On Halloween, 2017, an Uzbek immigrant purposely killed eight people in New York City with a rental truck he rented from The Home Depot as he drove down a bike path in lower Manhattan and mowed down several people before crashing into a school bus. Reports indicated...
Year: 2017
Trump’s Travel Ban 3.0 : The Latest Version, Effective 10/18/2017
Can someone tell me the difference between an “executive order” and a “presidential proclamation”? I don’t think I learned that in law school, and for sure it was not on the bar exam. Frankly, before September 24, 2017, I would likely have used the phrases...
The Dreamers’ Nightmare (DACA)
On September 5, 2017, the Trump Administration announced that it would be ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”) program. As if the 2016 presidential election post-mortem wasn’t bad enough, now this. This change of policy impacts almost 800,000...
Increase in ICE Sweeps in Saratoga Springs, NY: More Proof of a Broken Immigration System
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) has now conducted two (2) sweeps in my hometown of Saratoga Springs, New York. “If you’re in this country illegally and you committed a crime by entering this country, you should...
Changes Potentially Coming to the H-1B Visa Program: Another Executive Order
Yet another executive order related to immigration has come from the Trump Administration, this time potentially impacting the H-1B nonimmigrant visa program. Ugh. On April 18, 2017, President Trump signed an Executive Order “Buy American and Hire American.” The...
H-1B Filing Season has Come and Gone : The Economics of Immigration
This is becoming a terrible annual ritual. That is, April 1 has once again come and gone, a new H-1B filing season was upon us, and on April 7, 2017, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) once again announced that it had reached the congressionally...
U.S.C.I.S. Proposes the International Entrepreneur Rule
I originally wrote about this last Fall, but given the current events in Washington, the general chaotic environment that my colleagues and I are practicing in, and the great concern that clients are showing about their future prospects of remaining in the United...
It’s H-1B Visa Filing Season, but is it “Cheap Labor”?
Here we go again. The start of the H-1B nonimmigrant visa filing season is once again upon us. And once again, immigration practitioners around the country are having difficult conversations with their clients who wish to hire foreign nationals into what are called...
Super Bowl Ads Rebuke Xenophobia and Sexism
Two years ago, Coca-Cola’s 60 second Super Bowl advertisement featuring people singing a multilingual version of “America the Beautiful” sparked a national discussion of immigration and diversity. (Click here to read my comments in response to the bigotry that...
“Should I become a U.S. Citizen?” The Case for Naturalization and Trump’s Executive Order
Not everyone who is a permanent resident becomes a U.S. citizen (i.e., naturalizes), nor is there any legal requirement that one must naturalize. However, permanent residents who naturalize gain important benefits, not the least of which (these days) is...