USA Green Card Immigration Blog

House Committee to Take Up E-Verify Bill | immigration-news.

The House Judiciary Committee is set to debate the Legal Workforce Act, a bill proposing all U.S. businesses be required to use the federal E-Verify system to ensure only citizens or immigrants who have a work visa are employed in the United States.

Committee chairman Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas and who is the bill’s sponsor, is a member of the House’s Reclaim American Jobs Caucus. The caucus’ stated mission is to draw attention to the link between illegal immigration and unemployment, and on its web page cites a statistic that an estimated 8 million illegal immigrants are in the current U.S. workforce, while 15 million American citizens are unemployed. The group describes E-Verify as a key measure to ensure illegal immigrants do not take jobs from citizens.

The bill’s opponents, including President Barack Obama, argue that the E-Verify system is unreliable and that mandated participation would make large-scale immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for undocumented workers already integrated into the country’s social and economic fabric, more difficult to institute.

“If your answer is to enforce a dysfunctional system, you’re going to have problems,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, a Democrat on the judiciary committee, told the Washington Times.

Some states and municipalities have already passed E-Verify laws. San Bernardino County, California, is considering an ordinance requiring all food industry employers to use the database, while the state’s farmers have said mandated use of E-Verify would cripple the agriculture sector’s workforce.

2011 Green Card Lottery (“DV-2013″ Program):  Dates announced for this year’s Diversity Visa Lottery.

The green card lottery will run from October 4, 2011 through November 5, 2011.  You can register now through the USA Green Card web site (www.usa-green-card.com) to avoid last-minute problems and surprises.

Complete requirements and the application form are available now!  Contact us with any questions:  lottery@usa-green-card.com

Nation-World | Immigration reform stalls in Congress | The Detroit News.

Worries over ease of terrorists’ entry into U.S. means legislation remains elusive

Marisa Schultz/ The Detroit News

The week before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President George W. Bush welcomed Mexican President Vicente Fox to the White House for his first state dinner of upscale Tex-Mex.

Fox proclaimed the two countries could reach an immigration agreement by year’s end. And Bush, bucking some in his Republican Party, entertained ideas of granting legal status for some Mexican immigrants.

The news of high-level immigration talks thrilled Veronica T. Thronson, who worked in New York for an immigrant advocacy group. Their midtown office was abuzz with excitement that reform was finally going to happen in 2001. They pushed out press releases heralding the progress.

“Then Sept. 11 happened,” said Thronson, who now heads Michigan State University College of Law’s Immigration Law Clinic. “We knew that immigrants were going to be blamed somehow. That day it happened.”

Shortly after it was discovered that 9/11 hijackers entered the country with legally issued visas, the conversation around immigration became inextricably linked with terrorism. The anti-foreigner movement that took shape and the preoccupation with protecting the United States effectively knocked immigration reform off the national agenda. Ten years later, comprehensive legislation to alter how and when foreigners can become citizens has remained elusive.

Even a small part of immigration reform, known as the DREAM Act, has failed to pass Congress every time it’s been introduced in the past decade. It would allow undocumented students a pathway to citizenship through two years of college or military service.

After the initial horror of the terrorist attacks dissipated, the country was rocked by a prolonged recession in which millions of legal citizens were jobless. The downturn coincided with the spread of immigrant populations.

Historically, immigrants primarily settled in six states, including New York, California and Texas, said Ann Chih Lin, associate professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. But during the boom years of the 1990s, big influxes spread to states throughout the country. That set the stage for difficulties as some Americans became preoccupied with security, feared outsiders and had a grassroots anti-immigrant sentiment, Lin said.

“You can overlook a lot of foreigners when the economy is going well,” Lin said. “The bad economy stranded them in places that didn’t have the infrastructure to help resolve some of these problems.”

Assisting illegal immigrants hasn’t been a political priority in Washington, and the focus instead has been on border security, deportations and ensuring people don’t come to the United States to do harm. Though he supports the DREAM Act and immigration reform, President Barack Obama has ramped up deportations and deployed more security personnel to the southern border than ever before.

David Koelsch, professor at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, views the shift in attitude since 9/11 as a “net positive.” Prior to the attacks, immigration was a “sleeping giant” with laws not being enforced and people not associating the influx of foreigners with security.

Afterward, the Department of Homeland Security was set up. There’s better coordination among federal agencies, and local authorities are working with federal agencies to facilitate deportations following jail sentences, said Koelsch, who directs the Immigration Law Clinic at the college.

Lin and Thronson believe major immigration reform would have had a good chance of passing during the Bush administration had it not been for 9/11. Koelsch believes that’s an oversimplification. All three want comprehensive immigration reform, but their visions for solutions vary.

Meantime, the inability of Congress to pass an immigration package has spurred state and local politicians to pass their own laws, such as Arizona’s legislation giving police broad powers to detain those suspected of being undocumented, as well as legislation in New Mexico and elsewhere to allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.

Even in Michigan — with among the lowest percentages of undocumented residents, according to the Pew Hispanic Center — a package of bills is pending in the Legislature that would crack down on undocumented immigrants who live and work here. One bill is similar to Arizona’s divisive law.

As Thronson supervises her students, she looks back a decade ago to the progress in the making. “We were so close,” she said. “We were so close.”

Immigration Agency Denies Gay Couple’s Petition | immigration-news.

Tue, Aug 9 5:24 PM

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recently denied permanent residency to an Australian man, Anthony Makk, whose same-sex spouse, Bradford Wells, is a U.S. citizen.

Makk and Wells have lived together for nearly two decades and were married seven years ago in Massachusetts. However, the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act denies immigration benefits to same-sex couples. USCIS cited this law in rendering a decision against Makk’s application for an I-130 visa, which would grant him permanent residency as the spouse of a U.S. national. Unless the decision is reversed, Makk must leave the country by August 25.

Wells told the San Francisco Chronicle that as an AIDS patient, he relies on extensive medical insurance and essential care he receives in this country, making a move to Australia with Makk impossible.

Earlier this year, the White House declared it will no longer defend DOMA in court, though the U.S. Justice Department would continue to enforce the law.

A spokeman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, told The Chronicle the congresswoman will work to overturn the USCIS ruling.

Last March, same-sex couples cheered when USCIS announced a suspension of deportation cases involving gay citizens with immigrant spouses. However, shortly after its announcement, USCIS clarified the suspension would only last a few weeks, until a specific legal matter was settled.

Internet Scam Offers Visas for $900 | immigration-news.

Fri, Sep 2 1:03 PM

An internet scam is victimizing people who want to obtain a U.S. visa, NBC Miami recently reported.

According to the source, thousands of visa applicants have received an email telling them they have won a U.S. Department of State lottery and will be provided a visa – as soon as they wire $900 through Western Union.

Carmen Pino, a worker with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, told NBC Miami the email is a fraud, and might indicate the computer system tracking visa applications has been compromised by a hacker.

One recipient of the email, Venezualan Hely Santilez, told the source that the email asked for details of his family, and for money. He said he was suspicious of the message and did not send money because in his past travels to the United States, he always paid the U.S. Embassy directly for his visas.

The Department of State reports there were 3,564 cases of visa and passport fraud reported in 2005. Penalties for visa fraud range from 10 years imprisonment for a first offense to 25 years, if the fraud was related to international terrorism.

A compassionate and sensible step on immigration – KansasCity.com.

The following editorial appeared in the Sacramento Bee on Monday, Aug. 22:

It’s not amnesty, back-door or otherwise. It’s just a little more sanity in our broken immigration system.

The Obama administration has announced that it will suspend deportation proceedings against thousands of illegal immigrants who aren’t a danger to public safety, including those who came to America as young children and have graduated from high school and gone on to college or into the military.

Other “low-priority” cases likely to benefit under the new policy are veterans and spouses of veterans, caregivers for a seriously ill relative or for a person with a mental or physical disability and those with family members who are citizens.

It only makes sense to target limited manpower and resources to deporting those who are violent criminals and drug smugglers, or who pose a national security threat.

This is not a blanket policy; immigration officials will review, case by case, nearly 300,000 people now in the deportation pipeline to distinguish those who may qualify for relief from those who should be expelled as soon as possible. It also doesn’t automatically grant citizenship, though many could eventually apply for legal status.

Predictably, zealous activists against illegal immigration, along with elected officials in their thrall, are railing against this change. They are still not facing the reality that if they got their way, we would have to figure out how to find and deport more than 10 million people.

With this new policy, President Barack Obama is doing administratively much of what Congress hasn’t had the courage and common sense to do legislatively by passing the DREAM Act, a bill to give relief to college students who are illegal immigrants.

“Young people who arrived here at an early age and either serve in the military or are in good academic standing should not be removed from the country and separated from their families,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who urged Obama to make the change, said in a statement. “Instead, they should be allowed to reach their full potential as productive American citizens.” She has introduced 14 private bills in the past two sessions of Congress to block deportations of such students their only recourse until now.

This new policy is a necessary step that upholds our tradition as an immigrant nation, but it is not a long-term solution. We still have to get serious about comprehensive reform to create a system that is fair and sensible.

It has come to our attention that fraudulent notices are being emailed to visa lottery applicants, congratulating them for having won a US permanent residence card through the program.  These emails are being sent from email address lottery@usa-green-card-gov.com in an attempt to confuse recipients and fool them into believing that these are legitimate emails that were sent from USA Green Card, which has as its legitimate email address lottery@usa-green-card.com.  These fake notices claim to be official correspondence from the US State Department and request that you send payments in excess of $800 by Western Union to the United Kingdom.  You should ignore these notices and not send any payments!  If you registered to participate in the visa lottery through the USA Green Card site, you can login to your account to verify the status of your application.  All questions concerning this matter can be directed to lottery@usa-green-card.com.

U.S. to Assist Immigrant Job Creators – WSJ.com.

In its quest to spur job growth and jump-start the economy, Washington is reaching out to foreign entrepreneurs.

Alejandro Mayorkas, chief of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, on Tuesday will unveil several initiatives designed to attract and retain foreign entrepreneurs, particularly in the high-tech sector, who wish to launch start-up companies in the U.S.

Among the initiatives is a plan to make it easier for some foreigners to qualify for legal permanent residence, or green cards, if they can demonstrate their work will be in the U.S. national interest. The changes will also include a way for entrepreneurs to obtain work visas without a job offer from an established company.

Mr. Mayorkas also plans to announce that his agency will be training its examiners on how visa-eligibility requirements apply to entrepreneurs.

“In this economy, it certainly is in the interest of this nation to welcome foreign talent,” Mr. Mayorkas said in an interview.

The changes come as increasing numbers of software entrepreneurs have been taking their start-ups to other countries, often after completing advanced degrees in the U.S., because of the difficulty in securing temporary work visas and permanent residency here.

Vivek Wadhwa, a visiting scholar at the University at California, Berkeley, who studies immigrant entrepreneurs, estimates the new measures could yield “tens of thousands of start-ups and hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

The measures won’t require congressional approval because they don’t constitute changes in current immigration law. Instead, clarifications will be issued for existing visa categories with the objective of enabling more entrepreneurs to gain entry into the U.S. and of bringing more speed and efficiency to the visa-application process.

“The Obama administration is getting the immigration system engaged in creating jobs,” said Steve Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell University Law School. “They are trying to facilitate the ability of entrepreneurs to get temporary work visas and green cards when the economy is in the doldrums.”

Generally, immigrant entrepreneurs must have a specific job offer to qualify for an employment-based immigrant visa or green card, such as in the category for individuals with exceptional ability in the arts, sciences and business.

As part of the new initiatives, foreign entrepreneurs will be eligible for a so-called EB-2 immigrant visa without a specific job offer, as long as they demonstrate that their business endeavors will be in the U.S. national interest.

The government is also seeking to bolster use by foreign entrepreneurs of H-1Bs, which are temporary work visas for foreign workers in a specialty occupation.

The H-1B program has been a mainstay of software companies and other businesses that seek foreign nationals to fill certain jobs, and an employer-employee relationship has generally been a prerequisite for qualifying.

As part of the new measures, a sole entrepreneur can qualify for an H-1B if the individual’s employment is decided by a corporate board or shareholders of the start-up company.

Mr. Mayorkas will also unveil enhancements to the EB-5 investor program, which enables foreign investors and their families to qualify for green cards if they invest at least $500,000 in a U.S. project that generates at least 10 jobs.

His agency is also seeking to speed up the approval process by hiring additional adjudicators to evaluate applications and enabling petitioners to make their case before an expert panel should their application require further evidence or be denied.

The moves come as demand for H-1B visas has fallen. As of July 22, USCIS had received approximately 21,600 H-1B petitions out of 65,000 available for the 2012 fiscal year. The agency had received approximately 26,000 such applications for the same period last year.

Several factors are at play, including higher fees for the visas and increasingly better opportunities in countries such as India that entice their skilled workers to return home rather than stay in the U.S.

While completing his Master’s degree in computer science at the University of Southern California in 2008, Anuj Agarwal launched a company called Nachofoto.com, a start-up that makes a product used by search engines and digital-media companies. Unable to get a U.S. visa for himself and expecting his workers would have the same trouble, Mr. Agarwal moved the company to India.

“After realizing we had visa barriers to the U.S., we opened another company here,” Mr. Agarwal said in an interview from Mumbai.

Norberto Guimaraes of Portugal said he had to leave the U.S. in May 2010 after his student visa expired and his H-1B petition was denied because he lacked an employer to sponsor him, even though he was the founder and chief executive of his start-up.

“I had to sell the start-up that I had created while doing my M.B.A. at U.C. Berkeley together with another M.B.A. colleague,” he said.

Mr. Guimaraes was able to return to the U.S. this year, sponsored for a work visa by another company.

Bill abolishing visa lottery advances in House.

The US State Department is scheduled to release new results for last year’s Diversity Visa Program on or about July 15, 2011.  Check this website for updated information:  http://www.dvlottery.state.gov/