OC Immigration Attorney

Thanks to the electoral drubbing Republicans took from Latino voters on Tuesday, it’s looking increasingly likely Congress might actually tackle comprehensive immigration reform some time this year. House Speaker John Boehner suddenly likes the idea. Even Fox News’ Sean Hannity is a convert.

CAP believes that giving today’s 11.3 million undocumented immigrants a route to citizenship could increase their collective earning power by as much $36 billion a year. That money would funnel back into the economy and support more jobs. It might also help raise wages for American born, low-skill workers, since businesses wouldn’t be able to take advantage of cheap undocumented immigrants who lack lack legal rights or better job options.

Top Republicans are signaling for the first time in five years that the party will get serious about immigration reform.

Immigration’s sudden rise to the top of Washington’s to-do list after years on the legislative back burner spotlights how worried Republicans are about Latinos abandoning their party. The renewed interest in tackling the issue, if sustained, would represent a fundamental shift for Republicans, who allowed conservative firebrands to set the agenda on immigration after several failed attempts to pass a bill during the Bush administration.

“It’s clear to me, if Republicans are going to have the opportunity to be in the majority, we clearly have to determine how we deal with minority and Latino voters,” said Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, who is running for the National Republican Senatorial Committee chairmanship. “In some fashion, the way we have dealt with immigration gives us a black eye. And we need to figure out how to talk about issues and pursue policies that matter to Latino, Hispanic voters.”

Obama told the Des Moines Register editorial board last month that he was confident immigration reform would get done next year. He mused at the time that Republicans, after years of Latino alienation, would need to repair their relationship with one of the fastest-growing demographic groups.

Obama is expected to pursue a broad proposal early next year, Democratic officials said Wednesday.

“It’s self-inflicted. It’s almost a suicidal tendency they have to be relegated for the next — I would say — generation as a minority party,” Rep Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said.

The stats from Tuesday’s election tell a grim tale for Republicans.

Exit polls found that Obama picked up 71 percent of the Latino vote while Republican Mitt Romney received only 27 percent — a steep drop-off from Bush’s 44 percent in 2004 and 35 in percent 2000. Those figures were in line with a 75-23 margin in an election eve poll by Latino Decisions of 5,600 Latino voters across all 50 states.

If Romney had picked up even 35 percent of the Latino vote, Tuesday’s election may have turned out differently, said Stanford University professor Gary Segura, who conducted the survey by Latino Decisions, which has done extensive polling of Hispanic voters.

“For the first time in U.S. history, the Latino vote can plausibly claim to be nationally decisive,” Segura said.

Thirty-one percent of those surveyed said they would be more likely to vote Republican if the party took a role in passing an overhaul bill with a pathway to citizenship.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83552_Page2.html#ixzz2BfNMFPgK

Mitt Romney and the Republican Party’s tremendous difficulty appealing to Latino voters dealt a significant blow to their chances of winning in 2012.

Romney got off on the wrong foot with Latino voters early in the campaign. During the GOP primary, he took a hard line on immigration, endorsing the concept of “self-deportation” that would implement immigration crackdown policies to spur undocumented immigrants to leave the country on their own.

The Republican candidate tried to moderate his rhetoric over the next several months, but the damage was already done. According to the national exit polls, Obama won 71 percent of the Latino vote while Romney won 27 percent. That’s an improvement over Obama’s 2008 performance when Latinos backed him 67-31 percent over Republican John McCain and the largest Democratic margin since 1996. To give you an idea of how badly the GOP’s Latino support has eroded, just eight years ago, George W. Bush won around 40 percent of the Latino vote.

Obama faced questions about higher-than-average unemployment among Latino voters and a lack of progress on immigration reform during his first term. But he was able to energize Latino voters, especially after he enacted a program over the summer to provide a temporary reprieve from deportation to young undocumented immigrants.

Today, several news outlets are suggesting the GOP needs to change it’s policy on immigration.

Sen.-elect Tim Kaine (D-Va.) on Wednesday said he expects the Republican Party to “look in the mirror” and become more open to working with Democrats on finding solutions to averting the impending fiscal cliff and reforming the nation’s immigration laws.

President Obama has repeatedly listed immigration reform as something he believes Democrats and Republicans could find agreement on after the presidential election.

The last time a major immigration reform took place, Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was in his second term.

My hope is that Republicans will realize that they either need to pass a comprehensive immigration reform that creates a path to citizenship for undocumented aliens (who have no criminal record) or risk losing the influential Latino vote for decades to come.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:

In an attempt to get some immigration legislation on the books, Obama had urged Congress to pass the Dream Act, which would give young illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children a path to citizenship if they attend college or serve in the military.

However, in June, Obama issued an executive order to allow many immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children to be exempted for two years from deportation and granted work permits if they apply to the government. The exemption also applies to children who are students and/or veterans.

Some 1.7 million people could be eligible for the program, according to estimates. Tens of thousands have applied since August.

Obama has stated that the government should focus on sending back criminals and recent arrivals rather than minors and families who are already settled in the U.S.

As for legal immigration, Obama has repeatedly said he supports legislation, backed by some business sectors, that would increase the number of highly skilled foreign workers and entrepreneurs who can enter the U.S. on special visas or apply to immigrate.

MITT ROMNEY:

In the GOP primary debates, Romney attacked his fellow Republicans when he felt they were being too soft on immigration. He has consistently said he opposes providing “amnesty” for illegal immigrants.

He also says he favors a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. He opposes education benefits to illegal immigrants and opposes offering legal status to illegal immigrants who attend college—but would do so for those who serve in the armed forces.

Romney, if elected, has said he would establish a national immigration-status verification system for employers and punish them if they hire noncitizens who do not prove their authorized status.

Romney has not specifically said he supports the immigration laws in Arizona, Alabama, but he has called Arizona “a model” for the nation on immigration And he has urged the Justice Department to drop its lawsuit against the Arizona legislation.

On legal immigration, Romney has said that he favors allowing into the country skilled and highly educated workers, who are favored by American high-tech firms and other industries. He has criticized the current annual limit (140,000) on the number of high-skilled visas—saying “it is a barrier to the kinds of immigrants the country needs to remain innovative.”

Read more about each candidate’s immigration positions here.

Young illegal immigrants who receive temporary work permits to stay in the United States under an executive order issued by President Barack Obama would not be deported under a Mitt Romney administration, the GOP presidential hopeful told The Denver Post Monday.

“The people who have received the special visa that the president has put in place, which is a two-year visa, should expect that the visa would continue to be valid. I’m not going to take something that they’ve purchased,” Romney said. “Before those visas have expired we will have the full immigration reform plan that I’ve proposed.”

In June, Obama issued an executive order ( Later entitled Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or “DACA”) that will allow the so-called “dreamers” — kids who were brought here by their illegal immigrant parents when they were young — a temporary reprieve from deportation if they stay out of trouble and meet certain requirements such as graduating from a U.S. high school.

The Obama administration has sharply criticized Romney’s earlier ideas for immigration reform, which have called for all aliens living in the U.S. illegally to self-deport.

Romney said in a sit-down interview with The Post aboard his campaign bus ahead of a Denver rally that he would work with Congress in the first year to pass permanent immigration reform legislation.

He didn’t furnish specifics on that plan, but has said in previous interviews that students who served in the military may get a path to citizenship.

“I actually will propose a piece of legislation which will reform our immigration system to improve legal immigration so people don’t have to hire lawyers to figure out how to get here legally,” Romney said. “The president promised in his first year, his highest priority, that he would reform immigration and he didn’t. And I will.”

Obama’s order mirrors the “DREAM” Act, which has been dead on arrival in every Congress that’s tried to pass it. It was blocked by Senate Republicans two years ago.

Romney also was hazy about the future of Colorado’s medical marijuana industry, which reaps more than $5 million a year in state sales taxes, saying his administration would enforce federal drug laws, that prohibit marijuana for any use.

“I oppose marijuana being used for recreational purposes and I believe the federal law should prohibit the recreational use of marijuana,” he said.

Romney will spend Tuesday holed up preparing for the first presidential debate Wednesday at the University of Denver. He said he was looking forward to sharing a stage with the president to clear up distortions of the last few months.

If you are considering the DACA program, contact The Nunez Firm to schedule a consultation. Managing attorney Jay Nunez will personally meet with you to help you better understand the potential benefits and risks of applying.

WASHINGTON — Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Thursday that she will instruct immigration agents to consider same-sex relationships the same as heterosexual ones in determining whether an individual should be deported, a victory for advocates and members of Congress who worried verbal instructions could be ignored.
Although the administration had previously told reporters and others that same-sex relationships will be taken into account when making deportation decisions, putting it in writing for field officers is considered to be an important change.

“This is a huge step forward,” Rachel B. Tiven, executive director of gay rights and reform group Immigration Equality, said in a statement. “Until now, LGBT families and their lawyers had nothing to rely on but an oral promise that prosecutorial discretion would include all families. Today, DHS has responded to Congress and made that promise real.”

DHS released guidelines in 2011 instructing agents to consider a variety of factors — including family relationships, the age an individual came to the U.S. and other ties to the country — when determining whether the immigrant is high-priority for deportation.

More than 80 House Democrats, led by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), called in late July for the Department of Homeland Security to add a specific mention of same-sex couples to its guidelines.

Napolitano responded on Thursday to that letter with individual, but identical, messages to each of those members. There will be official guidance next week to ICE offices around the country.

“In an effort to make clear the definition of the phrase ‘family relationships,’ I have directed ICE to disseminate written guidance to the field that the interpretation of the phrase ‘family relationships’ includes long-term, same-sex partners,” she wrote in the letter. “As with every other factor identified in Director Morton’s June 11 memorandum, the applicability of the ‘family relationships’ factor is weighed on an individualized basis in the consideration of whether prosecutorial discretion is appropriate in a given case.”

Honda, one of the signatories of the letter, said in a statement Friday that he will continue to push for immigration reform legislation, such as his Reuniting American Families Act, which would allow Americans to petition for legal status for their same-sex partners in the same way heterosexual couples can.

“No one should have to choose between their spouse and their country, and no family should be left out of the immigration system,” he said in a statement.

Judy Rickard, an American, and her partner, Karin Bogliolo, who is a British citizen, heard the news on Thursday from Honda. Bogliolo entered the country legally under a tourist visa, and is still authorized to stay because her application for a green card is pending. But her application could be turned down because the federal government does not recognize same-sex couples under the Defense of Marriage Act.

“We’re glad beyond measure that someone is recognizing our status and making us safer,” Rickard said. “It doesn’t solve everything, but I’m confident now that Karin won’t be told to leave the country.”

The Ninth Circuit opinion in De Osorio v. Mayorkas expands the interpretation of the Child Status Protection Act (“CSPA”) to protect a larger group of aged out alien children.

CSPA, which became law in 2002, ensures that an alien does not lose “child” status due to administrative delays in the processing of his parent’s visa petition. CSPA reconstructs a alien child’s age by taking the child’s age on the date that a visa becomes available and subtracting the number of days in the period during which the applicable petition was pending. If an alien beneficiary’s “age” remains over 21 years after application of the formula, section (h)(3) provides further protection for the alien child by allowing a new petition to be filed for the alien child by a new petitioner while still retaining the original petition’s priority date. This is important because it can save the child several years of waiting for a visa to become available. Before De Osorio, USCIS interpreted the (h)(3) retention policy to only protect children of lawful permanent residents (category F2A) who turned 21 years of age and became unmarried sons and daughters (over 21 years) of lawful permanent residents (category F2B).

In De Osorio, there were three plaintiffs. Their fact patterns help to illustrate who benefits from the De Osorio decision.

In 1998, De Osorio’s mother filed an F3 visa for De Osorio (married daughter of a US citizen), whose son was 13 years old at the time of the filing. By the time the visa became available for De Osorio in 2005, her son was over 21 years old. De Osorio filed a visa petition for her son (as an unmarried son of a lawful permanent resident) and requested that the son retain the 1998 priority date. USCIS refused, resulting in the son likely waiting several more years until he could immigrate to the United States.

The second plaintiff, Teresita Costelo, was a beneficiary of an F3 visa filed by her citizen mother in 1990. At the time of the filing, she had two daughters aged ten and thirteen. By the time Costelo received her visa in 2004, her daughters had aged out and were over 21 years of age. Costelo filed F2B visa petitions for her daughters as daughters of a lawful permanent resident over the age of 21 and asked USCIS to retain the 1990 priority date. USCIS refused.

Lorenzo Ong’s sister, a US citizen, filed an F4 visa petition for Lorenzo as the brother of a US citizen in 1981. At the time of the filing, Lorenzo had two daughters, ages 2 and 4. In 2002 (over twenty years later), the visa became available for Ong, but his daughters were over 21 years of age. Ong became a lawful permanent resident and filed a visa petition for his daughters. He requested that the girls retain the 1981 priority date, but USCIS refused.

The government argued that the change in the petitioner forecloses the possibility of automatic conversion and priority date retention, but the Ninth Circuit held that “the CSPA contains no indication that Congress intended the identity of the petitioner to be relevant. We do not find the fact that an automatically-converted visa petition may entail a new petitioner to be the kind of ‘rare and exceptional circumstance’ that renders the plain meaning of a statute impracticable.”

The De Osorio decision is an important opinion with far-reaching consequences that will likely benefit countless immigrant families. If you are interested in how this decision might benefit you, please contact The Nunez Firm to schedule a consultation. Managing attorney Jay Nunez will personally meet with you to help you better understand whether you or your child’s immigration case is positively affected.

Following scrutiny from a California lawmaker, the University of California is shutting down a controversial college program for illegal immigrants, though the reasons for the closure are not satisfying critics of the so-called National Dream University.

Critics of the plan of the so-called National Dream University (NDU) welcomed the decision to stop the program, though they weren’t satisfied with the reasons given for its closure.

“I believe the procedural issue gave UCLA an out, but it was public pressure and public scrutiny during such difficult economic times that ultimately turned Dream University into a nightmare for UCLA President and regents,” says California Assemblyman Tim Donnelly (R-Twin Peaks).

NDU earlier this summer began actively recruiting those seeking a college degree and a career in activism focused on immigration issues. Its website, which has since been taken down,  promoted “an educational opportunity to those who have demonstrated leadership and commitment to the immigrant and/or labor rights movements {with admission} open to everyone, regardless of their immigration status.”

Operated by the UCLA Labor Center and the National Labor College, NDU would have offered credit for online courses in immigrant rights and political advocacy. At about $2,500, tuition was thousands less than what legal residents pay to attend UCLA, one of California’s premier public universities.

WASHINGTON,D.C., August 23, 2012 – Ten officers and agents for United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) including ICE Agents Union President Chris Crane,today filed a lawsuit against Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton challenging the Obama Administration’s deferred action Directive and associated Prosecutorial Discretion Memorandum that prevent ICE officers, employees, and agents from fulfilling their sworn oath to uphold the law and defend the US Constitution.

The Directive and the earlier memorandum instruct ICE officers to refrain from placing certain aliens who are unlawfully present in the United States into removal proceedings. The Directive further instructs officers to take actions to facilitate the granting of deferred action to aliens who are unlawfully present in the United States.  The Directive, entitled “Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion with Respect to Individuals Who Came to the United States as Children,” also directs DHS personnel to grant employment authorization to certain beneficiaries of the Directive.

“Both the Directive and memorandum command our agents to violate federal law and our oaths to uphold federal law.  We are federal law enforcement officers who are being ordered to break the law.  This directive puts ICE agents and officers in a horrible position,” said Chris Crane, veteran ICE agent and President of the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council.

“The Directive is an extension of the DREAM Act, which was rejected by Congress, and aims to grant an amnesty to 1.7 million illegal aliens.  It violates federal immigration laws that require certain aliens to be placed in removal proceedings, it violates the Administrative Procedure Act, and it encroaches upon the legislative powers of Congress as defined in Article I of the United States Constitution,” said Kris Kobach, the attorney representing the plaintiffs.

“Any threat of harm to our nation’s immigration officers for enforcing the law is a threat against the livelihoods of average American workers,” said Roy Beck of NumbersUSA, the organization that is underwriting the suit. “Congress passes laws to determine how many and which citizens of other countries are allowed to enter U.S. job markets to compete with American workers.  Fortunately during this long period of high unemployment,Congress has refused to add further competition through amnesties that would give millions of illegal aliens access to the legal U.S. job market.  The Napolitano amnesty directive does the opposite.  If immigration agents are not allowed to enforce the laws as decided by Congress, the wages and jobs of American workers are at risk,” said Beck.

“This Directive not only circumvents Congress, it also infringes on the plaintiffs’ ability to fulfill the oath they made to uphold the laws of this country. The plaintiffs seek to prevent law enforcement officers from being forced to either violate federal law if they comply with the Directive or risk adverse employment action if they disobey the unlawful orders of the DHS Secretary,”said Kobach.