“
This is a developing story and I’ll update it as new information comes in.
In the adjudications context: The USCIS has provided internal guidance that filings based on same-sex marriages are to be held in abeyance rather than rejected pending the outcome of the DOMA activity. What that means is that even if the I-485 isn’t adjudicated right away it’s possible to get employment authorization and proof of the right to be in the United States while the issues are worked out.
In the removal context: Manhattan Immigration Judge, Terry A. Bain, and the DHS trial attorney agreed to halt the removal of Monica Alcota, who was married to Cristina Ojeda, a US citizen, Connecticut in 2010, based on the argument that their same-sex marriage should be recognized for the purposes of immigration benefits.
Recently the Obama administration decided that it will no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court. The Defense of Marriage Act states that federal policy is that marriage is between one man and one woman. Therefore, despite a general USCIS policy that states that marriages which are valid in the jurisdiction in which they took place, same-sex marriages are not recognized even if they’re legal where they took place.
All of that could change if the US Supreme Court rules that the DOMA is unconstitutional, which is likely as the government will no longer be defending the law. Should that happen, or should it be repealed, same-sex marriages should be recognized by the USCIS for the purposes of family based petitions.
records to out “illegal immigrants” which included posting due dates of pregnant women.
“Two employees with the Department of Workforce Services have been put on leave after an investigation revealed that they apparently accessed records on hundreds of Utah residents to compile a list of 1,300 names of people purportedly in the country illegally.
A handful of other DWS workers also may have been part of the effort and are the subject of an ongoing probe.”
Deplorable xenophobia that could only be worse if violence occurred. Which isn’t too hard to imagine these days.
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.
Lou Dobbs, a man who regularly peddled xenophobic anti-immigrant smears based on lies and fictions and treated hate groups as legitimate sources is leaving CNN. Rumor is he’s heading to Fox. Or running for President. Who knows. However, what is clear is that CNN and immigrants will be better off now that he departed. His presence legitimized hate on a trusted news network.
More here and here.
In an article titled “Marathon’s Headline Win Is Empty” CNBC business writer, Darren Rovell, claims that the winner, Meb Keflezighi, a naturalized citizen who was born in Eritrea but has been in the US since he was 12 is a “ringer” so running fans shouldn’t be all that excited that an American won the NY Marathon – since he isn’t really an American.
It’s odd that he considers someone who has lived in the US for 22 years a ringer. Mr. Keflzighi has spent his formative years in the US. Has presumably trained and eaten like an American (not a Kenyan which Mr. Rovell brings up for some reason despite Meb not being Kenyan – guess they’re all the same). So what advantage did Meb have?
Perhaps Mr. Rovell thinks Eritreans are genetically superior runners to Americans.
Though I’d like Mr. Rovell to define “American” if he can.
Furthermore, my guess is that Mr. Rovell is not a Native American. My guess is that his ancestors – perhaps recent ancestors – immigrated to the United States.
One would assume he would not consider them Americans either.
Someone should ask him that too.
Contact your local representative to show your support for the Dream Act so we can get it passed this year!
The Department of Justice is investigating Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, known for parading immigrants in chains to his “tent city”, for racial profiling.
The DOJ is investigating whether or not deputies are engaged in “patterns or practices of discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures.”
(how could they not be if pretty much the only people they stop are folks who look “Hispanic” and they do their “sweeps” in Hispanic neighborhoods?)
Calls for an investigation from officials such as Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon and some Democratic lawmakers, as well as justifiable outrage by immigrant rights groups, likely led to the investigation – described as the first of its kind related directly to immigration.
The sheriff vows to fight the federal government – of course.
Good luck with that Joe!
read more here
A story in the Washington Post exposes the Immigration and Customs Enforcement National Fugitive Operations Program – a program that received over $600 million from congress – as a federally funded racial profiling operation.
The program which, as it is named, is intended to be used to round up fugitives, is an abject failure by that measure. In 2007 nearly 1/2 of the people arrested were not fugitives from the law. The USICE says that number is going down but since they specifically allow non-fugitive arrests to be counted towards the quota that’s nonsense. In fact, it should be zero if they are only going after specific fugitives not stopping minorities at random. Clearly the USICE is simply going up to brown people and asking for their papers – and the video footage in the story supports exactly that conclusion.
In fact, according to the Post, some employees say that they were specifically directed to arrest non-fugitives to boost their arrest numbers. The USCIS and USDHS have declined to actually investigate the claims. That makes sense since it’s official policy.
The video evidence makes it clear the USICE officers were simply stopping men of Hispanic descent without reasonable cause or suspicion. The men detained included, Ernest Guillen, who was merely stopping for a cup of coffee on his way to be with his US citizen son who was receiving chemotherapy at John’s Hopkins and another man who was detained for 18 days even though he was in the United States legally.
The questions for the Obama administration are: 1) are you going to maintain a policy of racial profiling? 2) If you do believe racial profiling to be effective and are going to continue it will you expand it to include other agencies not related to immigration?
Or perhaps it’d be a better idea to use that muscle of yours to get comprehensive immigration reform passed.
