In addition to change of address for certain employment based I-485′s, the I-485 form itself has changed, and the revision dated 12/3/09 is the only edition acceptable for filing. U.S.C.I.S. is allowing a transitional period up to March 29, 2010, during which it will accept prior versions of the form, but after that, any previous versions of the form that are submitted will be rejected.

Read the full story on ILW

“I am not going anywhere,” Laschenova told IG.

In January, Laschenova’s employer, Integrity Gymnastics in Plain City, Ohio, received a notice from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that her petition for an employment-based immigrant visa was denied, reopened and denied again.

“For how many years we’ve been here and what we’ve done, it’s so stressful right now,” Laschenova said Saturday. “It’s not right. Everyone knows it’s not right.”

Laschenova said she is hopeful that Gus Shihab, the immigration attorney who last week offered to handle her case pro bono, can succeed in appealing it. An Atlanta law firm handled Laschenova’s original case.

“Basically, we’re lucky at least once in these 10 years,” Laschenova said of her new association with Shihab, of Shihab & Associates in Columbus, Ohio. “He started working very, very quickly.”

Read the full story on intlgymnast.com/

• The first is through the annual “green card diversity lottery,” held each year by the Department of Homeland Security, for citizens of countries that have “low rates of immigration” to the United States. Millions of people from specified countries around the world apply to take part in the lottery, but only 50,000 green cards are made available through the process. Each participant in the lottery is issued a number, the government draws about 150,000 numbers, and the people with those numbers then are allowed to apply for one of the 50,000 slots.

• The second way to gain legal entry is to be a spouse, sibling, child or parent of an American citizen or the spouse or minor child of someone who holds a green card and is willing to sponsor your entrance into the United States.

• The third is through an employer, who must complete a lengthy application process that requires proof that the has a unique skill necessary to the business.

THERE ARE other provisions of immigration law that allow people who are seeking asylum to gain legal entry into the country, but being granted asylum is an extraordinarily difficult process.

An additional number of other immigrants are admitted each year under temporary work permits and student visas, however those visas generally do not permit conversion to immigrant status, and they require the holder to leave after a specified length of stay.

And then there is the “S” visa. Essentially a free pass, the visa is awarded only to those who work for law enforcement and must be applied for by law-enforcement officials. The Mayas say immigration officials promised them the “S” visa, but then reneged.

According to immigration officials, only 250 “S” visas are available each year, and fewer than 60 were awarded in 2009.

CONGRESS last year set immigration visa limits at 700,000 for employment and family preferences, excluding refugees and those entering the country on temporary work or student visas.

In 2008, the total number of immigrants admitted to the country (excluding refugees and those on temporary non-tourist visas) tallied just under 750,000.

Source: Daily Free Man

Matt, originally from Corning and now living in Rochester, is a U.S. citizen. Heather, who met her husband in 2005 when both were students at the Elim Bible Institute in Lima, is from Hamilton, Ontario, and a Canadian citizen. They thought that once they were married, it would be simple for Heather to get her “green card” and live and work legally here with Matt until they have enough money to finish their degrees and start the family they both want.
For more than a year, they had traveled back and forth to Canada without incident until June 26 (the day before the wedding at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington) when Matt told the Canadian border guards that marriage was the reason for his visit.

“I was turned away at the border,” Matt says. “I had to prove I had a means of departing and that I would return.” He hurried back to Rochester, got a letter from his boss indicating that he has a job, made a copy of his apartment lease, and purchased a return airplane ticket (even though he planned to drive home). He stayed in Canada as a visitor for several weeks before coming home to Rochester, but that’s when the couple realized living together would not be as simple as they hoped.

The U.S. and Canadian governments want to be certain that a marriage between citizens of their countries is legitimate, that the citizen spouse can support the non-citizen, and that the newcomer will not need public assistance, says Rochester lawyer Margaret Catillaz, an expert in immigration law.

Since Heather and Matt were married, both their passports have been flagged and when they visit, they are always detained for questioning. Even though she’s done nothing wrong, Heather said during a recent visit, she always feels as if she’s in trouble.

Matt and Heather just want to be together.

And money is the only thing standing in their way. It costs up to $2,000 to apply for legal resident status and complete the required procedures. And right now, neither Matt and Heather, nor their families, have the money. Heather is unemployed and Matt washes windows and cleans gutters. Rent, car payments, food — that’s all they can afford.

Read the full story on Democrat and Chronicle

Congratulations on getting married!

As part of this exciting time-of-life, you are probably also looking for an affordable, simple and quick option for filing your green card application.

Did you know that you do not have to use a lawyer to file the application? Many couples choose to complete the application process by themselves and avoid the huge fees that lawyers charge (which range from $1,000 to $5,000).

Easygration offers you an even better option than paying these fees or spending lots of time learning all the legal jargon and studying the different forms. Since we are not lawyers, but experts on green card through marriage, we do not charge hefty legal fees, and since we review every case and only take green card cases that do not require a lawyer, you can feel rest assured that you are in good hands.

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✓Detailed instructions on how to file the green card application.

Contact Easygration for your green card through marriage application.

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According to court documents, immigration agents placed the couple’s Blacklick house under surveillance, interviewed their next-door neighbors and sorted through trash bags taken from their curbside refuse container.

The agents collected enough evidence to establish that Kwadwo Asante and Lilian Asante were living as husband and wife but had entered sham marriages with others in hopes of gaining permanent residency in the United States.

Both pleaded guilty and were sentenced yesterday to two years on probation. An immigration judge is expected to deport them.

The tactics used by agents in the case aren’t typical, said a Columbus immigration lawyer, but they illustrate the extremes to which officials will go to investigate the validity of marriages between citizen and noncitizens.

“The truth is, if the government suspects that a marriage isn’t bona fide, they’ll investigate mightily,” said Kenneth J. Robinson.

Federal law is clear: Any individual who “knowingly enters into a marriage for the purpose of evading any immigration law” faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The notion that marriage to a citizen is a simple path to a green card granting permanent residency is a common misconception, said Dennis Muchnicki, a Dublin-based immigration lawyer. “People think the process is easy, but it’s no walk in the park,” he said.

The couple must file forms with immigration officials asking the government to formally recognize the relationship and grant the noncitizen permanent residency.

The process can take five to seven months, requires exhaustive documentation and includes an interview with an immigration official who separates the couple and asks personal questions, such as where they put their dirty clothes and which side of the bed each sleeps on.

The filing fees for a greencard cost $1,365. Couples who hire a lawyer to assist them with the process can expect to pay an additional $1,000 to $2,000, Robinson said.

The process isn’t open to all noncitizens. Those who scramble across the border without passing through inspection checkpoints aren’t eligible to gain residency through marriage.

Those who enter the U.S. through customs with fraudulent documents can seek residency through marriage, but the bureaucratic hurdles are significant.

“The majority of those who gain residency benefits through marriage entered the country lawfully,” Robinson said.

Most often, they came to the United States with temporary work or student visas. That was the path taken by the Asantes. Lilian Asante came to attend law school at Ohio State University. Kwadwo Asante was attending Case Western Reserve University’s MBA program.

“When people come here legally from the proverbial Third World countries with a student visa and realize everything this country has to offer, a lot of them don’t want to go back,” said Daniel A. Brown, an assistant U.S. attorney in Columbus.

And some are willing to pay to find a fraudulent spouse, he said.

In December, 11 central Ohio residents were indicted for their involvement in sham marriages arranged for about $17,000 each. Federal prosecutors determined that none of the couples lived together after they were married.

Brown said sham-marriage prosecutions are rare in central Ohio, but he suspects that many escape the scrutiny of investigators.

When couples approach Robinson about helping them with the greencard process, he puts them through the same kind of questioning they’ll get from an immigration official.

“For every 10 I take, I probably turn away two,” he said.

But he assumes that most find another lawyer willing to help them. “I don’t envy the government’s job.”

Source: The Columbus Dispatch

On the date of the interview, the couple has to demonstrate to the USCIS officer that they intent to establish their life together. To put it in another way, the couple has to convince the USCIS Officer that the intent of the marriage is not to circumvent the immigration laws of the United States. At the interview, the USCIS Officer makes a determination regarding the validity of the marriage as well as other issues pertaining to the good moral character of the beneficiary of the greencard. If the Immigration Officer is not convinced with the statements made by the couple at the interview, the Immigration Officer has the authority to schedule the couple for a second interview which is commonly known as the Stokes interview.

A stokes interview is a very difficult interview and it is a good idea for an individual to seek legal help in such situations. This is because if the couple fails the Stokes interview and if the immigration officer makes a determination that the intent of the couple was to circumvent the immigration laws in order to obtain a greencard, the beneficiary of the petition can be permanently barred from obtaining the greencard.

During the stokes interview, the couples are separated by the immigration officer and are separately questioned in detail about their relationship, relatives, employments, travels etc. If the answers of the couple properly match perfectly, then the officer will approve the I-130 petition. However, if the answers do not match and if the officer makes a determination that the marriage between the parties is fraudulent, the Immigration Officer has the power to arrest the parties and commence deportation proceedings against the beneficiary.

Very often, couples think that they are happily married and they have nothing to worry about their immigration interview. This statement may not hold true on all occasions. This is because the burden of proof in on the married couple to show by means of preponderance of evidence that they intend to establish their life together.

In essence, if you are confronted with a second interview (stokes interview) by immigration, it would be a good idea for you to be extremely well prepared in order to avoid serious consequences such as deportation.

About Author
The author of this article, N.M. Gehi, Esq. is a practicing immigration attorney in the state of New York and Connecticut. This article is based upon his practical experiences in handling stokes interviews since many years.

It seems than congress does not have the time, or the will to tackle immigration reform at this time and possibly not at all during the upcoming midyear election cycle. There are a variety of things the President can do without congressional support to begin the process and help put the system on a track towards reform. The system didn’t get to this sorry state overnight and cannot be fixed overnight.

The President can take administrative steps to help correct some of these problems, reduce the number of undocumented persons in this country and make it increasingly difficult for those who remain to function outside of the system. These are eight suggestions toward this end.

The President can, through his administrative powers change regulations and definitions in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) than can accomplish many of the reforms that are necessary without waiting for congress to act.

Since this is a huge problem it is wise for the President to implement these reforms as a first step in a larger process. How the governmental apparatus handles these changes will be a clue to how they will react to any larger legislative changes that may come in the future.

Here are eight of those suggestions.

1. Three and Ten Year Bars: Currently there are bars that prevent persons with approved immigrant visa applications from completing their cases either within or outside of the United States. Persons who have remained in the United States without permission often cannot risk leaving the United States to complete the immigrant visa process even though they may be supporting families here, caring for children or filling jobs that the U.S. Labor Department has determined are shortage occupations. These include persons who are spouses, parents and children of Americans and legal permanent residents.

Currently these people must return to their country or origin to apply for special permission to return. This permission is based upon hardship to their American or legal resident family. They can expect to wait many months or years for an answer. There are an estimated one to two million aliens in the United States who fall into this category. These are all people who the government has decided are eligible to become lawful permanent residents.

The President can allow these people to file their applications in the United States before they return to their countries and visa process there. This regulatory change can be accomplished simply and quickly and shrink our undocumented problem by ten to twenty percent in a short time, thereby making those who remain without permission stand out. If these people are denied visas in their home country because they have other problems such as concealed criminal problems, they will already be outside the United States and deportation hearings and appeals will not be necessary.

2. Mandatory Detention: There is currently a law that requires the government to detain all aliens who are released from prison for deportation (called removal) hearings. The Department of Homeland Security enforces this provision woodenly by detaining all aliens upon release from criminal custody without regard to the seriousness of the crime or hardship to their family or the possibility of relief.

Detention is taken in the literal sense and aliens are imprisoned. There is a large body of federal law in the area of habeas corpus that defines detention more broadly and includes orders of supervision, electronic custody and other methods of constructive control.

The President can by regulation redefine custody to include other methods of control and give to the Immigration Judges the authority to release aliens from actual physical custody when the situations warrant it. Judges need to be allowed to exercise their judgment and the current system does not allow for this. This would allow for a fairer system and would remove a significant administrative burden and expense in holding aliens for little reason. It would also free up prison space for those aliens who but for this law would be held.

3.Exceptional and Extremely Unusual Hardship: There is a law that allows an Immigration Judge to grant permission for certain aliens who have been in the country for more than ten years to become legal residents if they demonstrate good moral character and can prove exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to their American of legal permanent resident family.

The standard for this hardship is often impossible to overcome even though the alien’s family will suffer significantly upon the denial of such an application. President Obama can by regulation redefine this standard in such a way that spells out that two or more forms of significant hardship will met the standard. Forms of hardship might include, financial, psychological, medical, educational, career and other hardships. This will allow our Immigration Judges to use their judgment in granting some aliens the right to remain with their family in the United States. Those judges will still be expected to use their discretion to grant relief only to worth applicants.

4. Computerize list of wanted aliens: If we attempt to detain all aliens in the United States at once we would need a police force greater than all the police forces in the United States today. We would cause great hardship and there would be many mistakes.

We need a database of aliens who are wanted by DHS and have that data base accessible to all police forces in the country. Those forces should be able to detain aliens that have orders of removal or are suspect for a variety of reasons such as national security. We should not try to detain all aliens at once since we do not have the infrastructure to do it and if we try it will be at the expense of general criminal enforcement.

Currently there are a variety of law enforcement databases and it is difficult for the enforcement community to get the data they need in a timely way.

The President can use existing resources to accomplish this goal.

5. Transportation: That same computerized list can be used by the transportation community to allow the government to access bus, train and airline records to identify those illegally in the United States. In this way we make it increasingly difficult for those persons who are undocumented to remain here and function freely.

6. Redefine Shortage Occupations: Currently aliens can be sponsored for legal residence through a complicated process that demonstrates that each alien is not displacing American workers. Most of these applications are unnecessary. The process takes so long tat often the economy changes during the selection process. President Obama can change the regulations to state that occupations with a less than three percent unemployment rate are deemed shortage. This will eliminate a significant workload for the Department of Labor and employers through out the United States.

7. Redefine tax options: The tax code can be amended to deny employers the right to deduct the wages paid to undocumented aliens from their gross income after those employers have been warned about specific employees. This provision will be largely self enforcing since the national accounting community will be the primary enforcers.

8. Revalidation of visas: In almost every case aliens who seek to renew existing visas need to travel to a U.S. Embassy or consulate in their home country. We need to reinstate procedures that allow business persons, students and many other visitors to review their visas while in the United States and avoid the unnecessary cost and delay of travel involved. This would reinstate an old procedure that was cancelled some years ago and would be paid for by increased user fees. This could be done by regulatory change and like all of these suggestions is within the presidential authority.

Harry DeMell is an attorney practicing exclusively in the area of visa, immigration and nationality law since 1977. He is an active member of AILA and has been a member of the AILA’s annual planning committee, participated in their lobbying efforts, and is a mentor to other members.

Source: ILW

A: Immigrants filing applications to renew permanent resident cards, commonly known as “greencards,” need to file Form I-90 (which can be downloaded at www.uscis.gov) with US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The form can be mailed or sent by courier to the addresses shown in the instructions. The submission also can be made on line; go to www.uscis.gov and follow the instructions for online filing of Form I-90.

Currently (as of November 2009) an application fee of $290 and a biometrics processing fee of $80 must be submitted with the application. Applicants filing paper forms should obtain money orders for the $370 total, made out to “U.S. Department of Homeland Security.” Applicants filing on line will pay the fees electronically.

All applicants will receive by mail a notice for a biometrics (fingerprint) processing appointment at a local USCIS Application Support Center and will submit any required initial evidence and documentation during that appointment.

IMPORTANT: Applicants are being instructed to take to their biometrics appointments the records of any arrests, convictions, or any other involvement in criminal matters since last being granted legal permanent resident status. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have been attending these appointments and reviewing the documentation supplied by applicants. Some applicants have been detained because of the criminal records they submitted or because their names appeared as a result of an ICE investigation as having outstanding criminal warrants. Accordingly, it is IMPERATIVE that you obtain legal advice before filing your Form I-90 if you have ANY issues involving past or pending criminal proceedings anywhere in the world.

IIC can help you with the I-90 renewal filing process, as well as the application for getting a new greencard when the original has been lost, or when the card issued contains incorrect information.

NOTE: Holders of two-year conditional permanent resident cards based on marriage to a US citizen don’t file Form I-90 to remove the condition; they use Form I-751 instead.

By the way, anyone who has been a legal permanent resident long enough to be eligible for US citizenship really ought to consider applying for naturalization as soon as possible. IIC can help you with the all aspects of the naturalization application process.

For a free, confidential consultation on this or any other aspect of immigration law, visit one of our legal clinics advertised in The Emigrant.

[Source: Irish Imigrant]

Looking ahead to next year, it has become increasingly important that concerns about the economy not deter lawmakers from ensuring that reforms to attract and retain highly educated, highly skilled foreign nationals are included in comprehensive immigration reform legislation. Illegal immigration issues have dominated the debate, but the reality is that without addressing our broken legal immigration system, we will short-change ourselves in the long run. Keeping the United States a welcoming place for talented students and workers from around the world will be crucial to our economic recovery and our future ability to innovate, compete, and thrive in the global economy.

In an economic downturn, the temptation to lower the blinds and close the doors is strong. But in an age when work can be sent to other countries with the click of a mouse such an approach simply will not work. Many studies, and the experience of countless U.S. companies, have shown that hiring talented foreign workers boosts innovation and drives job creation. It also supports local economies. Foreign-born professionals buy cars and houses and pay tuition for their kids. At our universities, they teach our students, helping us develop our own talent pool for the jobs of tomorrow, and they collaborate with our faculty in the sciences, medicine, and other important fields. Turning away people with the skills our country needs denies us a much-needed resource to support our economic recovery. No country can be an island in the global economy – not even one as large as the United States.

Talented people from other countries often first come to the United States as foreign students. By the time they graduate from our colleges and universities, they have spent years investing in acquiring the best education in the world, generally in fields like engineering and the sciences, where they make up half to two-thirds of the graduate students. Some of these foreign graduates want to contribute their skills and knowledge in the United States, but increasingly they are going home or to other countries instead because our immigration system makes it too difficult for them to stay – even though it is in our interest to help them do so.

To keep them, and to attract other highly educated workers from other countries that U.S. employers need to fill key positions, we must do two things. First, the enormous backlogs and wait times that plague the green card system must be addressed, and there must be a better path to greencard status for those foreign graduates of our colleges and universities who wish to stay in the United States and whose talent and skills are important to our economy. Exempting from employment-based greencard quotas foreign students who receive a U.S. master’s degree or higher; eliminating the per-country limits that impede, in particular, Indian and Chinese professionals; and providing additional employment visas for backlog relief would constitute major steps in addressing this problem.

Second, we must maintain and improve the H-1B temporary visa system, the primary way for skilled foreign nationals to pursue employment in the United States. Today, H-1B visas serve as a way station for those who really seek immigrant status but are stuck in the long greencard line for 6 to 12 years. Fixing the greencard system will take pressure off the H-1B system, but we will still need a system that can accommodate temporary, high-skill workers. At the same time, where abuses exist with H-1B visas they must be addressed. We must realize it does not make sense in a global competition for highly educated and talented workers to turn away these individuals, many of whom will go to work for companies in other countries that directly compete with our own.

Any effort to address the question of what kind of immigration system the United States needs must begin with an understanding that the mobility of individuals and ideas across borders has profoundly changed. People today possess myriad options for study, employment, and life in countries across the globe. Many nations are aggressively recruiting high-skilled foreign professionals and students, adjusting immigration and work laws to create incentives for them. People, like technology and information, are crossing borders with unprecedented freedom and flexibility. Our immigration laws and visa policy must catch up to these new realities, and must support a climate that encourages the contributions of foreign talent. In the global economy, our future depends on it.

About The Author
Marlene M. Johnson is executive director and CEO of NAFSA: Association of International Educators in Washington, D.C.

Stuart Anderson Executive Director of the National Foundation for American Policy, served as Executive Associate Commissioner for Policy and Planning and Counselor to the Commissioner at the Immigration and Naturalization Service from August 2001 to January 2003.