Legalization

Report says foreign-born workers gained jobs after recession

Published on Sun, Nov 07, 2010

Officials with the American Immigration Council rejected the idea that employment among foreign-born and native-born workers was a zero-sum game.

“Immigrant and native-born workers are not interchangeable, nor do they compete with each other for some fixed number of jobs in the US economy,’’ said Mary Giovagnoli, of Immigration Policy Center, a rights group.

Published in the Boston Globe

Fast Facts on Immigration in the "Super Tuesday" States

Released on Tue, Jan 29, 2008

The impact of Latinos and immigrants in the voting booths and on state coffers will get increased attention as "Super Tuesday" approaches. Poll after poll shows that a candidate’s stand on immigration and the tone of the immigration debate are important to Latinos.

View Release

Immigration laws: Legislation could be catastrophic to agriculture businesses

Published on Sun, Feb 13, 2011

If all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Florida the state would lose $43.9 billion in economic activity, $19.5 billion in gross state product, and approximately 262,436 jobs, according to the left-leaning American Immigration Council, a research organization that studies immigrants and immigration policy.

Published in the Naples News

Legal Action Center Staff

Emily Creighton, Staff Attorney
202-507-7500 ext. 7505 ([email protected])

Emily Creighton is a staff attorney at the Legal Action Center. She has represented plaintiffs and amicus curiae before the Board of Immigration Appeals and numerous federal courts. Ms. Creighton graduated cum laude from American University Washington College of Law in 2006. Prior to law school, she served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine.

Melissa Crow, Director
202-507-7500 ext. 7523 ([email protected])

Melissa Crow is the Director of the Legal Action Center. Ms. Crow served as the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy, and previously as a Senior Policy Advisor, in the Office of Immigration and Border Security at the Department of Homeland Security. Prior to joining DHS, she was a partner with Brown, Goldstein & Levy in Baltimore, Maryland, where she developed a thriving immigration practice and undertook litigation to protect immigrants' rights in the workplace. As the past co-chair of the Worksite Enforcement Committee of the local AILA chapter, she played a critical role in responding to immigration raids in Maryland under the Bush Administration. Before entering private practice, Melissa served as Counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy during the 2007 debates on the U.S. Senate's comprehensive immigration reform bill. She also spent a year as the Gulf Coast Policy Attorney at the National Immigration Law Center. She has taught in the Safe Harbor Clinic at Brooklyn Law School and the International Human Rights Clinic at Washington College of Law.

Seth Garfinkel, Legal Assistant
202-507-7500 ext. 7516 ([email protected])Read more...

Enforcement

The LAC engages in administrative advocacy and targeted litigation to protect the rights of noncitizens facing removal, encourage the favorable exercise of prosecutorial discretion in appropriate cases, promote greater transparency regarding DHS enforcement practices, and ensure that immigration officers are held accountable for misconduct. We also provide practice advisories, mentoring and other support to attorneys representing immigrants arrested in enforcement actions and placed in removal proceedings.

Litigation Clearinghouse Newsletter Vol. 4, No. 8

This issue covers a court order requiring DHS to respond to a detention standards petition, BIA and Ninth Circuit decisions on continuances, a class action challenging prolonged detention, retroactive application of a change in law, and litigation resources on the Supreme Court's decision in Nijhawan.

Published On: Friday, July 10, 2009 | Download File

Litigation Clearinghouse Newsletter Vol. 1, No. 11

This issue covers LCCR's efforts to obtain remedies for individuals mistreated by immigration officials, Supreme Court update, and courts to consider who can apply for waivers of removability.

Published On: Monday, May 22, 2006 | Download File

Are Immigrants Flooding the Military for U.S. Citizenship?

Published on Wed, Jul 06, 2011

Are immigrants joining the military to circumvent the U.S. immigration system’s notorious backlogs and win citizenship for themselves and visas for their family? A new article from AFP seems to suggest so. The piece tells the story of Darby Ortego, a 25-year-old Filipino-American who became a citizen this year after serving in the military. He’sbeen stationed in Afghanistan.

AFP reports:

Like thousands of fellow Filipinos, he sees the US military as a fast-track to American citizenship, securing his own future and also helping his family back home. “I joined up to get my mom to America,” said Private Ortego, who is deployed at Combat Outpost Sabari in Khost, where US troops clash with Taliban rebels based across the border in Pakistan. “I want to bring my mom from her village in the Philippines to Nevada, where I live. I want her to be with me.” Ortego is one of the roughly 9,000 legal immigrants who join the US armed forces each year from countries as far apart as Panama, Nigeria, Liberia and Turkey.

The piece goes on to suggest that joining the military is a straightforward route to citizenship that many are taking.

In the last 10 years, nearly 69,000 immigrant troops have become US citizens while serving. Naturalisation takes just months for serving military personnel compared to years for regular legal immigrants. Unemployment and poverty in their homeland have driven millions of Filipinos abroad to search for work, often on construction sites or as domestic staff. “It is better in the US because there are more opportunities. You can find a job and they will pay a decent amount,” said Ortego, who sends money back to his family in Northern Samar province.

All true as it is, except that in order to even qualify for military service, foreign nationals must first have a green card, which is nearly impossible to come by these days. Military service is not exactly the breezy fast track to citizenship it can appear to be.Read more...

Published in the Colorlines Magazine

Mandamus

This Litigation Issue Page provides information about developments in immigration-related mandamus actions, with particular emphasis on cases seeking to compel the adjudication of applications that are delayed because of security checks.

USCIS Revisions of FBI Name Check Policy and Practice

In a June 22, 2009 press release, USCIS stated that, in partnership with the FBI, it had eliminated the FBI name check delays - officially described as the FBI National Name Check Program (NNCP) backlog. USCIS stated that it had met the goals set forth in a joint business plan between USCIS and the FBI announced on April 2, 2008: to achieve a sustainable performance level by the NNCP of completing 98 percent of name check requests submitted by USCIS within 30 days, and the remaining two percent within 90 days. USCIS stated in its press release that this performance level will become the new agency standard.Read more...

Failure to Appeal to the AAO: Does it Bar all Federal Court Review of the Case?

This Practice Advisory discusses whether and how a person can get review of a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services decision in federal court if he or she did not appeal the decision to the Administrative Appeals Office (AAO). The advisory addresses the Supreme Court case Darby v. Cisneros, holding that a plaintiff is not required to exhaust non-mandatory administrative remedies in certain situations, and how it may apply to cases involving appeals to the AAO.

Published On: Thursday, July 22, 2004 | Download File