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…

Family reunification, at least as far back as the Quota Law of 1921, has been and remains today a cornerstone of America’s immigration laws. Yet, one growing segment of family immigration is disfavored by operation of law. These are the families of same-sex life partners who must live under a legal system that imposes family-separation…

On the heels of my May 8 post (Do Immigration Fee Revenues Drive Justice at the USCIS?), the Office of the Ombudsman to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a May 15 report criticizing the unfairness and inconsistency across USCIS offices nationwide of the agency’s procedures for getting a seasoned officer to…

There was no one in the bleachers at the new Yankee Stadium to offer a Bronx cheer to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on May 13 when she promised to “streamline the visa process” during her commencement address to New York University students:

[W]e should bring more qualified students from other countries to study here.

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Immigration lawyers, including this blogger, have attended liaison meetings with the USCIS California Service Center and its predecessor agency, INS, for decades. These meetings have been periodically convened (typically on at least a quarterly basis) since the agency was first housed, decades ago, in San Ysidro CA just inside the U.S. border with Tijuana (the…

The dismal state of the economy has caused economists to revive the Keynesian notion of “animal spirits,” the concept that the economy is not merely understood through the study of charts, metrics and data, but also from psychological factors that move people to invest, build, lend, buy and sell. A new book by economists George…

In a refreshing break from the Bush Administration’s enforcement strategy, John Morton, President Obama’s nominee to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that, if he is nominated, immigration law enforcement efforts would focus less on unauthorized workers and more on the employers who hire…