This week as Halloween approaches, there is all sorts of scary stuff going around. For starters, Ebola! Ebola! Ebola! There isn’t a front page newspaper story or a broadcast news segment that doesn’t involve Ebola. And with all that fear and news coverage comes this: African immigrants face ostracism.
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The United States Supreme Court recently decided to consider appeals regarding two very different immigration scenarios. One involves a judge’s order of deportation issued inside the United States; the other involves a decision made by a U.S. consulate in a foreign country. However, both cases have a common thread: what is the permissible extent of the government’s powers?
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Not too long ago, I was sitting in jail with my client the night before his first hearing. I told him that once I got him out of custody, I would buy him a beer. He says “But Mr. Aquino, I don’t drink.” “Well,” I asked him, “what would you like to toast with instead?”
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Hollywood sit-com writers occasionally air episodes where the storyline has an immigration subplot. But sometimes, you don’t need fiction writers! Joe Giudice, from “Real Housewives of New Jersey”, was convicted on federal charges that will likely trigger immigration consequences.
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Living amongst us in the United States are hundreds of thousands of children who grew up as Americans but lack immigration status because of the way that they entered the United States. Many of these DREAMers have been given a chance to avoid deportation through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (or DACA) program. And now, the Department of Defense has announced that the MAVNI program has been expanded to those individuals.
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Occasionally, USCIS will hold group naturalization ceremonies specifically for children. One such ceremony occurred recently at the Los Angeles Public Library. These are really cool events and they are much more exciting than sitting in the waiting room at the federal building for an immigration officer to call your name and bring you the completed certificate.
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The possibility of executive action on immigration (and deferred action for parents of DREAMERs) was in the news recently. Unfortunately, not for the reason that many immigrants had been hoping for.
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In the past, I have written about people of modest means who have been bamboozled by unscrupulous attorneys, “consultants,” and “notarios.” For example, I wrote about the fraudulent asylum applications submitted by attorneys and paralegals in New York City. Unfortunately, even wealthy investors can be victims of scams.
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Over the last several months, I’ve been breaking down the process of what happens in immigration courts. This week, KPCC took a closer look at the busiest immigration court in the nation: Los Angeles.
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Not too long ago, we took a look at an interesting map of the United States that showed the potpourri of languages that are spoken across the United States when you you look beyond English and Spanish. This week, we take a look at another map:
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