Immigration & The Baby Boom

It is time to address the chronic issue of too few visa numbers for skilled worker green cards and specialty occupation H-1B visas. Contact your congressional representative and let them know you support increasing the quota numbers.

The baby boomer generation is retiring, marking the exit of thousands of skilled, experienced workers from the U.S. workforce.

Who will replace these people? It should be a healthy mix of U.S. citizens, U.S. permanent residents and U.S. non-immigrant visa holders taking the jobs, but it will likely not play out that way. There are too few work visas available every year to fill the growing number of created jobs, let alone the existing jobs that require replacement workers. Most importantly, there are not any where near enough Americans to fill the jobs. Therefore, those jobs that cannot be filled will simply go overseas to another country with a more realistic immigration attitude. In economic terms, we are starving ourselves of the supply and the demand for a specialized work force. We will end up with executives with nothing to execute.

Unless we find a way to increase the number of visas available each year, we will continue to turn away the worlds best and brightest individuals, many of whom get their education in the U.S. and have no choice but to enter a different country and contribute to its well being. They want to stay, they are already here and so obviously do not pose any threat whatsoever, but we are afraid of something. What?

Initiate some change. You can find contact information for your congressional representative here:
http://www.congressmerge.com/onlinedb/index.htm
Tell your representative you want them to fight for an increase in the immigration quota numbers.

New U Visa - Victims of Trafficking and Violence

People in the United States illegally who are victims of violent crimes and are actively helping law enforcement to solve the cases can now apply for a U visa. The visa is valid for up to 4 years and leads to permanent residence.

Citizenship and Immigration Services took seven years to implement the visa category because developing the specific regulations involved federal, state and local agencies.

Victims of rape, torture, child abuse and other crimes may stay in the country for four years and apply for permanent resident status along with their dependent family members. Witnesses to certain violent crimes can also obtain the visa and need not be the victims.


In order to qualify for U Visa, the applicant must be the victim of one or more of the following crimes or any similar activity in violation of Federal State, or local criminal law: rape; torture; trafficking; incest; domestic violence; sexual assault; abusive sexual contact; prostitution; sexual exploitation; female genital mutilation; being held hostage; peonage; involuntary servitude; slave trade; kidnapping; abduction; unlawful criminal restraint; false imprisonment; blackmail; extortion; manslaughter; murder; felonious assault; witness tampering; obstruction of justice; perjury; or attempt, conspiracy, or solicitation to commit any of the above mentioned crimes.

Applicants for the U visa must submit a declaration, information on the crime or incident, a certification letter from the law enforcement agency handling their cases that confirms that they are assisting investigators, and proof of substantial mental or physical abuse.

Temporary employment authorization is likely to be issued to applicants while they await adjudication of the visa.

10,000 of the visas will be available each fiscal year.

If you would like to learn more about this visa or any other U.S. immigration law issue, please contact one of our immigration attorneys directly at (206) 262-0561 Seattle; (360) 734-5260 Bellingham; (604) 495-6392 Vancouver; or email me - duncan@usborderlaw.com

Bianca Jagger Evicted - Not a NY 'Resident.'

Bianca Jagger will have to move out of her NY apartment because she is only a visitor in the U.S. and cannot treat the apartment as her primary residence. The owner of the Park Avenue apartment can evict Jagger and raise the rent, currently over $4600 per month. Jagger had been withholding rent from her landlord due to issues with mould in the edifice. The landlord sued to evict Jagger and won. She must leave and pay back rent and possibly court costs.

Park Avenue, New York

The NY court of appeals agreed with the Landlord's immigration based strategy, focusing on the fact that a B-2 visa is for temporary visits and will not allow a person to 'live' in the U.S. or treat a U.S. residence as their primary residence. When NY rent-stabilized properties change hands, the rent amounts may be increased to the market rate.

This begs the question: What does it mean to live somewhere?

Under U.S. law, you may only live in the U.S. under certain types of visas, and a B-2 will not support anything but brief, casual visits (up to 180 days per visit for non visa waiver country nationals, and 90 days for those from the 27 visa waiver countries).

However, where someone 'lives' is not as simple as determining their nationality. Jagger had rented the apartment for 20 years, and routinely stayed in New York, although she also has an apartment in London, England. I submit that where someone lives is their own fiction, and where they feel at home. I routinely counsel individuals to know where they are entitled to live and where they are not, and to be very careful about the subtle but very important difference between living somewhere and simply visiting.

Work authorization and Tax returns are a good test. If you are allowed to visit, but not entitled to work or file a tax return in a country, you probably cannot consider yourself to be living there.

If you would like to learn more about this or any other U.S. immigration law issue, please contact one of our immigration attorneys directly at (206) 262-0561 Seattle; (360) 734-5260 Bellingham; (604) 495-6392 Vancouver; or email me - duncan@usborderlaw.com

We are happy to let you speak directly with an experienced immigration lawyer.

The Immigration 'Problem.' We need to create another option.

A sign warning drivers near the border about families running across the freeway.

If there are enough people running across the freeway near the border that the government needs to put a sign up, we have a problem. The U.S. immigration problem is very complex but has been contorted to get it into sounds bytes by the current policy machines. The result is an either / or scenario and a race to the bottom, where the two political parties argue their polar stances in blue or red ties. But this sign says it all. It is more practical, safer and more humane to  address the issue and do something to protect those in our country than to ignore the people . 

In immigration law, it is easy to slip into the habit of creating a dichotomy out of every issue:

• You're either an immigrant (permanent intent) or a non-immigrant (temporary intent);
• You're legal or illegal;
• A citizen or an alien;
• Admitted or not admitted;
• Admissible or inadmissible;
• Have been convicted or have not been convicted of a crime; and,

• Your permanent residence has conditions attached to it or does not. That is when you were granted permanent residence you were given only two years to begin with and must release conditions (show that you are still married to or working for the petitioner , or are not but had a bona fide relationship not just for immigration benefits at the time you applied for and were granted benefits), or you were given full permanent resident status.
  

This seems to be the trap that many commentators, legislators and critics have fallen into when discussing the current population of individuals who entered the U.S. without inspection. It is difficult to get past the notion of giving illegal aliens permanent resident status without creating an incentive for future illegal entrants, so I think the only way to move on is to create a new, third residence status - Probationary Residence. This status would only apply to people currently physically present, so registering after the initiation date would be futile.

I propose that when it comes to creating a legal method for these people to cure their immigration status, we need the new status to account for the fact that these people are not here temporarily but are not considered permanent either, and so can enter into a status that allows them to convert to another status. No conversion and they must leave when the status expires - just like non-immigrant visa holders.

We could pick a date, say January 1, 2008, and make it so that anyone who does not register with the government and prove that they are physically present on or before that date cannot come forward for benefits. We would have to ensure that this would not be a 'round-up' and that coming forward to register physical presence would definitely not lead to enforcement action.

Those people who do register to prove that they are physically present would then pay for a number and wait for it to be called. Once called, those people would have to establish that they do not have any criminal issues (other than working without authorization and the attendant documentary issues) and could be given Probationary Residence. This status could require them to report frequently their whereabouts and perhaps could include an auto-deduct from their pay to cover the costs of the immigration processing instead of making them pay for it all at once. 12 million people coming forward would need to be delicately handled, so payment for the proof of physical presence and a number in line would likely need to be more than the current cost of attaining a green card ($1365).

This probationary status would only last for a specified time, during which the people could convert to another status without being treated as having entered without inspection. This would allow family members to petition for each other and for employers to hire workers legitimately and would not make the current illegal population so afraid to become witnesses in criminal cases or to comply with laws designed to protect all Americans from harm - such as driving regulations and workplace certifications.

Probationary Residence would not be amnesty. Those that could not come forward because of criminal issues would not be able to keep up with what is sure to become a society where identity is too hard to fake and anonymity is impossible. The process of elimination would allow enforcement to focus on the people that do need to be removed and would create an even greater incentive for people with no criminal issues to come forward.

This is a very difficult issue that seems to be stuck without resolution because we can't see past the dichotomy of permanent versus temporary. If the U.S. wants to remain competitive going forward, we will need to convert these valuable people into meaningful participants in our society or paranoia will overcome us and we will grow even more divided. Right now, we have no conceptual answer to the issue and that is what we need. Do we really think that the undocumented population does not intend to stay? Then why do we treat this as a temporary problem when it is so obviously permanent. Why? Because we don't have a choice such as Probationary Residence to rely on.

If we had Probationary Residence we could have a population of legal, admitted, admissible aliens with hope and incentive instead of a population of illegal, undocumented people that are not available for the U.S. economy and society to embrace.

If you would like to learn more about this or any other issue concerning U.S. immigration law, please contact one of our immigration attorneys directly at Seattle (206) 262-0561; Bellingham (360) 734-5260; Vancouver (604) 495-6392; or email me - duncan@usborderlaw.com

We are always glad to connect you directly with an experienced immigration lawyer.