Obama Weighs Significant Action

Posted August 27, 2014

The Immigration and Nationality Act is on course for a substantial makeover.

According to the Washington Post, President Obama is weighing a range of proposals for executive action that would loosen and broaden a range of federal administrative rules impacting eligibility for lawful U.S. immigration.  According to various immigration advocacy groups, the rule changes should significantly increase fiscal year quotas in family and employment-based categories.  The question remains, of course, to what degree and with which moving parts that excuse present inadmissibility rules.

Obama “believes it’s important to understand and consider a full range of perspectives,” according to a White House spokesman.  New categories of skilled and labor-intensive work visas may emerge that allow illegal immigrants without family sponsorship to apply to temporarily stay in the U.S. and work their way toward eventual immigration.  Such a balancing stroke would complement a much more consequential move to grant provisional resident status to relatives of U.S. citizens (mostly native-born children) and permanent residents or those already granted deferred action.

Inside information from excited advocates should be viewed as unfocused yet fairly scoped given the immigration reform movement’s historical crescendo, the political calendar and the president’s stated intentions. Stay tuned for the latest as this monumental event shapes up.

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Immigration Reform Dead in the Water for 2014

Posted July 2, 2014

The news out of Washington, DC is not good.  A combination of events, including an unexpected influx of Central American immigrant children at the Texas border, has caused House Republicans who hold the keys to immigration reform to step back and reassess the politics and sensibility of comprehensive immigration reform.  President Obama has promised to move forward with executive actions to re-prioritize deportation policy in lieu of reform legislation, but the reality is that the Department of Homeland Security will remain significantly constrained to alter existing mechanisms of illegal immigration and deportations beyond the muddled notions of prosecutorial discretion and deferred action already in place.

If you are the beneficiary of a grant of deferred action (DACA), you must prepare and file another deferred action application, including another application for employment authorization, before the expiration of your current two year period.  As always, the best resource for accurate and up-to-date information is the USCIS website.  See here for the latest official information about the DACA renewal process.

If you are in removal proceedings with few if any legal options for relief, and are (at the advice of your attorney or otherwise) utilizing delay tactics in the hope that you may yet become the beneficiary of reform legislation, you should understand that further delay may become untenable and is fraught with risk.  A responsible approach should incorporate practical strategies that rely in part on available waivers under existing law.  Filing a frivolous asylum or withholding of removal application should never be the answer, particularly now that it appears immigration reform legislation, if it ever arrives, may be more conservatively skewed.

 

 

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House Cons Push Law to Obey Law; Prez Counters with Plea to Humanity

Posted March 14, 2014

In the latest round of dueling press releases disguised as serious legislative action, the House of Representatives this week passed the ENFORCE the Law Act of 2014 (H.R. 4138), a Moses-like edict to the president to obey the law, to which the president quickly answered with a public event in the ornate East Room of the White House where he promised to kick illegal aliens out of the country more humanely.

ENFORCE in this instance stands for Executive Needs to Faithfully Observe and Respect Congressional Enactments.  At best, one can applaud House Republicans for scrounging in their late-night scrabble for a suitable ‘R’ in this farcical legislative proposal.

Pres. Obama, meanwhile, has linked arms with the Hispanic caucus and confessed his true obsession: that he’d rather be Pope than President.

Continue reading »

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“On net, immigrants expand the U.S. economy’s productive capacity . . .

Posted February 13, 2014

. . . stimulate investment, and promote specialization that in the long run boosts productivity. . .  there is no evidence that these effects take place at the expense of jobs for workers born in the United States.”

So says economist Giovanni Pero of the University of California, Davis, in a report on the impact of the H-1B visa published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

This Forbes article highlights differing approaches to the H-1B (or lack thereof) problem by the House of Representatives and Senate.  The House’s ‘Skills Visa Act’ removes barriers to IT outplacement firms currently facing H-1B dependency restrictions.  The Senate Bill, famously passed last June but which languishes somewhere deep in the Milky Way, keeps the screws to H-1B dependent employers.  Senate Democrats surely insist.

These seemingly subtle differences differences reflect fragmented policy approaches to the economics of immigration.  Protectionism complicates progress in a global economy.  To some, America’s composition is at issue.  To others, competitiveness.  The sensible approach incorporates both policy prescriptions without pandering to special interests (unions, primarily) or xenophobia.  The Great Immigration Stalemate continues.

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