Hispanic students vanish from Alabama schools

Hispanic students have started vanishing from Alabama public schools in the wake of a court ruling that upheld the state’s tough new law cracking down on illegal immigration. Education officials say scores of immigrant families have withdrawn their children from classes or kept them home, afraid that sending kids to school would draw attention from authorities. Several districts with large immigrant enrollments reported a sudden exodus of Hispanic children. The law requires schools to check students’ immigration status. Anxiety has become so intense that the superintendent in one of the state’s largest cities went on Spanish-language TV to try to calm widespread worries. “In the case of this law, our students do not have anything to fear,” Casey Wardynski said. He urged families to send students to class and explained that the state is only trying to compile statistics. Police, he insisted, were not getting involved in schools. Victor Palafox graduated from high school in Birmingham and has lived in the US without documentation since age 6, when his parents brought him here from Mexico. “Younger students are watching their lives taken from their hands,” said Palafox, whose family is staying put. (AP)

Mayor Bloomberg Pushes for More Immigration

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Thomas J. Donohue, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, urged Congress and the Obama administration to dramatically increase the number of legal immigrants in the US in the scientific, engineering and medical professions Speakers at a chamber-sponsored conference warned that other countries are able to retain talented scientists and engineers more effectively than is the US and that Congress and the administration need to fix the problem before the U.S. is outpaced by emerging economic powerhouses in Asia. Bloomberg said quotas limiting the number of H-1B work visas, which are good for 3 years, and green cards, which allow permanent residency in the US, issued to those seeking residency in the country are “arbitrary,” and “crazy.”  The number of H-1B visas issued each year is capped at 65,000. (albany times union)

 

 

Rick Perry and the Texas DREAM ACT

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said his fellow White House hopefuls are heartless for criticizing his support of providing government funds to help lower tuition rates for university students in his state who did not enter the United States legally.  In 2001, Perry signed the Texas DREAM Act, which allows Texas students to take advantage of in-state tuition prices even if they lack legal status in the US.  “If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they have been brought there by no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart,” Perry said at the Republican presidential debate hosted by Fox News and Google.  “We need to be educating these children because they will become a drag on our society,” Perry said, noting that the law passed with near unanimous support in Texas.

GAMENESS AND IMMIGRATION LAW

“Gameness is a quality of fighting or working with traits of eagerness despite the threat of injury. To be game is to described as persevering, ready and willing, full of fight, and spirited.” 

Do you really want a lawyer who just talks to you for free for a few minutes?  Someone who takes your case for a few dollars, puts some papers in a folder and forgets about you? 

Or do you want attorneys with gameness?  A team who will fight for you with no fear of losing? 

Think about this.  It’s your life.  Who do you want to defend you? 

Who do you need to help when you or your loved one is in trouble?

These days, there are more immigration lawyers than ever.  But how many of them are game?   And how many of them have really fought?   How many cases? 

We have persevered for thousands of clients.  We remain ready and willing to help you with the system that holds you back.  

We spend time with our clients and know them all personally.  We talk to them at night, on weekends, whenever they need us.  See if you can find that with the lawyer who gives a free consultation.

We know what it is to fight for your green card, your work permit, your visa, and your driver’s license.  

We are full of fight and spirited.

It’s your life.  Think about it.  

Harlan York and Associates
http://www.immigrationlawnj.com
 (973) 642-1111

 

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• Superb, Avvo

Obama Pro-Immigration Before Congressional Hispanic Caucus

US President Barack Obama said that reforming the nation’s immigration system is central to repairing its economy, while calling on Congress to pass his jobs bill and the DREAM act. The president made the remarks while addressing the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s (CHCI) 34th Annual Awards Gala in Washington, D.C. “We are at a critical time in our country,” Obama said in front of a crowd of about 3,000 people. “The fight that we are having right now, the fight to put people back to work … could not be more important for the Latino community and the people in this room.

He left out the part about deporting a million people since he took office.

(fox)

Broader security checks to reduce visa overstays

The Obama administration is cracking down on immigrants in the U.S. who have overstayed the terms of their visas by using a system that automatically checks multiple national security, immigration and law enforcement databases at the same time, a senior Homeland Security Department official said.  The common practice has been to make manual checks of individual databases. The new system has already identified dozens of investigative leads, said John Cohen, deputy counterterrorism coordinator at the Homeland Security Department.  The immediate focus is on identifying people who have overstayed their visas and who pose a potential threat to national security or public safety, Cohen said.  Some of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were in the U.S. in violation of their visas, in some cases because they did not attend a school they said they would on their application for a student visa, or their visas had expired.  The 9/11 Commission saw the visa system as a major vulnerability and recommended completing a biometric system that would log immigrants out as they left the U.S. This program, however, was never fully implemented. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has said the exit system called for by the commission is expensive, and the government has put other policies in place since 2001 to address the same issue for a lot less money.  Automating these checks is the latest of those policies. Until now, if an investigator wanted to vet a visa applicant, it would require manual checks of many databases. This policy left room for mistakes, such as someone entering the wrong spelling of an immigrant’s name, which might not turn up critical national security information.  (AP)

160,000 deported without ever facing a judge

Over the course of seven years, 160,000 immigrants have been deported without ever facing a judge. A National Immigration Law Center report charges that the US has used something called “stipulated removal” to strong arm immigrants into signing away their due process.  Immigration agents gave detainees a choice: Stay in detention for a long time while you wait to appear before a judge, or sign a paper that waives that right and gets you out of detention quicker through deportation. “These are people who have been diverted from the normal process,” said Jayashri Srikantiah, one of the study’s authors and a professor of law at Stanford. “They are deprived of the only chance they have to fight their deportation.”

96 percent of them, said Srikantiah, did not have lawyers.

These people are being removed because they voluntarily signed a paper. Srikantiah said the law that rules these kinds of proceedings states that immigrants can be removed only if they sign the waiver “knowingly, voluntarily and intelligently.”  Srikantiah said what their review of documents found was that ICE agents consistently gave detainees “poorly translated and even false information about their cases.” She said agents were found to read scripts that were “derogatory” and did not inform those detained that they could fight their deportation and apply to be released on bond.  “That’s absolutely no way to run a system,” said Srikantiah.  Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NPR. But the AP reports that the agency defended the practice, saying ” the program is voluntary and the paperwork for stipulated removal is signed by an immigration judge.”  Srikantiah said the program violates the statute under which it operates. In one court case, Srikantiah said, a translator was asked to listen to one ICE agent explain the program to a detainee in Spanish. The translator said it was unintelligible.  One of the most damning things Srikantiah said they found is that some immigration judges refuse to sign stipulated removal papers, saying they can’t be sure by just looking at a paper whether it was signed “knowingly, voluntarily and intelligently.”  Srikantiah said in those cases, documents show that ICE just circumvents the judge by taking the case to another.  (npr)

Humility and Immigration Law

Today I consulted with a man with a very difficult immigration case.  Nothing new about that.  But what happened was very educational to me as an attorney. 

I asked all of my questions and reviewed his papers.  He kept pointing to one section of one page.  It was a commonly generated notice of action from the Immigration Service. 

I responded that I have seen this language thousands of times.  So I did not bother to read the thing word for word, rather jumping for law books to support my initial conclusions about how to resolve the case.

Finally, when I reentered my office, I sat down again at my desk and looked at the paper, which was still in the center of my desk.  The man sat silently as I finally read the document.  And wouldn’t you know it?  There were some sentences in there that I had never seen before, important stuff that might help solve his problem. 

I was so caught up in analysis that I glossed over the diagnosis.  In other words, ego got in the way.  Luckily, I returned to the important lesson that I had learned from my days of training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, which I often apply to Immigration Law:

“What’s the key to ground fighting?  What should I focus on?  The answer, when it comes from Zé or Murilo, is enlightening: humility.  Always assume that your opponent is better than you, that he knows more – you have to work harder in training and learn more. You know only 5 percent of what there is to know.  Fight your own pride and ego and be open-minded and always learning new techniques, new things from anyone.”

The thing is, I just found out that I had been named to Best Lawyers in America for the seventh year in a row, and that sort of honor is humbling. 

I never want to let the awards go to my head.  Instead, I want to remember that I only know 5 percent of what there is to know, because just like ground fighting, Immigration Law is a never-ending series of combinations and confusing twists.  And you have to always focus on humility.  

Today I learned the answer to this fellow’s problem, not by reading it in a statute or sharing information with my colleagues, although those elements are crucial as well.  The answer was staring me right in the face.

 

(Quotation above from A Fighter’s Heart by Sam Sheridan)

 

Prosecutorial Discretion Starting to become Reality?

A father and son set to be deported to Peru won a last-minute, temporary reprieve after an Illinois senator intervened on their behalf.  Immigration and Customs Enforcement is delaying for a month the deportation of longtime Concord resident Arturo Rengifo, Sr., and his son, Arturo Rengifo, Jr.  “My mom is able to relax more,” said the 24-year-old son, who would have left his mother and older brother in Concord had he been forced to take the one-way flight to Lima on Tuesday night. “She can actually breathe now. Hopefully more good things will happen, and I will be able to stay in this country.”   The Rengifos are hoping a more lenient Obama administration deportation policy, announced on Aug. 18 but not yet implemented, could keep the family of four together in the Bay Area.  “I have more hope now; I have more faith now. I didn’t pack my bags,” said Arturo Rengifo, Jr., a student at Diablo Valley College and customer service representative at an AT&T store in Richmond. His father is a janitor, and the parents run a day care business at their home.  They applied for political asylum in the 1990s, but Arturo Rengifo, Sr., recently lost his case after several appeals.  News of the 30-day stay came to the family from the office of US Sen. Dick Durbin, which had made calls to immigration officers on the family’s behalf. (Contra Costa Times)

Federal judge blocks Alabama’s new immigration law from taking effect this week

Chief U.S. District Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn cited the need for more time to consider the legal challenges against the law in an injunction that blocks implementation of the law through September 29  “In entering this order the court specifically notes that it is in no way addressing the merits of the motions,” the judge wrote in her two-page order.  Federal judges have previously blocked key parts of other immigration laws passed in Georgia, Arizona, Utah and Indiana. The Alabama law, widely seen as the toughest state measure on illegal immigration, requires police to detain people they suspect of being in the United States illegally if they cannot produce proper documentation when stopped for any reason. The law also makes it a crime to knowingly transport or harbor an illegal immigrant, and requires public schools to determine, by reviewing birth certificates or sworn affidavits, the legal residency status of students upon enrollment. (reuters)