U.S. citizens and non-citizens have lost their jobs in the economic fallout caused by the Coronavirus pandemic. Applications for unemployment benefits have skyrocketed across the country. A record 3.3 million people in the United States applied for unemployment benefits during the week of Marc...
As more places are put into quarantine in the United States because of the Coronavirus COVID-19, universities are scrambling as they attempt to have solid plans in place for the more than one million international students who attend American universities. In the last two weeks universities a...
In this uncertain time it is hard to keep up with all the announcements being made as to the Coronavirus COVID-19 and travel, coming to and leaving the United States. The Center for Disease Control is even warning people about travel within the United States and the effect it may have on trav...
A federal judge in Washington D.C. has ruled that former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cucinelli's appointment by President Trump as head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) last year was done unlawfully. Cuccinelli, who was Attorney General of Virginia from January 2010 to...
USCIS recently released a policy announcement which seeks to clarify when taking an extended trip abroad could affect a lawful permanent resident's ability to apply for naturalization. After obtaining a green card (lawful permanent residence), persons applying for naturalization generally ...
Starting February 24, 2020, most green card applications for lawful permanent residence filed in the United States will require a Form I-944 Declaration of Self Sufficiency. Since 2019 something known as the public charge rule has been in and out of the courts- a rule put in place to ensure th...
A federal judge in Maryland just ruled that “federal immigration officials cannot detain immigrants for the purpose of deportation if they are currently involved in legal proceedings to acquire legal status via a marriage to a U.S. citizen.”
Under a new proposed regulation the government wants to increase the waiting period that an asylum applicant has to wait to obtain employment authorization from 150 days to 365 days. America – the land of unlimited economic opportunity, right? Not exactly, if the government gets its way. Th...
On January 27, 2020 the Supreme Court made a ruling allowing the government to begin enforcing limits on immigration for people considered likely to become overly dependent on government benefit programs. For those of you wondering what this means, a brief review: Back in 2018, USCIS and th...
Beginning January 24, 2020, the United States began imposing restrictions on women suspected of coming to the country for “birth tourism.” I suspect this new restriction is meant to address what the Trump administration has touted as a very large and serious problem, although the government ...
If you’ve been involved in any kind of immigration work or applied to adjust your immigration status you know that the term “good moral character” often brings more questions than answers.
The 2019 national average for green card processing times for family-based adjustment applications is 11.1 months, as of September 2019. That doesn't sound too bad, right? Well, the national average is just that, a compilation that doesn't fully communicate what all areas of the country go thr...
Who is a Conditional Permanent Resident? A Conditional Permanent Resident (CPR) is someone who has received a marriage based green card that is valid only for two years because at the time the government granted their green card their marriage to a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident i...
Under a proposal from the current administration, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is proposing to increase the government fees for several popular immigration applications, including naturalization, DACA renewals, green card, and asylum applications. The cost of applying fo...
Immigrants all over the country are feeling anxious as news continues of people being arrested at USCIS interviews- specifically marriage interviews for green cards. Reports of these arrests have come from Florida, Maryland, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, Illinois, and Calif...
The immigration court in Arlington, Virginia has the 3rd largest backlog of immigration cases in the country. To put it into perspective, there are 64 immigration courts in the United States. In 2017, the Arlington immigration court was rated 5th in the nation for backlogs. This means that the ...
Nearly 9 out of 10 Americans support the idea of DACA recipients staying in the United States, so why is USCIS trying to convince them otherwise? On November 16 USCIS published a report entitled DACA Requestors with an IDENT Response. “IDENT” is the Automated Biometric Identification System (I...
“Good moral character” is a term that the average person doesn’t hear much about, but if you are applying for immigration status in the United States you are quite familiar with. According to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the standard of “good moral character” requires adherence to the generally accepted moral conventions of the community, and criminal activity is probative of non-adherence to those conventions. A recent decision handed down by the Attorney General now creates harsher parameters for a lack of “good moral character,” commonly shown by multiple DUIs.
The much anticipated arrival of DACA's day in the Supreme Court came yesterday - Tuesday, November 12, 2019. Hundreds of thousands have waited in anticipation for this day, wondering what sort of precedent the Supreme Court will set. In 2012 President Barack Obama created the Deferred Action...
El servicio de inmigración (USCIS) anunció que extenderá los permisos TPS de Salvadoreños, Hondureños y Nicaraguenses hasta el 4 de enero de 2021. No es necesario presentar una solicitud o pagar una tarifa para recibir la extensión. Los permisos se extienden automáticamente por reglamento. Aquell...
As an update to our post on President Trump's new executive order requiring immigrant visa applicants at US consulates to have health insurance, on November 2, 2019 a federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked the executive order from taking effect. The new order was set to take effect on Novem...
2019 has brought many changes to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and the immigration lawyers here at Valverde Law have noticed the effects. The current administration is requiring much more detail and information included in immigration applications, yet is denying those ap...
I along with many immigration law practitioners were very anxious about October 15, 2019, which was to be the effective date for the new public charge rule. However, fortunately for my stress levels three federal courts in New York, Washington, and California issued a preliminary injunction prev...
In yet another action to restrict and reduce legal immigration, the Trump administration has announced a new requirement in its quest to limit the number of immigrants entering the country. The Proclamation, announced on October 4, 2019, finds that “the unrestricted immigrant entry into the Uni...
The Norfolk Sheriff's department has ended its contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)- an agreement that paid the local sheriff's department to keep suspected illegal immigrants locked in the county jail until federal authorities could transfer them to a long-term facility. IC...
