Did President Obama’s speech provide clues to his vision for Immigration Reform?
Posted by Harsharn Makkar
The answer depends on each’s interpretation. However, the President did comment on who has to be held accountable: the Government, the Employers who hire illegal workers, and the illegal immigrants themselves. He mentioned that the system is broken since it does not encourage students graduating from our own schools to work here; consequently, we train our competition. He also discussed that undocumented workers continue to risk their lives because the demand exists. Thus, the employers who exploit these workers must be held accountable if Immigration Reform is going to work. Finally, he talked about requiring illegal immigrants to be held accountable for their actions as well so we do not encourage another wave of illegal immigrants. He did not say that he is for Amnesty. However, he did remark that it is not practical to round up 11 million undocumented aliens and deport them. Whether those comments translates into Amnesty remains to be seen.
House Bill 978 may impact your business assets/vehicles
Posted by Harsharn Makkar
The State of House of Representatives recently passed House Bill 978, which allows state authorities to seize any vehicle involved in a traffic violation or accident if it’s driven by an illegal immigrant, which includes rented and leased vehicles if the owner knew, or should have known that the driver is an illegal immigrant. If this bill becomes effective, anyone involved in an accident or even minor traffic infraction would be required to prove that the person is a United States citizen or risk loosing his/her vehicle. On the surface, this law appears to be fair since this would mean that those who break the law would be forced to reimburse the system at least in a small way. The end result, however, would require the state police to become proficient in immigration law since they would be required to seize vehicles based on immigration status. Otherwise, how would they determine if a person with expired greed card or adjustment of status does not mean that the person is here illegally? How would the police be able to determine a driver was illegal immigrant during a traffic stop? Would the inquiry be based on color or accent of the driver? Would the owner of the vehicle be required to prove that they did not know the immigration status of the driver? Would this bill work like the property seizure laws in drug offense cases? If this HB 978 becomes effective, business owners might be required to provide sworn affidavits to prove that they did not know the immigration status of the driver. They may even be required to testify in a hearing or risk loosing their vehicle.
Pending Anti-immigrant Bills in Georgia Legislation
Posted by Harsharn Makkar
Georgia legislators are considering several bills that are anti-immigrant, which severely impact illegal immigrants. These bills are designed either to limit their movement on our roads or limit their ability to function here. Consider the following bills, which are designed to limit immigrants’ movement here. One of those bills is House Bill (HB) 978, which allows the police to seize cars driven by illegal immigrants who violate traffic laws when involved in an accident regardless of who owns the vehicle. Another House Bill 971 makes it a misdemeanor for an illegal immigrant to drive in Georgia with an out-of-state license and a Senate Bill (SB) 25 makes it a felony if an applicant or his/her agent was to lie about the applicant’s citizenship to renew a driver’s license or tag. Lastly, Senate Bill (SB) 350 makes it a felony to drive without a Georgia license on the fourth conviction within 5 years.
Similarly, there are several other bills pending that limit illegal immigrant’s ability to function here by doing away with birthright citizenship or promoting English-only policies. For example, House Bill (HB) 127 urges Congress to deny automatic citizenship to children born to illegal immigrant mothers. Another example is Senate Bill (SB) 335, which prohibits state agencies from requiring or giving preferences to those applicants with other language skills for a particular position. Lastly, House Bill (HB) 1028 allows a 2% fee on wire transfers, and allows the transfer company to keep up to 20% of that fee to cover collection and record-keeping costs.
Some of these bills have passed the Senate. Others are still pending. Many are working to stop this anti-immigrant pieces of legislation from moving forward since it not only impacts illegal immigrants but it also affects legal immigrants as well as potential immigrants.
What is causing the processing delays at the USCIS?
Posted by Harsharn Makkar
Based on the testimony prepared for the Director of USCIS, Emilio T. Gonzalez, the cause of processing delay is the increase in naturalization filings before the filing fees increased on July 31, 2007. According to this testimony, in the summer of 2007, USCIS received in excess of three million applications. The Service claims that such an increase in filing within a couple of months is unprecedented and it represents increase of almost 350 percent compared to the previous year increase in workload. Although the general talks such as naturalization filing increase contemporaneous with the opening of the employment-based visa window does help to understand the current backlog, it does not explain the delays that have existed prior to the rate increase. In other words, the director did not provide any concrete answers as to why increase in applications and petitions alone ought to cause such delays. He admitted that the processing time for the naturalization applications has increased from seven months to eighteen months and for family-based adjustment-of-status applications from six months to twelve months.
In essence, rather than answer the questions; he outlined the steps that the USCIS has taken to remedy the situation. According to the Director, the Service has increased the manpower to process the applications. The Service is also expanding the automation process for those who already qualify such as those with expired permanent resident cards or temporary employment authorization. They are also promising to improve the background check process and centralize the intake of naturalization application before the end of 2010.
