USCIS has a difficult job. It adjudicates immigration benefits. What makes the job difficult? First, the volume and scope of work. America is a large country and there are a lot of foreigners seeking lots of things – temporary visas, permanent residence visas, citizenship, work permits, travel permits, humanitarian entry into the United States, asylum, protections against deportation based on harsh conditions abroad, and on and on. The variety of different laws pertaining to each of these different types of…

Last week I got more of that crazy mail I have described earlier. I am sitting in my office, minding my own [actually, my clients’] business, and then open the mail. I have a package. The government [USCIS San Diego office, this time] does something so kooky that the next two hours have to go to correcting their error. A client was granted a permanent residence visa. The visa was issued. Then the government issues a document threatening to revoke…

Remember July? Hotter? Long days and short nights? In July, I had two clients in immigration detention. Nice young women. Neither needed to be detained. Needed in the sense that there was any point to their detention. They were placed into detention months earlier, April. Remember April? Cooler? Shorter days and longer nights? October’s mirror image. Both had trials set for July. The clients hated being in detention – regimentation, bars and locks, crowded, horrible food, noisy, an environment of ignorance. But…

I had promised a discussion of the third piece of goofy mail I got from USCIS in one day in October 2009 to highlight the wheel-spinning frustrations of dealing with USCIS. By now, a month since I began this jag, so many more goofy pieces of mail have come that it is hard to recall the ones from that day, but recall I have. A client was granted asylum nearly two years ago. We then applied to get derivative asylum status for his wife…