[Blogger’s note: This article is reprinted with permission from the February 22, 2012 edition of The New York Law Journal.  ©2010 ALM Properties Inc. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited. The authors thank the Journal for permission to reprint this article.]  

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No More Waiting on Legal Immigration

By Angelo

“Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer” ~ Alexander Pope, poet, satirist, and translator, “Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot

clock face time 3.jpgI hesitate to criticize the Obama Administration’s immigration reform measures, having urged long ago that half a loaf, at least for now, will perforce suffice

Who really wields power in Washington?  The December 3rd opening sketch of Saturday Night Live, featuring Fred Armisen as a chastened President Obama, offered an answer to the question. 

SNL‘s Obama shared his insight, gained over the last three years, that the presidency is not truly a powerful post, but merely a “ceremonial position . . .

Europe is at a tipping point.  Will the European Union be dashed on Greek or Italian shores.  Will France follow Greece and Italy in losing the esteem of bondholders? Will the EU revert to an Uncommon Market and again suffer its historic curse, a mash-up of competing and warring states whose citizens must proffer passports to

Bangalore immigration.jpgAt least when it comes to India, Yogi Berra had it wrong. It’s not déjà vu all over again. 

Blogging this weekend from my hotel room in Mumbai, I vividly recall my first trip to India in 1993. Invited as part of an American Bar Association delegation, I spoke in New Delhi on “Nonimmigrant Visa Options for Computer

skull.jpgMany dysfunctions within the immigration ecospace are disturbing, but some make my blood boil.  The conniption that brought me to this Howard Beale moment erupted after I belatedly read a Forbes online article, published last April, by Osha Gray Davis (A Death in Juarez: How U.S. Immigration Policy Is Tearing American Families Apart“). The Forbes piece reported on two

global workersWith the President’s supporters pleading for action, Barack Obama at last has pivoted to jobs.  “Pass this bill [the American Jobs Act]” has become his oft-shouted mantra. Surprisingly, however, career bureaucrats within the Departments of State and Homeland Security apparently haven’t read his September 8 speech to Congress and instead are taking affirmative steps to prevent

As the debt-ceiling crisis causes America to plunge headlong into the lemming-led abyss of a credit default, Congress and the country are reminded of a timeless truth. “Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.”

In these parlous times, our nation is regularly compared to the nearly deadbeat country of Greece, which tried

visa_stamp.jpgThe sage of the current age, Wikipedia, defines the term “nonmaleficence” — from the Latin primum non nocere — as a principle of medical ethics, one that in my view is equally applicable to the immigration sphere.  The princple holds that “given an existing problem, it may be better not to do something, or

sample-visa-denial-letter.jpgI’m no fan of the U.S. Department of State’s policies and actions in the immigration space.  State’s approach, as manifested by the behavior of U.S. consular officers and the apparatchiks within the Visa Office at the Bureau of Consular Affairs, too often comes off as a mix of treacly haughtiness and callous indifference.

These Ugly American attributes