The Washington Post: "Appeals court strikes down proof-of-citizenship voting requirement in 3 states"

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has reversed a prior ruling that allowed certain state US election agencies to require a proof-of-citizenship for a mail-in federal voter registration form used for November’s election in Kansas, Alabama, and Georgia. To date, Kansas was the only state to actually enforce the rule, and in oral arguments, civil rights groups claimed that if permitted the ID provision could potentially disenfranchise tens of thousands of US citizens applying to vote in Kansas without required papers. 

The requirement entailed a “demand to show documentation such as a birth certificate, passport or naturalization papers instead of accepting signed and sworn affirmation of citizenship to register to vote in federal races.” Two US Appeals Court judges, Judith W. Rogers and Stephen F. Williams, granted a preliminary injunction and the case will go back down to the district court.

For native and naturalized citizens, one of the greatest rights one possesses is the right to vote for public officers; however, voter requirements, including providing a state-issued ID or proof of citizenship, have been considered by some an undue burden and discriminatory. The Obama administration has waged ongoing battles with conservative lawyers and Republican lawmakers over voter requirements and who will be eligible to vote in this year’s presidential election, and the administration has asked federal appeals courts to repeal new voting laws passed in Texas, North Carolina, and other states. Chris Carson, president of the League of Women Voters, who brought the suit in this case, says voting should be made easier, not harder: “We are grateful to the court of appeals for stopping this thinly veiled discrimination in its tracks,” she tells The Washington Post. “All eligible Americans deserve the opportunity to register and vote without obstacles.”

In this case, voter groups sued after what they called an “unauthorized and unilateral decision” earlier this year by Brian D. Newby, executive director of the US Election Assistance Commission, to grant the three states’ requests to change the federal registration form to include new ID requirements to reportedly combat voter fraud. In the 2-1 ruling, US Appeals Court Judge A. Raymond Randolph, disagreed with his fellow judges and agreed with Newby stating that it would “raise serious constitutional doubts” if the federal elections assistance body prevented a state from “enforcing its voter qualifications.” Kansas Secretary of State Kris W. Kobach, who defended the voter ID requirement in court, claimed that “any harm to potential voters was speculative.” The final result of this case remains to be seen as it is now back with the district court, though Kobach stated previously that if the state were to lose it would retroactively allow voters to cast ballots in federal races if their applications were canceled solely because they did not document citizenship.

New York Times: "A Mother’s Love? Of Course. Her Citizenship? Not So Fast"

Twenty-seven countries around the world do not allow or limit the ability of mothers to pass on their citizenship to their children and a non-citizen spouse, according to data from the United Nations. In countries such as Iran and Qatar, for example, restrictive laws state that women cannot pass citizenship onto their children even if the children are left stateless, while in Nepal or the United Arab Emirates, there are exceptions if the father is unknown or stateless himself. Such laws restricting citizenship can potentially leave children and stateless parents without identity documents, access to education, health care, or employment. The New York Times explains:

The laws are not just a measure of the unequal treatment of women. They can also have grievous consequences for the children who, as citizens of nowhere, may be kept from being able to go to school. Syrian refugees born in Lebanon, for instance, may be in especially dire straits because so many of their fathers are dead or missing; Lebanon and Syria are among the 27 countries, and Lebanon is among the most restrictive.

While some countries will let a woman pass on citizenship when she is unmarried—and prevent her from doing so when married—advocacy group Equality Now says this reinforces the belief that “a woman, once married, loses her independent identity[.]”

Examining the UN data and other sources, the Pew Research Center found that these types of laws and policies preventing women from transmitting citizenship were present in most countries around the world sixty years ago. Gradually countries have revised their laws, and recently in the past five years, multiple countries, including Kenya, Monaco, Yemen and Senegal, have decided to change their laws to allow women to transmit citizenship. Only last month, Suriname changed its law and now allows women to transmit citizenship to children and non-citizen spouses.

Such restrictions regarding citizenship are most common in the Middle East and North Africa, where twelve out of twenty countries have restrictive nationality laws. In Jordan, the law prohibits women married to non-citizens from passing citizenship to their children. This potentially affects the 84,711 Jordanian women who are married to non-citizens and their 338,000 children, a figure from a recent statement from the country’s Interior Ministry. Laws in Saudi Arabia prevent women married to non-citizens from transferring citizenship to their children; moreover, they are required to obtain government permission prior to marrying a non-citizen, a rule that also applies to Saudi men who want to marry a non-citizen from outside the Gulf Cooperation Council member states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates). Eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa have laws or policies limiting women’s ability to pass citizenship to their children, even though three of these countries—Burundi, Liberia and Togo—have “enshrined the principle of gender equality” in their constitutions. Men in these listed countries have few if any barriers in transmitting citizenship to their children and non-citizen spouse.

In the Asia-Pacific region five countries have laws or policies limiting women in their ability to pass citizenship to their families. Two in the Americas have similarly restrictive laws, including in the Bahamas, where the law “makes it easier for men with foreign spouses than for women with foreign spouses to transmit citizenship to their children,” according to a State Department Human Rights Report.    

The United Nations tracks citizenship laws as part of its mandate to monitor stateless populations, particularly stateless children who cannot acquire nationality from either parent. While in most circumstances children can obtain nationality from their father, if the father is stateless, the child may also be at risk to become stateless. With nearly one in one hundred people displaced from their homes, the highest amount since World War II, stateless peoples and children are especially vulnerable and at risk.

Go, America!

Last week Daniele, one of our paralegals, and her husband became US citizens. To celebrate this momentous occasion, we had some good old-fashioned American cake and decorated the office with lots of US flags. Her oath ceremony in New York City was conducted by the first Filipino-American Judge, the Hon. Lorna Schofield, who during the ceremony shared her own immigration story with the 160 oath-takers from forty-seven different nations. "Although the whole procedure took about three hours, the wait was totally worth it," Daniele says. "I am so happy to finally be a US citizen." Congratulations, and enjoy that super delicious cake, because that's what America is pretty much all about!

Wall Street Journal: “What American Citizenship Makes Possible”

Immigration is a vital part of our nation because people come to the United States to not only make a better life for themselves and their family, but to become American citizens, according to General Colin Powell, the former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He says of his own immigration experience and his professional achievements:

Only in America could the son of two poor Jamaican immigrants become the first African-American, the youngest person and the first ROTC graduate from a public university to hold those positions, among many other firsts. My parents arrived—one at the Port of Philadelphia, the other at Ellis Island—in search of economic opportunity, but their goal was to become American citizens, because they knew what that made possible.

Saying that “America stands to benefit…as much as, if not more than, the immigrants themselves,” he goes onto refute common misconceptions about immigrants: neighborhoods with greater concentrations of foreign-born immigrants have lower rates of crime and violence than comparable nonimmigrant neighborhoods; foreign-born men between ages eighteen and thirty-nine are jailed at one-quarter the rate of native-born American men of the same age; immigrants today are learning English at the same rate or faster than earlier generations; first-generation immigrants are less likely to die from cardiovascular disease or cancer than native-born people, and experience fewer chronic health conditions, have lower infant-mortality and obesity rates, and have a longer life expectancy.

General Powell’s own parents met and married in the US while working in the garment industry, making $50 to $60 a week. General Powell was educated in the New York City public education system, from kindergarten through to Morris High School in the South Bronx and City College of New York—back when tuition was free—and experienced great success in his military career. He writes that while some countries including Japan and Russia worry that population decline threatens their economies, America benefits from immigrants’ energy, creativity, and drive. “We are all immigrants, wave after wave over several hundred years,” he writes. “And every wave makes us richer: in cultures, in language and food, in music and dance, in intellectual capacity. We should treasure this immigrant tradition, and we should reform our laws to guarantee it.”

For those interested in naturalization, US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) has a helpful guide titled “10 Steps to Naturalization: Understanding the Process of Becoming a U.S. Citizen.” In this guide, USCIS explains who is eligible to apply for naturalization, steps to file Form N-400, Application for Naturalization, information about the process when the N-400 is pending, and, of course, what happens after approval, including taking the Oath of Allegiance and the naturalization ceremony.

USCIS Proposes to Raise Fees on I-129, I-140, I-90 and Other Applications by an Average of 21 percent This Summer

US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) proposed earlier this month to raise certain fees for petitions and applications, and is currently accepting comments for the required sixty-day comment period. USCIS conducts biennial fee reviews, and the latest review indicated that a twenty-one percent average fee increase is necessary to recover operating costs and to maintain “adequate service.” As the money obtained from USCIS filing fees accounted for ninety-four percent of the USCIS budget last fiscal year with the remaining funding coming from other fee accounts and a small Congressional appropriation fund, USCIS estimates a shortfall of $560 million if fees are not raised.

USCIS has “authority to set its IEFA fees at a level that recovers the full cost of providing adjudication and naturalization services. This includes the cost of providing services to asylum applicants or other immigrants without charge and any additional costs associated with the administration of the fees collected.” USCIS last adjusted its fees in November 2010. Some notable fee increases include:

I-129

Currently set at $325, USCIS is proposing to raise the fee for this form, used for such common non-immigrant visa petitions as H-1Bs, L-1s, and O-1s, among others, by over one hundred dollars to $460.

I-140

USCIS wants to raise the fee for this immigrant petition from $580 to $700.

I-90

This application to replace the permanent resident (Green Card) card will go from $365 to $455.

N-400

USCIS proposes to establish a three-level fee tier for this Application for Naturalization, which is very popular these days as people prepare for voting in the upcoming election. First, USCIS wants to increase the standard fee from $595 to $640. Second, DHS would "charge no fee to an applicant who meets the requirements of sections 328 or 329 of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (INA) with respect to military service and applicants with approved fee waivers." Third, USCIS would charge a reduced fee of $320 for "applicants with family income greater than 150 percent and not more than 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines."

Form I-924A for EB-5 Investor Visa

Rather than a fee increase, USCIS wants to establish a new fee of $3,035 to recover the full cost of processing this form. While approved EB-5 Regional Centers are required to file Form I-924A annually, there is currently no filing fee and as a result, USCIS does not fully recover the processing costs associated with such filings.

What Will Customers Get in Return for These Fee Increases?

The last time USCIS raised fees, they committed to certain goals and performance improvements toward “increasing accountability, providing better customer service, and increasing efficiency.” USCIS claims some improvements since that time but acknowledges that the “agency has experienced elevated processing times” which have led to backlogs; however, they believe that the fee increases this year would increase “resources to fund the personnel needed to improve case processing, reduce backlogs, and achieve processing times that are in line with the commitments in the FY 2007 Fee Rule, which USCIS is still committed to achieving.”  

"When USCIS increases filing fees, our hope is that they will use the increased revenue to improve efficiency and reduce processing times," Justin Storch with the Council for Global Immigration tells the Latin Post, reflecting sentiments shared by many immigration practitioners. Public comments for the fees increase are scheduled to close July 5.