Opinion

Unscrupulous: adjective. Not honest or fair; doing things that are illegal, wrong, or dishonest (Merriam-Webster definition). There are a lot of unscrupulous people out there, and you can find them in immigration as well. There are immigration attorneys who charge insanely high prices for cases that have no legal merit. There are notarios who file forms and […]

There’s a lot of talk in the media about the crisis of immigrant children and how cases are being moved through too quickly. Immigration advocates constantly talk about how the immigrants at the border are being deprived of due process. So what is due process? And why is it a problem when due process is denied?

Watching the news these days is depressing: Congress does little to nothing. Ugly hatred reveals itself as adults yell at YMCA camp kids, thinking they are undocumented minors. Our president admits that our country tortured detainees post 9/11. Corporations seem to be granted more rights and more tax breaks while families struggle to pay for

The past few weeks, I’ve written about the unwaivable types of fraud – marriage fraud, asylum fraud, and false claims to U.S. citizenship. But not every lie or misrepresentation is a permanent bar from immigration benefits. So today I am going to write about types of fraud that can be waived. Under section 212(a)(6)(C)(i) of the Immigration

Not all marriage fraud is obvious. The classic example is when the foreign national offers U.S. citizen money in exchange for getting married and filing immigration paperwork. But if the foreign national and U.S. citizen are best friends and they just want to help each other out? Or what if the couple is elderly, never

There are three types of fraud that the Immigration and Nationality Act takes very seriously – so seriously that if you’re found to have committed one of these, your chances for any type of immigration benefit in the future are reduced to just about zero. In a future post, I’ll talk about the types of fraud that

For those of you in Georgia, you’ve probably heard about Senate Bill 404. What this bill proposed to do was to deny immigrants who had been granted “deferred action” from being able to obtain a Georgia driver’s license. There are similar bills and even laws across the United States, but I’d like to talk about SB

The immigration system can seem like it’s in a time warp. Three months’ processing is considered fast and waiting for three hours is normal. If I went to my job and made my boss wait three months for a small project or kept my team waiting for three hours while I worked on something else,

Over the past few months, I’ve had consultations where just-turned-21-year-olds come in and want to start the immigration process for their undocumented parents. The families are excited and happy that the magic age of 21 has been reached. It breaks my heart when I tell them there isn’t anything that can be done. When these

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season! One of the many advantages of being married to a German is that we often spend Christmastime in Germany. In addition to seeing my in-laws, who I only get to visit once a year, I get to experience a new culture and step outside my normal comfort