Appellate courts are deliberately cagey. When they make a decision, they normally limit their decisions to the facts in a case. When other issues arise not related to the case under consideration, they will write sentences like, “We reserve deciding that issue,” or “We do not need to decide this issue to resolve this case,” or other such verbiage. When a decision’s scope is not clear, appellate courts are reluctant to express limits to the impact of a decision, willing…

President Obama on Thursday ordered his Homeland Security Secretary, Jeh Johnson,  to review the government’s immigration policies to determine ways to make them more humane, a response, some speculate, to mounting pressure from advocates to stem deportations of illegal immigrants. Here’s the problem. There are lots of people in the United States who have entered the United States with visas and overstayed them and lots of people who entered illegally. Most came to work. Many married and started families, started businesses, bought homes. Some…

When an alien applies for relief from removal, he has to prove eligibility for the relief according to INA § 240(c)(4)(A). For some forms of relief, principally voluntary departure and Cancellation of Removal for Certain Nonpermanent Residents, one of the requirements for relief is that the applicant not have had any convictions for crimes of moral turpitude. Whether a crime is a crime of moral turpitude is indubitably among the issues most addressed by courts of appeals. A big problem…

Immigration law, as immigration lawyers (and their clients) say often, is quite complex. There are a lot of hoops people have to jump though to get a benefit. Forms on top of forms asking the same things over and over. Fees on top of fees. Petitions, applications, security checks, medical exams, interviews, investigations, verifications. With all the stuff that is deemed necessary, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State should, one would think, want to eliminate pointless…