The Washington Post: “Louisiana isn’t letting immigrants get married”

A new state law passed earlier this year in Louisiana has effectively made it illegal for thousands of immigrants to get married. Last year, after losing the fight over the legalization of gay marriage, legislators in Louisiana claimed undocumented workers—and even terrorists—had discovered they could exploit Louisiana’s marriage laws to gain citizenship, leading to a so-called epidemic of “marriage fraud.” In response, legislators passed a law stating that any foreign-born person wanting to get married in Louisiana must produce both a birth certificate and an unexpired visa (although a federal court ruled that marriage licenses cannot be denied based on immigration status).

The law has effectively prevented undocumented immigrants as well as many legal immigrants from marrying in the state. Louisiana is home to thousands of refugees, predominantly Vietnamese and Laotians who received asylum in the 1970s and 1980s after escaping war and communism, and even though these Louisianans often have Green Cards and even US citizenship, many have no access to their original birth documents. Xanamane, a US permanent resident in the process of applying for citizenship who was born in a village near Savannakhet, Laos, in 1975, the year the country fell to communism, never received a birth certificate. Although Xanamane and his partner, US-born citizen Marilyn Cheng, were married in a Buddhist temple in 1997, like many in the local Laotian community, they never obtained an official marriage license. When Xanamane was diagnosed with cancer this summer and was asked to provide evidence of his marriage, they attempted to get married in Louisiana and were twice turned away, even though they presented Xanamane’s Green Card, refugee documents, and driver’s license, “They told me I have to go back to Laos and get my birth certificate,” Xanamane tells the Washington Post. “But there isn’t any birth certificate there, either.” The couple opted for a last-minute courthouse wedding in Montgomery, Alabama, a seven-hour drive away, which takes appointments for courthouse marriage ceremonies and accepts Green Cards as proof of identity.  

Since the law went into effect in January this year, six to eight couples each month have been turned down for a marriage license in Orleans Parish, the Times-Picayune reports, demonstrating how the law has affected marriage applicants. “My parents don't have birth certificates. They came over as refugees,” Minh Thanh Nguyen, executive director of the Vietnamese Young Leaders of New Orleans, which works with immigrant communities, tells the Times-Picayune. “They are born in rural areas and, I mean, who is going to produce a birth certificate for you? That is just a reality of immigrant communities. They come from rural areas…It's not as formal as the United States."

Only individuals born in the US or a US territory can apply to a judge for a waiver for the birth certificate requirement, but that is not an option for foreign-born applicants. "I think it is going to get worse and worse," State Senator Conrad Appel, who fought the bill’s restriction on immigrants, tells the Times-Picayune. "If people want to get married, I want them to get married."

The legislation's sponsor, Representative Valarie Hodges, said the law’s purpose is to prevent marriage fraud. Hodges told the House Civil Law committee that she introduced the bill because “one of her friends had accidentally married a man who was also married to someone else.” But other supporters of the legislation were clear what impact it would have on immigrants. Gene Mills, the leader of the Louisiana Family Forum organization, told a committee he backed the legislation because it "prevents persons who are in the United States illegally from marrying in Louisiana."  

"If you are trying to use marriage as an immigration (regulation) tool, I think that's a mistake," Appel told his fellow Senators before they voted on the legislation last year. There are now discussions about introducing a bill to allow legal immigrants to get a marriage license without a birth certificate, but the earliest this would happen is in the next legislative session starting in April 2017. Fernando Lopez, a community organizer at the New Orleans Center for Racial Justice, says the organization is filing a lawsuit on behalf of those denied marriage licenses.  

Wall Street Journal: “Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups”

A new non-partisan study on entrepreneurship shows that immigrants started more than half of current US-based startups valued at $1 billion or more, lending credibility to the claim that immigration benefits the US economy. The study, from the National Foundation for American Policy, a non-partisan think tank based in Virginia, shows that immigrants play a “key role in creating new, fast-growing companies.” Immigrants, the study shows, have started more than half (forty-four of eighty-seven) of America’s startup companies valued at $1 billion dollars or more; moreover, immigrants are key members of management or product development teams in over seventy percent of these companies. Using public data and information from the companies, the study found that among the billion dollar startup companies, immigrant founders have created an average of approximately 760 jobs per company in the US, and the collective value of the forty-four immigrant-founded companies is $168 billion, close to half the value of the stock markets of Russia or Mexico.

India was the leading country of origin for the immigrant founders of billion dollar companies with fourteen, followed by Canada and the United Kingdom with eight each, Israel with seven, Germany with four, China with three, France with two, Ireland with two, and twelve other countries with one. The three highest valued US companies with immigrant founders include car-hailing service Uber Technologies, data-software company Palantir Technologies, and rocket maker Space Exploration Technologies.

Stuart Anderson, the author of the study and the foundation’s executive director, says the findings show that the US economy could benefit even more from foreign-born entrepreneurs if it were easier for them to obtain visas, since currently it can be difficult for foreign-born entrepreneurs to grow their companies because of the many difficulties and delays in obtaining work visas and Green Cards. The study argues that a “startup visa” to enable foreign nationals who start companies and create jobs would be an important addition to the US immigration system. “Who is going to invest in a company if the founder of the company may not be able to stay in the U.S.?” Anderson said in the Wall Street Journal. Many start-ups also face problems hiring new personnel because of the low quota of H-1B temporary visas, which have been decided by random lottery in recent years and is thus not a reliable category for skilled workers.

Additionally, the study argues that new immigration restrictions would likely prevent many future cutting-edge companies from being established in the United States:

Based on an examination of the biographies of company founders, if S. 2394, a bill by Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL), had been in effect over the past decade, few if any of the billion dollar startup companies with an immigrant founder would have been started in the United States. That measure would impose a variety of hurdles before any foreign national could be employed by a U.S. company on an H-1B visa (typically the only practical way for a high-skilled foreign national to work in America), including, in most cases, working at least 10 years abroad before obtaining a visa in America.

While tech leaders including Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates have called for increasing the number of H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers, critics argue that many industries that want more H-1B visas are simply looking for cheaper foreign labor.  Mother Jones examined companies who allegedly used the H-1B program to ultimately outsource jobs from US workers, and a recent lawsuit charged that Disney colluded to replace US workers with H-1B foreign workers. The EB-JOBS Act of 2015, introduced last July as one solution for entrepreneurs, proposed to provide a two-year Green Card that would be revoked if certain financial and job-creation requirements are not met, has not proceeded because of the standstill in immigration reform.

BuzzFeed: “Welcome to America — Now Spy on Your Friends”

The FBI has been pressuring Muslim immigrants who face long delays when applying for permanent residency and US citizenship to become informants in order to expedite their cases, a BuzzFeed News investigation alleges.

The investigation, based on government and court documents, official complaints, interviews with immigrants, immigration and civil rights lawyers, and former special agents, finds that pressuring Muslim applicants to become informants in order to have their cases expedited—or, conversely, threatening to deport them if they do not comply—violates the FBI’s own rules regarding informants. These rules are detailed in the “Attorney General’s Guidelines Regarding the Use of FBI Confidential Human Sources” and forbid FBI agents from making any promises or commitments regarding the “alien status of any person or the right of any person to enter or remain in the United States.”   

Moreover, according to these guidelines, agents must explicitly warn potential informants that the FBI cannot assist with their immigration status in any way. BuzzFeed finds the opposite has happened:

Mandated to enforce the law, the bureau has assumed a powerful but unacknowledged role in a very different realm: decisions about the legal status of immigrants — in particular, Muslim immigrants. First the immigration agency ties up their green card applications for years, even a decade, without explanation, then FBI agents approach the applicants with a loaded offer: Want to get your papers? Start reporting to us about people you know.

BuzzFeed shares the story of one Pakistani software programmer named A.M. (he did not want his name used), who had spent seven years attempting to obtain a Green Card. After a series of interviews, three encounters with the FBI, and unexplained bureaucratic delays, with his work visa shortly expiring and no apparent end in site, he decided to file suit against the Department of Homeland Security, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and the FBI.  Afterwards at another meeting with the FBI he was asked to write down names of people he thought were terrorists. When he replied that he didn’t know any terrorists nor was he aware of any suspicious activity, he reported to BuzzFeed that one of the agents told him: “We know about your immigration problems…And we can help you with that.” The catch: he had to make secret reports on his community, friends, and family.

He refused, and shortly thereafter immigration authorities revoked A.M.’s existing work visa and FBI agents turned up unannounced at his home and workplace. Soon A.M. and his family sold their possessions and left the US, where he had lived for seventeen years. 

The goal for the FBI, BuzzFeed reports, is to take advantage of many immigrants’ desperation no matter how useful their supposed “terrorist” contacts would be or if they even have any reliable intelligence about terrorism. This wide-scale approach to intelligence gathering is not even effective according to Michael German, a former FBI agent who is now a national security expert at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. He told BuzzFeed. “All of this investigative effort is against people who are not suspected,” he said, of “terrorism or any other criminal activity.” He added: “This becomes an obstacle to real security.”

Many delays for Muslim immigrants begin with the Controlled Application Review and Resolution Program (CARRP), a once secret USCIS program designed to identify security risks among applicants for visas, asylum, Green Cards, and naturalization. Established in 2008, CARRP targets a wide range of applicants, including not only suspected or known terrorists, but also for applicants based on a range of criteria, including geographical factors, knowledge of someone who is under surveillance, whether any money transfers have been made abroad, having worked for a foreign government, or even certain foreign language skills.

With CARRP, critics contend, the FBI can easily influence the immigration process. Indeed a 2013 report by the ACLU found that immigration authorities “are instructed to follow FBI direction as to whether to deny, approve, or hold in abeyance (potentially indefinitely) an application for an immigration benefit.”

Christopher Bentley, a USCIS spokesperson, told BuzzFeed that each applicant’s file is reviewed and decided by immigration officials alone (not law enforcement) on a “case-by-case” basis. The FBI’s National Press Office said they couldn’t comment to BuzzFeed on the specific strategies and tactics used to recruit informants.

While many have criticized the FBI’s use of informants within Muslim communities, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the FBI believed recruiting informants within the Muslim community was crucial to preventing future terrorist attacks. The Heritage Foundation details at least eighty-one potential terrorist attacks they say have been thwarted since 9/11 and notes that the use of informants was key to preventing many of the attacks. The authors stated: “Both government outreach efforts and the vigilance of Muslim communities against terrorism have proven vital in protecting the US” while noting that “more must be done to enhance mutual trust and partnerships between government, intelligence, and law enforcement and Muslim communities.” And after the recent San Bernardino terror attacks, Edward Gernat, a supervisory special agent for the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in San Diego, explaining how the FBI operates in general, told the San Diego Union-Tribune: “Our No. 1 goal is to prevent acts of terrorism…We will use any law enforcement tool legally available to us to prevent an act.”

USCIS Announces Revised Procedures for Determining Visa Availability for Certain Applicants Waiting to File for Adjustment of Status

US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) along with the Department of State (DOS) is revising the procedures for determining visa availability for applicants waiting to file for employment-based or family-sponsored preference adjustment of status. The revision in the process means that certain people will be eligible to file their adjustment of status applications (and the interim benefits that go along with that filing including work cards and travel permission) earlier than the date their Green Card priority date becomes current. USCIS states that the "revised process will better align with procedures DOS uses for foreign nationals who seek to become U.S. permanent residents by applying for immigrant visas at U.S. consulates and embassies abroad."
 
Implementing President Obama's November 2014 executive actions on immigration—as detailed in the White House report, Modernizing and Streamlining Our Legal Immigration System for the 21st Century—the revised process will enable foreign nationals (and their spouses) to obtain work cards and travel permission faster than they might have, and enable DOS to more accurately predict overall immigrant visa demand and determine the cut-off dates for visa issuance published in the monthly Visa Bulletin. All this, according to USCIS, will "help ensure that the maximum number of immigrant visas are issued annually as intended by Congress, and minimize month-to-month fluctuations in Visa Bulletin final action dates."

What Is the Visa Bulletin?

Every month the DOS publishes the current immigrant visa availability in a monthly Visa Bulletin. This Visa Bulletin indicates when statutorily limited visas are available to prospective immigrants based on their individual priority date for both the family-based and employment-based preference categories. The priority date is generally the date when the applicant’s relative or employer properly filed the immigrant visa petition on the applicant’s behalf with USCIS; or, if a labor certification was required to be filed with the applicant’s immigrant visa petition, the priority date is when the labor certification application was accepted for processing by the Department of Labor. Availability of an immigrant visa means eligible applicants are able to take the final steps in the process of becoming US permanent residents—namely, applying for an immigrant visa at a US Embassy or Consulate abroad or else applying for an adjustment of status to permanent residency if in the US.

What is Changing in the Visa Bulletin?

Effective in the October Visa Bulletin, there are now two charts per visa preference category:

• Application Final Action Dates (dates when immigrant visas may finally be issued); and
• Dates for Filing Applications (earliest dates when applicants may be able to apply for adjustment of status).

Applicants can use the charts to determine when they are eligible to file their Form I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status. USCIS states that to determine whether additional visas are available they will compare the number of visas available for the remainder of the fiscal year with:

• Documentarily qualified visa applicants;
• Pending adjustment of status applications; and
• Historical drop-off rate, including denials, withdrawals, and abandonments.

Who is Affected?

The October Visa Bulletin introduces the new adjustment filing date chart and allows many people who have been waiting for their Green Card priority date to become current to now file for the adjustment of status. Significantly the "Dates for Filing" for China-born and Indian-born nationals in the EB-2 category is May 1, 2014 and July 1, 2011, respectively, which is years ahead of these Green Card priority dates (January 1, 2012 and May 1, 2005, respectively). The changes also affect family-based visa applicants. Therefore, someone who has been waiting for a priority date for their Green Card may be able to apply for adjustment of status earlier. They will not get their Green Card unless the Green Card priority date becomes current but they will enjoy the benefits of being an adjustment applicant, namely the interim work card and travel permission that they can keep while their adjustment of status application remains pending.

For those eligible to apply, USCIS has more information about filing the adjustment of status. One of the most sought after benefits and advantages to filing adjustment of status is that applicants can concurrently file employment authorization and travel permission applications. An experienced immigration attorney will be able to advise if foreign nationals are eligible to file for adjustment of status and what the next steps would involve.

UPDATE SEPTEMBER 25, 2015: The Department of State (DOS) has today unexpectedly published an updated and revised October 2015 Visa Bulletin. This bulletin supersedes the bulletin for October 2015 that was originally published on September 9, 2015, and the revised dates affect priority and filing dates for certain nationalities. US Citizenship & Immigration Services explains:

Following consultations with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Dates for Filing Applications for some categories in the Family-Sponsored and Employment-Based preferences have been adjusted to better reflect a timeframe justifying immediate action in the application process. The Dates for Filing Applications sections on pages 4 and 6, which have been adjusted, have been identified in bold type and highlighted.

Applicants are advised to use the revised chart when determining eligibility to file adjustment of status applications. Applicants are advised to consult with qualified immigration attorneys for questions about eligibility and the revised visa bulletin. We will post more information as we receive it.

UPDATE SEPTEMBER 8, 2015: Immigrants are protesting the amendments to the October Visa Bulletin by sending flowers to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Inspired by the nonviolent protest methods of Mahatma Gandhi, immigrants are sending bouquets and letters of protest decrying the bulletin reversal that affected thousands of excited applicants who were preparing to file their adjustment of status applications. Many applicants spent between $2,000 to $5,000 to prepare for the applications, not to mention countless hours and often days tracking down often difficult to obtain paperwork.
 
"We started making plans," Sridhar Katta, a mechanical engineer and M.B.A. who lives in Seattle with his wife and sixteen-year-old twin boys, said to CNN. "All our hopes were dashed within a matter of days." So far the Department of Homeland Security has only issued vague comments about the sudden turn-around. One DHS spokeswoman told CNN: "Further analysis of a recently published Visa Bulletin, intended to improve the issuance of green cards, showed that some of the new filing dates in that bulletin did not accurately reflect visa availability." Whatever happens, one can only hope that the sweet smell of the flowers will remove the sour taste left in our mouths.

UPDATE SEPTEMBER 22, 2015: In the latest Kafka-esq development in the ongoing saga stemming from the October 2015 Visa Bulletin updates and revisions that have affected thousands of immigrants, USCIS announced that beginning with the November 2015 DOS Visa Bulletin, if USCIS "determines that there are more immigrant visas available for a fiscal year than there are known applicants for such visas" they will state on the USCIS website that applicants may use the "Dates for Filing Visa Applications" chart. Otherwise, immigrants will need to use the the "Application Final Action Date" to determine when to file their adjustment of status applications. USCIS states that they anticipate making this determination each month and posting the relevant chart on their website within one week of visa bulletin publication.

AILA: Delays in Production of Work Authorization and Green Cards

The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) is reporting that there are delays in the issuance of employment authorization and permanent resident cards (aka Green Cards) after approvals of I-765 and I-485 applications. US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) has confirmed through AILA that because the card production facility in Corbin, KY is undergoing maintenance, all card production work has been transferred to the facility in Lee's Summit, MO, resulting in a production backlog. Recipients may therefore not receive their cards until two to three weeks after application approval. USCIS anticipates that the backlog will be resolved in September 2015.