Big-Picture, Clean-Slate Immigration Reforms
for the Biden-Harris Administration
By Angelo A. Paparelli and Stephen Yale-Loehr
As a new administration takes office on January 20, and the tantalizing prospect of enlightened immigration reforms looms on the horizon, an intriguing question has surfaced on Twitter:
“Is there a progressive version of Stephen Miller? Someone who has (1)
Much digital ink has already been spilled reporting on the phantom tide of undocumented migrants supposedly breaching our Southern border. This article will address a different, but very-real immigration flood, and suggest ways U.S. employers, noncitizens, and their lawyers ought be emboldened to add to the deluge.
Ironically, it is about a dry subject –
[Blogger’s note: An anonymous immigration lawyer offers this lament on the woeful quality of adjudications at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). For related wailing, see: “ ‘I Hate [Bleep]ing Immigration Law’ — Whenever I Get an Unjust Request for Evidence,” “End the Tyranny of Immigration Insubordination,” and “Immigration Indifference
The EB-5 employment-creation immigrant investor visa category continues to transcend its chutes-and-ladders early history. This 24-year-old program — like many young adults of the same era — seems at last to be maturing in healthy ways. Foreign investors have become more savvy. Regulators are more attuned to the need for greater investor protection, as
Why Are Immigration Lawyers So Happy?According to statistics provided to CNN by the Centers for Disease Control, among professionals in the United States lawyers rank fourth in suicides (exceeded in misery only by dentists, pharmacists and physicians). Lawyers are also nearly four times more likely to suffer from
[Blogger’s Note: An earlier version of this post mistakenly suggested that the article discussed below offering the views of an immigration lawyer was written by that lawyer. It was not; rather it was written by a reporter who quoted the lawyer. This blogger regrets the error.]
The power of online and social media to whip
Much has been written since April 17 when the bipartisan Gang of Eight senators introduced S. 744, a brobdingnagian immigration reform bill that overlays 844 pages of turgid text on top of the already gargantuan and complex Immigration and Nationality Act. The Migration Policy Institute, the National Immigration Law Center, and the American
Andrew Jackson had his “Kitchen Cabinet,” Franklin Roosevelt his “Brain Trust.” Seth Godin has his “Tribes,” web-based “silos of interest.”
I’ve been a member of many tribes (as I write this I’m recalling my tattered T-shirt from my own and my adult daughter’s Indian Princess days, many moons ago [click here
Ever since I first sat in a Los Angeles movie theatre watching Grand Canyon, Lawrence Kasdan’s 1991 film, the only movie, to my knowledge, whose protagonist is an immigration lawyer, I knew I would mouth to myself, repeatedly over the ensuing years, one of its memorable lines. The main character, Mac (played by Kevin Kline)
Many thoughts rushed through my mind as I read the heartening headline to a press release issued January 19 by the American Immigration Council (“U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Takes Steps to Improve Noncitizens’ Access to Legal Counsel“).
What did USCIS do to improve access to lawyers? Did it instruct the agency’s Fraud
