I’ve toured a number of the USCIS regional service centers. In all of them, rows upon rows of immigration file folders, stacked high overhead in warehouse-sized rooms, are shuttled hither and thither, ultimately to be doled out to adjudicators sitting in Dilbert-style cubicles and intently facing their computer screens while reading paper files. The job…

Raymond Kurzweil, a scientist and futurist, predicts a new epoch he calls the “Singularity.” This is the point along the evolutionary path where the line between human beings and technology is crossed, where quasi-human/quasi-machine beings possess far more brainpower and longevity than mere mortals. As Kurzweil puts it:

One can make a strong case

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It took a scathing study (“A Broken System: CONFIDENTIAL REPORTS REVEAL FAILURES IN U.S. IMMIGRANT DETENTION CENTERS“) by the National Immigration Law Center, the ACLU of Southern California, and the law firm of Holland & Knight, to accelerate disclosure of what may have been already in the works. Today, U.S. Immigration and Customs…

I’ve always loved to travel, especially to foreign lands. In law school, I devoured all the courses that dealt with international law — public international law (involving relations between countries and international organizations), private international law (dealing with transnational contracts between individuals or businesses), conflicts of laws, and a seminar on international business transactions. Those…

Chris Matthews of the mainstream media and Jon Stewart, the faux newscaster on Comedy Central, have been all abuzz this week over the resilience of a pernicious and persistent claim by conspiracy theorists and immigration opponents. They claim that Barack Obama is an illegal immigrant (born not in Hawaii but in Kenya) who never…

Federal Inspectors General (IGs) are critically-important public servants — except when they are entranced by the siren song of individual Members of Congress who commission reports that lead to phony, pre-ordained and self-serving outcomes. When performing their responsibilities as Congress intended, the IGs work like truffle-sniffing canines, faithfully rooting out crimes, waste, fraud and…

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced yesterday, in so many words, that she intends to shake, rattle and roil the still-swooning economy by endorsing a Bush Administration initiative that would make the online employment-eligibility-confirmation system known as E-Verify mandatory for federal contractors and subcontractors.

Despite the Secretary’s announcement, a counter-intuitive alliance of business and pro-worker…

The Office of Ombudsman (Ombudsman) to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has just released an outstanding 2009 Annual Report to Congress. The culmination of an especially ambitious and successful year of several spot-on recommendations, the Report focuses a laser beam on the many shortfalls in USCIS’s performance.

Among the Report’s many worthy insights, the…