Now she just wants a way to stay in the United States, at least until her college graduation.

A Bright Futures scholar in her junior year at the University of South Florida, Sarah could be deported back to England when she turns 21 this summer.

Her parents, who own a Pinellas County pressure washing business, thought Sarah could remain with them as long as she was their dependent.
“My understanding was that she is my dependent until she finishes school,” said Peter Farnan, 51. “It turns out I was wrong.”

Their plight, and others like it, have advocacy groups pushing to reform the E-2 visa program, which rewards foreign business owners for investing and creating jobs in the United States.

They estimate there are more than 100,000 such businesses, with yearly revenue of $50 billion and a work force of 700,000 despite the visa’s limitations.

Among them: An E-2 holder cannot get a homestead exemption or a job in a different business and has no path to permanent residency.

“This is not an immigration visa,” said Sonja B. Stefanadis, a caseworker for U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis who is trying to help the Farnans. “You’re supposed to just finish up and go home.”

Read the full story at Tampa Bay

In 1990 the U.S. government began granting permanent residency, or greencards, to immigrants who invest over US$1 million in the country, and in 1993 it introduced an immigrant investment program dubbed “Regional Center EB-5 Program” which offers greencards to those who invest at least US$500,000. The number of agencies which file applications for the immigration program on behalf of clients tripled to around 60 to 70 last year from 23 worldwide in 2008.

Immigration through investment is a popular option especially among parents seeking to have their children educated in the U.S., as the parents and all children aged 21 or under are able to receive greencards. Various benefits come with permanent residency, such as lower tuition fees for U.S. residents. Between 2006 and 2008, 1,454 Koreans obtained greencards via the program, the highest number among 67 countries that participated.

Read the full story on Chosun

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]

Clutching a rolled-up American flag in one hand, Mahmoud Saad couldn’t stop grinning today as he sat beside 15 other immigrants in a jury box inside a Redding courtroom.

After all, the 26-year-old Egyptian Chico State University electrical engineering student had been waiting for much his life to recite the words that would make him a U.S. citizen.

But it was the special honor of leading the group in the Pledge of Allegiance earlier in the naturalization ceremony in U.S. Eastern District Court that had special meaning for Saad.

“They’re not just words, ‘With liberty and justice for all,’ ” he said prior to the ceremony in the courthouse parking lot, his four friends from Chico beside him. Each held an American flag.

The event was the first ceremony in recent memory offered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to be held in Redding, allowing Northern California immigrants to avoid a lengthy drive to Sacramento or San Francisco to take their citizenship oaths.

A Canadian, a Czech, two Indians, a Kenyan, seven Mexicans and three Filipinos joined Saad in taking their oath.

Each had been in the country for at least three years, living legally in the U.S. first as a permanent resident with a greencard.

“You can’t simply immigrate,” said Sharon Rummery, a spokeswoman for the USCIS.

For a nonresident to come to the country, someone — usually a parent or a spouse already in the country — must first petition for an immigrant’s greencard.

An employer can also petition for a greencard for an employee, but it’s unlikely that someone who doesn’t have at least a bachelor’s degree would be allowed in through that route, Rummery said.

Others can request asylum from their home. A judge can also grant a greencard during a deportation hearing, Rummery said.

But a few lucky ones like Saad are drawn in what’s known colloquially as the GreenCard Lottery, which is officially called the USCIS Diversity Visa Program.

Hundreds of thousands apply from all over the world, but only 55,000 immigrant visas are granted each year.

Most at Redding’s ceremony had family in the United States that allowed them into the country in the first place. Others married in.

The latter was the case for Norma Muzzall, a 37-year-old Mexican immigrant who married a Chico delivery driver named Mark Muzzall, 42.

The two now live in Corning with their two children.

“Hey, you get to vote now,” Mark Muzzall said after the ceremony.

“I know!” she said.

But first, she said, she gets to pick a political party.

“He’s a Republican and his mom’s a Democrat,” Norma Muzzall said. “They’re both trying to convince me to pick their party.”

It was America’s political process that brought Rodolfo G. Lagoc, a 73-year-old retired lawyer from the Philippines who lives in Redding down the path to U.S. citizenship.

“The freedom from want, the freedom from fear, you have peace and order,” Lagoc said.

For Saad, becoming a citizen means he at last belongs.

“I used to feel like I was a part from this place,” Saad said. “Now I feel like I am officially a part of this country.”

Reporter Ryan Sabalow can be reached at 225-8344 or at rsabalow@redding.com.

[Source: Redding]

Applicants should bring their green card, Social Security card and driver’s license or state ID, a money order payable to USCIS for $675, two passport photos and the personal information detailed on the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights page at icirr.org.

Future workshops will be held on the third Saturday of every month at various locations in Chicago. For more information, call Caitlin Elsaesser at (773) 772-7170 ext. 3022.