British actor, comic, author, singer, et al., Russell Brand, who is also the husband of Katy Perry, has suffered eleven arrests according to media reports, I can find no information about the final disposition of these arrests, i.e., what he was actually convicted of. Media reports include two arrests for shoplifting and several marijuana arrests, including one for cultivating marijuana. Interviews of him also contain admissions to his having been a drug addict.

Assuming some of the reported arrests led to convictions, and even without convictions, assuming he committed the acts involved in some of the arrests and assuming his admissions to drug addiction were sincere and procedurally sufficient, he can never become a permanent resident of the United States.

(more…)

Much has been written  and adorably dramatized by me and others about the new prosecutorial discretion policy announced by President Obama and his administration. Despite continued skepticism in the media, the policy is being boldly implemented, at least in San Diego, where I practice. Pilot programs are underway in Baltimore and Denver and files are being reviewed nationwide.

Implementation is being carried out by the Office of Chief Counsel (OCC), a.k.a., Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, ICE’s lawyers who prosecute removal cases for the Department of Homeland Security. Criticism of DHS is chiefly because law enforcement officers at ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) appear to be arresting and placing aliens in removal proceedings as usual, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is similarly instituting removal proceedings as before the new policy was announced (though there is a new memo to guide USCIS in light of the new policy). Because of this, the burden falls on the OCC to evaluate cases for prosecutorial discretion when cases reach the litigation stage, while for officers in the field, it is business as usual. This is supposed to change, but largely it has not yet.

(more…)

In a recent New York Magazine article, David Frum,  a former George H.W. Bush speech writer, wrote, “The reality is, however, that the big winners in the American fiscal system are the rich, the old, the rural, and veterans — typically conservative constituencies.” He was pointing out the irony that these Conservatives, associated with a belief in small government, actually benefit from big government most. They are big winners because of the government largesse they receive – be it tax breaks, Medicare, farm subsidies, or veterans benefits.

In a Republican Party debate on November 22, 2011, Newt Gingrich startled America by voicing pro-immigrant sentiments at a debate. He said, “If you’ve been here 25 years and you have got three kids and two grandkids, you’ve been paying taxes and obeying the law, you belong to a local church, I don’t think we’re going to separate you from your family, uproot you forcefully and kick you out.”

(more…)

The Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review’s Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) laid one on us Friday, in what Matt Drudge might call a Friday document dump. In this case, the dump was a decision about the stop-time rule, Matter of Camarillo. The stop-time rule, found at INA § 240A(d), states, in part, that “… any period of continuous residence or continuous physical presence in the United States shall deem to end … when the alien is served a notice to appear under section 239(a).”

(more…)