In the past, immigration authorities often gave people a chance to regularize their immigrant status when faced with a deportation order. This was especially true when the order was old and the immigrant had a good chance of qualifying for legal status. For example,...
Courts have long held that, when a criminal law is too vague for a reasonable person to understand, it cannot be enforced. Enforcing it would violate our basic due process protections. The U.S. Supreme Court has just applied the same standard to the Immigration and...
A federal judge in Los Angeles recently ruled that the U.S. Department of Justice will not be allowed to withhold grant funding from cities, counties and states that refuse to comply with federal immigration priorities. He issued a nationwide injunction striking down...
The State Department recently announced a plan to require virtually all applicants for U.S. visas to provide more details as part of the vetting and approval process. Only certain official and diplomatic visa applicants would be exempt. The proposal was published in...
When Hector B. was in the Army, he didn't apply for U.S. citizenship. He was already a lawful permanent resident, and says that recruiters misled him into believing that citizenship would be automatic after his service. It wasn't. Hector was born in Mexico and brought...
The U.S. Supreme Court recently turned away an appeal by the state of Arizona, which had sought to end its participation in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. When the state attempted to deny program beneficiaries the driver's licenses they were...
"The system is being gamed, there's no doubt about it," said Attorney General Jeff Sessions in a speech last October. He was trying to get Congress to tighten the rules for asylum. In the U.S., asylum is offered to people who have suffered persecution, or fear they...
H-1B visas are available for several types of workers, but the most well known is the "specialty occupations" visa. It is available to highly skilled foreign workers who work in jobs which typically cannot be performed by people without at least a bachelor's degree in...
Two major court decisions involving the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program were announced this week. First, the U.S. Supreme Court put off an appeal of a federal court order. That order, a nationwide injunction, ordered the federal government not to shut...
Although many immigrants worry that they could be targeted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement despite causing no problems, recent information suggests that the agency has been focusing mostly on those with criminal issues. At the same time, however, ICE...