When you encounter a non-citizen of the United States on an American street, the usual understanding is that he could be one of six things: 1. A person who was admitted to the United States after inspection at a port of entry (border or air or seaport) and is maintaining proper status; 2. A person who was admitted and then overstayed his period of admission or violated his status; 3. A person who was paroled into the United States. Parole…

The American Civil Liberties Union and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced  that a settlement has been reached in a lawsuit, Alfaro Garcia v. Johnson, filed by the ACLU seeking to compel USCIS to conduct reasonable fear interviews for aliens detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement who are prior deportees who are found in the United States and make Asylum claims. Under the settlement, USCIS will conduct these interviews within ten days of the alien’s being referred to USCIS for such…

Some of my clients understand what is going on in their cases. Others think of what is happening as a black box. They hire me to solve some problem. We fill out papers, pay fees, they pay me, we go to meetings or hearings, I may go to meetings or hearings without them, and their problems are gone (when we win).  Despite my explaining what we are doing and why, to them it is just magic. Then they send others…

Time and time again immigration lawyers like to tell you how complicated the immigration laws are.  Often the motivation for saying this is to encourage people to hire a lawyer. While hiring a lawyer may help to avoid the procedural pitfalls of trying to obtain benefits from immigration agencies, the biggest problem is that the immigration laws are too complicated for the agencies themselves to administer. Lawyers have a hard time stopping the decision makers from making their stupid mistakes….