mp3 International Education Conference Podcast – Chapter 1 On January 23, 2006, this blogger participated in an extended panel discussion with U.S. government officials and university administrators about international students and immigration issues. The event, part of the the 4th Washington International Education Conference (hosted by the Washington International Education Council, Inc., www.washcouncil.org) produced a lively discussion of the immigration obstacles facing foreign students and the government’s plans to improve the process of admitting foreign students to the U.S. The discussion highlights some of the most complex issues in immigration law, issues that continue to be relevant today.

The discussion included presentations and contributions from: Prakash Khatri, Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Susan Geary, Director, Student and Exchange Visitor Program, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Joan Taylor, Chief, Training and Outreach Branch, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Stephen A. “Tony” Edson, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Visa Services, Bureau of Consular Affairs, U.S. Department of State Martin Tatuch, Deputy Division Chief, Post Liaison Division, Office of Field Support and Liaison, Bureau of Consular Affairs, U.S. Department of State Dorothy Mora, Program Officer for East Asia/Pacific, Eurasia, Educational Information & Resources Branch, Bureau of Educational & Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State Nicholas Arrindell, Ph.D., Director, Johns Hopkins University, Office of International Student and Scholar Services

The discussion will be presented in a series of podcasts on this blog, some of which will be compilations of comments from a variety of speakers on a particular topic of interest.

Our podcasts begin with comments by this blogger offering views on various structural impediments to a functional immigration system. The presentation raises issues such as the treatment of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals, U.S. economic prosperity and proposals for legislative reform.

On June 23, 2006, the American Immigration Law Foundation (AILF) held its annual benefit dinner and awards program. AILF is a non profit, educational, charitable organization dedicated to increasing public understanding of the value of immigration to American society and to advancing fundamental fairness and due process under the law for immigrants. This year, AILF saluted the contribution of Mexican Americans to the United States and honored four individuals: Carlos Alvarez, business leader; Carmen Lomas Garza, artist; Alma Lopez, appeals court judge; and Victor Villasenor, author.

The event was hosted by Monica Navarro, news anchor for KWEX in San Antonio, and featured performances by the Guadalupe Dance Academy, the Guadalupe Mariachi and the San Antonio Independent School District Mariachi Band.

Paparelli & Partners LLP was a proud sponsor of the event. More information is available at http://www.ailf.org/awards/benefit2006/.

The American people are righteous and fair. They prefer honesty over political wordplay. The hot-potato that everyone shuns today is “amnesty.” Politicians proclaim that Americans won’t tolerate amnesty for foreign citizens who entered or remained in the country illegally. Yet, we readily accept other forms of amnesty. We allow the wealthy who’ve used elaborate tax shelters to ‘fess up, pay their taxes and penalties and escape jail time through federal tax amnesties. We let accused criminal defendants ‘cop a plea’ to a lesser offense and escape penalties for much more serious crimes – yet another routine type of tolerated amnesty.

Amnesties are a realistic response to systemic problems. Although our laws must be enforced, the government simply cannot afford the resources (police, prosecutors, public defenders, judges, juries, courtrooms and detention space) necessary to punish tax cheats and other criminals to the absolute letter of the law. We therefore opt for pragmatic solutions; we create reasonable penalties that honor the spirit of the law but don’t let wrongdoers thumb their collective noses at us.

So if amnesty is a reasonable solution to large-scale enforcement problems, why the no-amnesty fuss for immigrants here illegally? Since we lack the resources to deport 11 million people, why not declare an amnesty with strings that sting? Make them pay back taxes and hefty fines, and prove they’ve stayed on the sunny side of the criminal laws and are employed.

For that matter, we should broaden the immigration amnesty, extending it to all of us who’ve benefited from the undocumented. Virtually all Americans have enjoyed the fruits of illegal labor: tidier lawns and gardens, lower restaurant prices, cleaner, well-built homes, more affordable goods and services, and homecare for kids and seniors. In the spirit of forgiveness enshrined in most faith traditions, we should forgive ourselves and the foreign folk among us. We should make our borders as impregnable as possible and take pressure off the borders with a guest worker program, while pursuing the American dream in harmony together. Call it amnesty if you will, but let’s join hands and work for the betterment of our families and our country.

mp3 A World of Immigrants Podcast The Next Frontier – Employment-Based Global Migration To succeed in today’s challenging business environment, global companies must recruit, keep and place the top talent where and when needed, despite tougher host-country immigration laws and post-9/11 security screens. To scale the career heights, knowledge workers must be prepared to live and work outside the familiar confines of one’s homeland.Given these converging trends, globally competitive companies must take ownership of a process far broader than mastery of the work permit and residence rules in the headquarters country. World-class companies must develop a migration management business model that allows for employment-based transfers of key personnel from country to country, with minimal delay and proper attention to law compliance.For a discussion of this timely and vital topic, join Andrea Elliott and Angelo Paparelli in a World of Immigrants Podcast, “The Next Frontier – Employment-Based Global Migration.” Andrea is the Principal of Pro-Link GLOBAL, a boutique immigration firm specializing in global work permits, residence permits, entry visas, and immigration documentation and management services. Angelo, the moderator of World of Immigrants and blogger of www.nationofimmigrators.com, leads the 12-lawyer immigration specialty firm, Paparelli & Partners LLP, from offices in New York City and Irvine, CA.

Guest Column by Julie Soininen
Copyrighted by, and reproduced with permission of ILW.COM.

I am writing to seek your assistance on behalf of several dozen clients of my firm. As you know, a recent Board of Immigration Appeals decision, In re Perez Vargas (23 I&N Dec 829 (BIA 2005), held that Immigration Judges have no authority to determine whether the validity of an alien’s approved employment-based visa petition is preserved under section 204(j) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1154(j) (2000), after the alien’s change in jobs or employers. The Board stated that “ it is incumbent upon the DHS to determine whether the respondent’s visa petition remains valid pursuant to section 204(j) of the Act” but offered no practical guidance as to how to actually obtain this determination.

Under INA §204(j) and the American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act (“AC21”), an applicant for employment based adjustment of status based on an immigrant petition shall remain valid with respect to a new job if the individual changes jobs or employers if the new job is in the same or a similar occupational classification as the job for which the petition was filed. I trust that you are aware that USCIS officers routinely make determinations on this issue in adjudicating clients’ 485 applications throughout the country. Quite frankly, although our firm advises clients conservatively on this issue, in practice such adjudications have been extremely straightforward. Continue Reading An Open Letter To USCIS Ombudsman: AC21 In Court

By Angelo A. Paparelli

Demographics don’t lie. Populations in the developed world are aging rapidly, especially in Europe, Japan and Russia. To a lesser but still pronounced degree, the ratio of older to younger citizens is also projected to increase in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea. At the same time, the global market for knowledge workers, especially in the STEM fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, is growing ever hotter with no cool-down in sight. More troubling still, China, India and other fast-rising global competitors with sizable populations are producing STEM graduates with Masters and PhDs, and submitting patent applications, at a more rapid pace than the world’s perennial leader, the United States.

The trend lines of these forces are ominous. Increasingly, globally competitive businesses must broaden the recruiting search beyond national borders if they are to secure the brightest and best workers. As new, more demanding jobs are created, will your recruiting team find and hire the best of a globally scarce lot? One essential way to prepare your company’s recruiters is to confirm that the team makes optimal use of employment-based options under U.S. and foreign immigration laws. Another equally important measure is to provide recruiters with the training and resources required to avoid the many mission-killing snares of global migration. Continue Reading GLOBAL HIRING: ARE YOUR RECRUITERS READY FOR THE WORLD STAGE?

Readers of this blog surely have noticed the absence of new postings in the last two months. With the start of the New Year, and a holiday season break, this blogger is refreshed and enthusiastic to alert readers to the dysfunctions of America’s immigration system. Coming weeks will see postings of podcasts on comprehensive immigration reform and global immigration issues and reprints of relevant articles penned by this blogger, published elsewhere. For now, though a bit off topic, there is a reprint of an article I did for the Winter 2006 issue of Small Firm Business entitled “Don’t Slog on your Blog: Seven Tips for Cyber-Writers.”1 You’ll note that I’m guilty as charged in violating at least Tips 1 and 3 – but hey, that’s what New Years resolutions are all about!

1 This article is reprinted with permission from the Winter 2006 issue of Small Firm Business, (c) 2006 ALM Properties, Inc. Further duplication without permission is prohibited. All rights reserved.

An October 14 New York Times article by Nina Bernstein “A Contest of Suffering, With the U.S. as a Prize” sheds light on humanitarian parole, the authority vested in the Secretary of Homeland Security, to grant foreign citizens entry to the United States for “urgent humanitarian reasons.” The article reports that since January, 2000 only about 20% of the 6,718 requests received for humanitarian parole were approved. According to Michael W. Gilhooley, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency deciding requests for humanitarian parole, each request is considered independently by two ICE officers and then their (presumably collective) decision is reviewed by an ICE supervisor. Continue Reading Immigration Heart on ICE: Why Does ICE Decide All, and Deny Most, Humanitarian Parole Requests?

An Open Letter to Grover Norquist: Stop Congress from Imposing a New Immigration Stealth Tax on Multinationals!

Dear Mr. Norquist:

You are a well-known champion of tax and immigration reform. As President of Americans for Tax Reform, you’ve helped secure the signatures of President George W. Bush, 46 Senators and 221 Members of the House of Representatives (including Jim Sensenbrenner, Chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary) on the No New Taxes Pledge. You have also supported comprehensive immigration reform along the lines of Pres. Bush’s guest-worker proposals.

As you know, the No New Taxes Pledge includes an oath to oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for businesses. I suggest it’s time for you to hold Rep. Sensenbrenner and other No-New-Tax-Pledge supporters in the House Judiciary Committee accountable.

On September 29, by a 20-6 vote the Judiciary Committee marked up HR 3648, legislation proposed by Mr. Sensenbrenner, and approved it for inclusion in an appropriations bill that would impose up to a $3,000 per worker tax on multinationals who use the L-1 “Intracompany Transferee” visa category to bring from abroad to the U.S. executives, managers and persons with specialized knowledge from affiliated companies in a family group of affiliated businesses. The L-1 visa category is essential if American businesses are to compete successfully in global markets. As the State Department explains, the L-1 category “was created to permit international companies to temporarily transfer qualified employees to the United States for the purpose of improving management effectiveness, expanding U.S. exports, and enhancing competitiveness in markets abroad.”

Note, Mr. Norquist, that unlike other immigration filing fees, HR 3648 is not a user fee. If enacted, the estimated $136 million in L-1 stealth taxes, to be collected by this proposed law would not be used to fund the operations of government immigration agencies charged with deciding whether or not to approve L-1 visa petitions. No, the taxes will go straight into the U.S. Treasury. It takes little parsing of language to understand that this tax on international trade in services would constitute a business income tax by imposing additional levies on U.S. businesses operating globally. In effect, HR 3648 would ultimately result in a marginal increase in the tax rate on business income — a clear violation of the No New Taxes Pledge.

Perhaps a higgling distinction worthy of a hearse-horse snicker can be offered to explain why this L-1 tax does not violate the pledge. Maybe the Americans for Tax Reform can ask Rep. Sensenbrenner to withdraw HR 3648 or to acknowledge that he has breached his No New Taxes oath.

Sincerely,

Angelo A. Paparelli Concerned taxpayer and proponent of immigration reform

In today’s 24/7, Twenty-First Century world, with on-demand services often only mouse clicks away, our nation’s employment-based immigration laws are reverting to Puritan times. How so? Remember the infamous Blue Laws of the colonial era, when government officials decreed that the economy must shut down every Sunday, the Sabbath, for a day of rest. Fast forward now to 2005, and let’s look at America’s modern-day immigration blue laws, which take the “business-must-rest” concept to an absurdly blue (melancholic) low point.

As the State Department has announced , the waiting time for virtually all categories of employment-based immigrant visas (the coveted “Green Card”) will “retrogress” (move back in time) on October 1. In practical effect, this means that individuals who have already patiently waited for years in the legal-immigration queue – especially those born in China, India, the Philippines and Mexico – must wait much, much longer still. Continue Reading Immigration Blue Laws: Never on Sunday, Monday or Any Other Day for the Next Several Years.