A public policy blog on America's dysfunctional immigration system
The first rule of gambling is that the odds always favor the house. U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS), the unit within Homeland Security tasked with conferring or refusing requests for immigration benefits, has started its own casino of sorts. And the house, not surprisingly, is winning.
As business and family petitioners have come to…
In the same month that the world commemorates the 20th anniversary of the bloody showdown in China’s Tieneman Square, we are again witnessing (this time, through the samizdat of Twitter and YouTube) what may become another defeat for democratic freedoms in a different Asian country, Iran.
For a sixth straight day, Iranian citizens of every…
Few people would ever confuse the sultry Blanche DuBois of Tennessee Wiliams’ Streetcar Named Desire with a Buddhist monk. Despite their very different appearances and stations in life, they share one survival skill. As Blanche explained to the play’s protagonist, Stanley Kowalski, Blanche (and so too the follower of Siddhartha Gautama) have “always depended on…
It’s Groundhog Day in Las Vegas, as immigration attorneys convene for the first day of the annual conference of the American Immigration Lawyers Association — for many of us, regrettably, a victory of hope over experience. This is not intended as a smackdown of AILA. On the contrary, AILA has assembled an all star cast…