How Does the Supreme Court’s June 9th Decision Affect Your Child’s Immigration Processing? Also, what do F2B, F3 and F4 categories mean for your child’s immigration status? Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a very important decision regarding the ability of children to immigrate to the United States based upon…
Overview of Removal Proceedings How do individuals find themselves in removal proceedings? This week’s blog will kick off a series of posts aimed at providing a broad overview of removal proceedings. Removal proceedings, formerly known as deportation proceedings, are the process by which the Department of Homeland Security (or “DHS”)…
The story of “Tommy and Tomina”… One of the questions that every immigration lawyer gets asked is “How long is it going to take for my family member to get his green card?” And, in typical lawyer fashion, my response is “Well, it depends.” This answer sometimes gets met with…
All that glitters is not gold So don’t believe what you’ve been told — Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark Last Tuesday as I was leaving court, I reached for my phone to find that it was blowing up (as the kids say these days). Apparently, there was an internet article that…
The decline in deportations still leaves immigrants vulnerable According to recently released government statistics, there has been a 43% decline in deportations ordered by immigration judges. Unfortunately, these statistics do not include “expedited removals” — individuals who are issued a deportation order at the border without ever seeing an immigration…
US Naturalization 101 What you need to know to apply for naturalization in the United States Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I have been writing about naturalization quite a bit lately. First, the one about a looming deadline. More recently, the one about my client with…
Will there be immigration reform in 2013? Every now and then, when a judge is writing a decision, that judge will add a footnote about a question that is NOT being considered by the court. It’s a way of signaling that a particular legal issue remains an open question. Or…
The Immigration and Naturalization Service is long gone. In its wake lie a slew of acronyms that can leave your head spinning. Recently, I met with some clients who wanted to know if their prior applications for immigration benefits would cause any harm to a new application. They showed me…
With the federal government shutdown now in the rearview mirror, the question now becomes: Is there going to be a new immigration law this year? Here’s some of what I learned as a political science major: The two parts of Congress — the House of Representatives and the Senate —…
How does the government shutdown affect immigrants, the courts and our border? Although the federal government has been shutdown, the effects upon my immigration clients have been varied. U.S. CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION SERVICES U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is the primary agency that handles petitions and applications related to…