My Immigration Story

January 22, 2015 Matthew Bray

A series of posts by Daryanani & Bland staff sharing their own “immigration” stories—how they (or their families) came to America and/or how they came to work in the immigration law field.

My immigration story begins when I discovered my grandfather had an accent. As a child, I never recognized his Irish “brogue” (the word supposedly comes from the idea that the Irish sounded as if they spoke with a shoe in their mouths—“bróg” is the word for shoe in Irish), distinctive after more than fifty years of life in the US. I heard no difference at all in how he spoke compared to how my parents or grandmother (native “noo yawkahs”) spoke.

My grandfather was born in the Lanes of Limerick, Ireland in 1912. These same Lanes were made famous in Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, and there has long been speculation in my family that the hearse driver mentioned in the book was my own great-grandfather. Who knows—people love a good yarn! Certainly Summer Street in Limerick—where my grandfather grew up—is a short walk from the home described in McCourt’s book. My grandfather had a 6th grade education but was among the most intellectual and well-read people I ever met. As a child during the Irish Civil War, he ran across enemy lines to deliver messages to the Irish Republican Army fighting the Provisional Government over the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Following the war—as before it—he and his family struggled to survive in the urban slums, and it was no surprise that he would follow in the footsteps of millions of his countrymen and women and take the boat to America. He arrived in New York City at age sixteen in 1928. His name was Jack Bray.

President Obama’s Executive Action on Immigration Reform

November 21, 2014 Matthew Bray

Last night President Obama made a long-awaited major announcement to the nation regarding the administration of the immigration system. Though short, the announcement will have an enormous impact on millions of people living in the United States without legal status. US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) today published a summary of the impending changes which provides a few more details but highlights the fact that there is much to be done to put these changes into effect.

While all the details are yet to be released, the key piece of the announcement is a deferral of deportation for the millions of law-abiding undocumented immigrants who can prove that they were present in the US for at least five years, have US citizen or legal resident children, pass a background security check, and are willing to pay their “fair share” of taxes.

The President also announced some changes to the business immigration system designed to improve the chances for entrepreneurs and other business creators to remain in and enter the country in the future.

Before the announcement, the White House held a briefing with more details about each element of this plan. They include the expansion of the DACA program by eliminating the age limit (currently thirty-one years) for applicants who were brought to the US as children as well as expanding the period of validity of the deferred action to three years (currently two).

The plan also includes important tweaks to the enforcement priorities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE, the enforcement wing of immigration), clarifying that priority must be placed on the apprehension and removal of non-citizens who present a risk to national security and public safety. In addition, individuals who are the beneficiaries of approved immigrant petitions filed by their employers, but whose cases are held up in the severe immigrant visa backlogs, will be able to apply for adjustment of status. While this will not necessarily result in their Green Card being issued any faster, it may give them more flexibility in their career advancement.

While the details of each component of the President’s plan have not yet been fully released or digested by immigration lawyers and advocates (we are in the process of reviewing all the finer points of the President’s plan), it is clear that the announcement will have a significant effect on millions of people—authorized and undocumented immigrants alike. It is also clear that there will be a considerable pushback from Congress in January, when the Republicans take control of both chambers.

We will be tracking the President’s plan and its implementation, and will continue to post updates as they are available.

Travel Report: AILA in Seattle

October 7, 2014 Matthew Bray

This year I had the great opportunity to attend the annual fall conference of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), held in Seattle, Washington. The theme of the conference this fall was “Mastering the Art of Removal Defense,” and consisted of an all-day Continuing Legal Education program designed to provide attorneys with a review of the basics of representing immigrants in removal proceedings as well as the latest developments in the law. The program also included a report from several attorneys who had recently volunteered for the hundreds of mothers and children detained at the Artesia facility as well as an update on the lawsuits filed recently to try to shut down that facility and put a stop to the expedited deportation practices of the Obama administration in response to the border surge.

Opinion: Crisis at the Border

September 18, 2014 Matthew Bray

The surge in Central American children crossing the US-Mexico border over the last nine months has been all over the news, and has revealed some of the best—and worst—of this country. Surely, the increase in the number of children crossing the border has overwhelmed the US Border Patrol, who are far more used to arresting adults running from them than children running toward them, and are, moreover, entirely unequipped to care for and house these children. In many instances, these children have fled horrific gang violence and crushing poverty, and have come to the US in search of parents that they have not seen for most of their lives. This difficult situation has exposed the fault lines in American politics and given opportunities for people across the political spectrum to show their true colors.

The surge of new arrivals has provided fodder for Republican criticisms of President Obama as an “Amnesty President.” The president’s meager administrative measures to provide relief to the undocumented are blamed for fueling rumors that children will get a “permiso” if they can make it to the other side of the Rio Grande. (Calling Obama the “Amnesty President” is, of course, baseless posturing given the hard cold facts that many more people have been deported under the Obama administration than during any of his predecessors’ administrations, notwithstanding recent reports that deportations have actually decreased 20% in the last year compared to the year before).

Border Surge Update: Children Reuniting with their Parents

July 29, 2014 Matthew Bray

It is estimated that more than 57,000 unaccompanied minors have crossed the US-Mexico border in the last several months, overwhelming the border agents and immigration courts seeking to stem the tide, as well as communities and legal resources seeking to help them. Most of these children are fleeing severe poverty, and many are fleeing gang and drug violence. Many of these children are also coming to reunite with their parents, immigrants living without legal status in the US. ABC News features a story of one young woman from Guatemala, 19-year old Washington, D.C. resident Cindy Monge, who made the journey herself when she was only 11 years old. Like many of the children coming now, Cindy had never met her father and rarely saw her mother when she left home in 2006 to reunite with her family.

The New York Times reports that a “vast majority” of the children coming to the US now are coming, at least in part, to reunite with their families. According to the article, Government officials are aware that many of the sponsors are also living illegally in the US. Since there is no requirement that a sponsor taking in a child be lawfully present in the US, many of these parents have quickly reclaimed their children. According to the article, those children who are not claimed remain in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is frantically scouring the country looking for suitable shelters to house the children as they process asylum claims and go through removal proceedings.

AP: “U.S. passport and visa database crashes due to an 'unspecified glitch' leaving millions of travelers stranded”

July 24, 2014 Matthew Bray

The Associated Press is reporting that the Department of State’s database for issuing US passports, visas, and other travel and identity documents has crashed. There is no indication yet of the cause of the crash, but travelers and others abroad applying for these documents are warned of “major delays.” According to the AP, “potentially millions” of US citizens and international travelers in need of visas are affected by the problem, which “is worldwide and not specific to any particular country, citizenship document, or visa category.” The State Department’s Consular Consolidated Database is used to verify that background checks on applicants are conducted and to print the visas and other documents.

SECOND UPDATE 7/31/14: The main travel page of the State Department’s website is providing daily updates as they work towards a resolution. They have added a FAQ page which provides more extensive information on the problem and the steps they are taking to process visa applications faster. They’ve also announced that during this period, priority is being given to immigrant visa processing. As for nonimmigrant visa processing (i.e., the processing of temporary work and travel visas), the site states: “Some Embassies and Consulates may temporarily limit or reschedule nonimmigrant visa interview appointments until more system resources become available to process these new applications.” Therefore, applicants for nonimmigrant visas are encouraged to give themselves plenty of time to process their visa stamps, and to expect significant delays until the visa system is back up and running at full capacity. The Wall Street Journal has detailed some of the difficulties these technical problems have caused.

Television Review: Borderland

June 20, 2014 Matthew Bray

Borderland, a new series produced for Al Jazeera America, examines our current immigration crisis by following six Americans from different parts of the country and walks of life as they trace the steps of migrants who died crossing the border. The Borderland experience promises that each of the six participants--all of whom hold strong opinions regarding immigration, both pro and against--will be changed forever by the journey, and the series certainly delivers on that promise. In the process, the show provides a more informed and nuanced perspective on the debate about our immigration policies by painting a picture of some of the human cost of those polices beyond the rhetoric and statistics.

The six Americans are: Alison Melder, Republican staffer in the Arkansas State Legislature; Alex Seel, a Brooklyn-based photographer and artist; Gary Larsen, who employs migrant workers on his Washington State asparagus farm; Kishana Holland, a fashion blogger and publicist from Las Vegas; Lis-Marie Alvarado, daughter of Nicaraguan immigrants and an activist and community organizer on behalf of day laborers in Florida; and Randy Stufflebeam, Vice Chairman of the Constitution Party, which opposes amnesty for undocumented immigrants.

Asylum for Transgender People

May 16, 2014 Matthew Bray

Sanctuary, or asylum, is a very old legal concept that refers to the protection that a country or other sovereign provides to a national of another country fleeing war or persecution. Unlike most of US immigration law, asylum is unique in that it is derived from international law, including the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention), which provides a definition of refugee and sets forth the principle of non-refoulement. Under the refugee convention and US asylum law, a refugee is a person who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.”

The principle of non-refoulement is the principle that a country may not return a refugee to countries where they would face persecution based on one of these protected grounds. Another international treaty is the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), to which the US is also a signatory, that prohibits returning a person to a country where there are “substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”

Do I Need an Immigration Attorney?

March 28, 2014 Matthew Bray

Many people ask themselves this question when considering applying for work visas, Green Cards, or other immigration benefits. At first glance the immigration forms and instructions on the US Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) website seem relatively straightforward. Some even may have heard stories from friends or colleagues who successfully applied without hiring a lawyer. In this post, we consider different kinds of immigration benefits (along with more complicated deportation cases) and the reasons why one may wish to hire an attorney to assist them in the process.

Of course, as a lawyer working for a boutique immigration law firm, I’m biased; however, I also write from the perspective of a lawyer who has seen what happens when applicants attempt to apply pro se (without legal representation) for cases that are far from as simple as they seem. In a separate future post, we will discuss the dangers of hiring an “Immigration Consultant” or “Notario” and also the unique ethical obligations of attorneys.

First, let’s be clear: There is no legal requirement to be represented by a lawyer in immigration petitions and applications. A petition or application filed pro se will not automatically be rejected by a USCIS Service Center simply because it was not prepared by an attorney. Such petitions or applications will be subject to the same review and adjudication process that others filed by attorneys go through.