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October 07, 2022

Biden's Marijuana Pardon Proclamation Excludes Non-Citizens Not Lawfully Present

White House, Oct. 6, 2022 - A Proclamation on Granting Pardon for the Offense of Simple Possession of Marijuana "... This pardon does not apply to individuals who were non-citizens not lawfully present in the United States at the time of their offense. ..."

October 07, 2022

“A Failure on All Our Parts.” Thousands of Immigrant Children Wait in Government Shelters

Melissa Sanchez, ProPublica, Oct. 7, 2022 "The public has largely stopped paying attention to what’s happening inside shelters and other facilities that house immigrant children since President Donald Trump left office, and particularly since the end of his administration’s zero tolerance policy, which separated families at the southern border. But the shelter system remains in place under President Joe Biden....

October 07, 2022

National Immigration Project Calls on President Biden to Include All Immigrants in Marijuana Conviction Pardons

National Immigration Project, Oct. 6, 2022 "Today President Biden pardoned thousands of people who were convicted on federal charges of simple possession of marijuana from 1992 to 2021. While these pardons are long overdue and necessary, they regrettably fail to protect many immigrants from negative implications of marijuana-related activities on their immigration status. The President must take the further step...

October 07, 2022

Webinar: Rapid Response Briefing on the Fifth Circuit Ruling on the Legality of DACA

The Presidents' Alliance, TheDream.US, FWD.us, the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA "The Presidents' Alliance and co-sponsors, TheDream.US, FWD.us, and the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA, are hosting a virtual one-hour briefing on the Fifth Circuit Ruling on the Legality of DACA. Speakers will address the current legal context and implications of the recent ruling from the...

October 07, 2022

550+ Higher Education Leaders Call on Congress to Act Now to Protect DACA Recipients and Other Dreamers After Fifth Circuit Ruling

Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, Oct. 6, 2022 "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has released its decision in the case  Texas v. United States  to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s ruling that DACA is illegal but stayed the results of its own decision due to the recently released DACA rule by the U...

October 06, 2022

Expert on Fifth Circuit DACA Decision

Jorge Cancino, Univision, Oct. 6, 2022 "The future of the nearly 700,000 beneficiaries of the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program remains uncertain following the ruling issued Wednesday by the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals…...“The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the challenge to the DACA program must come back for further review by a lower court” (the Southern District...

October 05, 2022

Groups Detail "Grave Concerns" to Garland re Dedicated Docket

106 legal services providers, Oct. 5, 2022 "On May 28, 2021, the Departments of Justice (DOJ) and Homeland Security (DHS) jointly launched a “Dedicated Docket” to quickly process the cases of families seeking asylum in the United States who entered between ports of entry.1 We write to express our grave concerns with how this initiative has played out in its first year. The undersigned 106 legal service providers...

October 05, 2022

ACLU to CBP: Stop Trashing Asylum Seekers’ Possessions

Melissa del Bosque, The Border Chronicle, Oct. 4, 2022 "For years, Border Patrol agents have trashed peoples’ documents and possessions at the border. But since the pandemic, the practice has escalated, further dehumanizing asylum seekers and violating the federal agency’s own policy regarding personal belongings, according to the ACLU and a coalition of immigrant advocacy organizations. The requirement...

October 04, 2022

The Economic and Fiscal Effects on the United States from Reduced Numbers of Refugees and Asylum Seekers

Michael A. Clemens, May 2022 "International migrants who seek protection also participate in the economy. Thus the policy of the United States to drastically reduce refugee and asylum-seeker arrivals from 2017 to 2020 might have substantial and ongoing economic consequences. This paper places conservative bounds on those effects by critically reviewing the research literature. It goes beyond prior estimates by...

October 04, 2022

Building Our Common Home: Honoring the Dignity and Resilience of Migrants

2022 Hybrid Academic and Policy Symposium November 09, 2022 09:00 AM - 05:00 PM (ET) Building Our Common Home: Honoring the Dignity and Resilience of Migrants Join the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) for its annual Academic & Policy Symposium on November 9, 2022, from 9:00am – 5:00pm (ET). This hybrid event will take place at the law offices of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP...

October 04, 2022

Important Free Webinar, Oct. 13, 2022: Nativist Extremism

MIRR Alliance - Register here for this free webinar, Oct. 13, 2022 How did nativist extremists capture the GOP, strangle immigration reform—and what to do about it? "Strong nativist sentiment, once relegated to the ideological fringes, has found a home in the Republican Party. Today, an increasingly acrimonious culture war powered by anti-immigrant posturing and contemporary narratives of fear has paralyzed the...

October 04, 2022

Green Card Solutions

Solutions for the Family Member Who Did Not Get the Employment Based Green Card with the Principal Family Member on September 30, 2022 Cyrus D. Mehta & Jessica Paszko, Oct. 1, 2022 "This past month, we said our goodbyes to summer beach days and cookouts, welcomed the crisp autumn weather, crossed our fingers for clients with current employment-based priority dates and hoped that they would be one of the lucky...

September 30, 2022

The Budgetary and Economic Tradeoffs of Reducing the Immigration Backlog

Gordon Gray, American Action Forum, Sept. 29, 2022 "There are about 8.6 million immigration benefit applications pending before United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, of which 5.2 million are considered part of the agency’s backlog. While the agency has faced backlogs before, disruptions posed by the COVID-19 pandemic substantially increased benefit application backlogs. Eliminating the backlogs...

September 30, 2022

"Looking for Animals to Shoot"

TEXAS JAIL WARDEN CHARGED WITH KILLING MIGRANT WAS PREVIOUSLY ACCUSED OF SERIOUS ABUSES - Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept, Sept. 29, 2022 Warden of West Texas immigration detention center arrested in migrant’s death was previously accused of abusing detainees - ALEJANDRO SERRANO, URIEL J. GARCÍA AND WILLIAM MELHADO, Texas Tribune, Sept. 29, 2022 "The men, per the Times, said in interviews with law enforcement that...

September 28, 2022

Podcast: Stephen Yale-Loehr and The Stories of Immigrants

Rational Middle, Sept. 28, 2022 " Stephen Yale-Loehr, Professor of Immigration Law at Cornell Law School , joins host Chris Lyon this week. They discuss Yale-Loehr’s work in immigration law and research on refugees in America."

September 26, 2022

Cornell Law School Welcomes New Immigration Postdocs and Scholars

Cornell Law, Sept. 26, 2022 "In 2021, Cornell Law School received a grant of $1.6 million from the Charles Koch Foundation for a two-year project to study ways to improve immigration law and policy. Thanks to that generous funding, the Law School has hired two postdoctoral research associates and two distinguished visiting scholars to expand upon its research capabilities in this area. According to Stephen Yale...

September 26, 2022

DHS Extends, Redesignates TPS for Burma

USCIS, Sept. 26, 2022 "The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today announced  an extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Burma for an additional 18 months, from Nov. 26, 2022, through May 25, 2024, due to extraordinary and temporary conditions in Burma that prevent individuals from safely returning. In addition, DHS announced a redesignation of Burma for TPS for the same reason, allowing Burmese nationals...

September 24, 2022

Hon. Dana Leigh Marks on Immigration Law Reform

Hon. Dana Leigh Marks, Sept. 20, 2022 "After 45 years in the field of immigration law — 35 years on the bench, deep in the belly of government bureaucracy, preceded by 10 years as an attorney in private practice representing families and businesses who wanted help obtaining legal status for relatives and employees — I have learned a thing or two about immigration law and policy. Despite my retirement...

September 23, 2022

H-2A Sheepherders in Colorado: NYT

Miriam Jordan, New York Times, Sept. 23, 2022 "Mr. Mendoza, 46, has spent most of the past decade living in these rugged, remote mountains, herding sheep raised for wool and meat from spring to fall. “You live in complete solitude, just you, your animals and your thoughts,” he said, gazing at the windswept tundra below the soaring Uncompahgre and Wetterhorn peaks. He is among some 2,000 herders, most of them from...

September 23, 2022

The Statue of Liberty Plan: A Progressive Vision for Migration in the Age of Climate Change

Deepak Bhargava, Rich Stolz, Aug. 24, 2022 "Climate change and mass migration are reshaping politics, economies, and livelihoods around the world—and they are increasingly connected. Climate change has already forced people across the globe to leave their homes to seek safety and sustainable livelihoods, and the pace of climate migration will continue to accelerate as the climate warms. Sudden-onset disasters,...

September 22, 2022

Citizenship Discrimination Settlements (CarMax, Axis Analytics, Capital One Bank, Walmart)

DOJ, Sept. 21, 2022 "The Department of Justice today announced that it entered into another four settlements to resolve claims that companies discriminated against non-U.S. citizens by posting job opportunities with unlawful citizenship status restrictions on college job recruiting platforms. These four agreements add to the department’s  recent settlements with 16 other companies  to resolve similar claims in...

September 21, 2022

Due Process Disaster in Immigration Court

Jason Dzubow, Sept. 21, 2022 "It is not easy to convey the magnitude of the ongoing disaster at EOIR, the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the office that oversees our nation’s Immigration Courts. Simply stated, the agency is rescheduling and advancing hundreds–maybe thousands–of cases without notifying attorneys, checking whether we are available to attend the hearings or checking whether we have the capacity...

September 20, 2022

Latest ICE Detention Data Riddled With Errors

TRAC, Sept. 20, 2022 "ICE’s latest release of detention data is, once again, riddled with errors. ICE’s data on Alternatives to Detention wrongly reports enrollments of 96,574 people, because the agency mistakenly released data from May 2021 rather than September 2022. (The actual number is closer to 300,000.) ICE’s reported data on immigrant detention facilities shows a similar but even more egregious error: the...

September 20, 2022

The Smoking Gun in Martha's Vineyard

Judd Legum, Popular Information, Sept. 19, 2022 "Popular Information has obtained documentary evidence that migrants from Venezuela were provided with false information to convince them to board flights chartered by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R). The documents suggest that the flights were not just a callous political stunt but potentially a crime. ... Popular Information ... has obtained a brochure that was...

September 20, 2022

Texas Sheriff Launches Investigation into Florida Flying Migrants to Martha’s Vineyard

Alishba Javaid, Texas Tribune, Sept. 20, 2022 "Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar has  launched a criminal investigation  into Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flying 48 migrants from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard last week. The decision comes on the heels of immigration rights groups and Democrats accusing Republicans of exploiting vulnerable migrants for political points by promising them jobs and housing, only...