Have you heard about the Department of Homeland Security program for scanning local jails for illegal immigrants? If not, you certainly will be. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the state of Texas is the first border state to fully deploy this federal scanning program. The program, known as Secure Communities, is administered by the federal government and literally scans local jails looking to identify illegal immigrants.

According to the WSJ, “…the program is designed to intercept and remove illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes such as homicide, rape, and kidnapping…”

So, while this federal program is great for identifying dangerous criminals, many forget that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has the authority to deport anyone who enters the U.S. illegally.

Once again, this points out the direct need to identify a path to citizenship for those millions who are already here illegally in this country but have not committed any crimes. Yes, they are here illegally partly because we have no clear path for them to obtain the basis of citizenship. They are working here, often taking jobs no one else wants and supporting themselves (which means they also contribute to our economy). They are employed by thousands of small businesses that obtain a competitive advantage with labor pools that are readily available to them.

It will be more than interesting to see what happens with the dynamic debate of immigration reform with the political map redrawn nationally.

The Washington Post was reporting this morning that nearly 392,000 people have been deported from the U.S. during the 2010 fiscal year ending September 30th. That’s an astounding number that reflects the current focus of our country to locate and deport unauthorized immigrants. The Post noted that about half of that 392,000 deportations were identified criminals.

Three interesting notes on this:

“Officials said that they had also stepped up audits of employers suspected of using unauthorized immigrants as workers, part of a strategy to undercut the magnet of jobs that draws many migrants. Officials said that 180 owners, employers or managers had been criminally charged and $50 million had been levied in fines”, said the Post article.

Businesses have long been known to utilize immigrant labor, legal or illegal to subsidize their business and save on costs (compared to offering better wages and benefits). This trend should be a solid alert for those businesses that have used immigrant labor that added emphasis by U.S. immigration enforcement authorities makes you a clear target. That will result in criminal charges and debilitating fines.

Employers who are in this situation would be wise to consult an immigration law firm to find out what their options are before they become subject to criminal investigation and other bad news. Don’t ignore the trend of better law enforcement.

Issue Two:

“Immigrants who overstay their visas or enter the country without authorization are not considered criminals; unauthorized immigration is an administrative violation. The Obama administration has sought to distinguish such immigrants from those who have committed crimes.”

The answer to this is if you overstay your visas or enter the country without authorization, seek the counsel of an immigration attorney and see what you options are.

Third issue:

“A path to citizenship should be found for many of the country’s estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants, she said, but “they must get right with the law” by paying fines, committing to learn English and submitting to criminal background checks.”

Getting right with the law and getting on the path to citizenship starts by doing the right thing and getting immigration legal counsel to help you figure out the best legal options avaiable to you under current regulations.

The days of hoping that things will just magically change for employers who employ illegal aliens or those who are illegal aliens are numbered. Do the right thing and seek legal counsel.

www.4immigration.com
1-800-522-0804

Most people I meet are not aware of the fact that the USCIS will be increasing most fee’s related to immigration processing as of November 23, 2010. I reviewed the pricing changes and with a few exceptions, almost all of them are going up! When have you seen fee’s go down? Neither have I. So, like anything else these days, immigration processing fees are going up also.

While the fee increases vary depending on the specific filing you need completed, most all of them are increasing significantly. These kinds of fee increases can hamper people who are already financially stretched in this current economy.

The good news is this: If you have an immigration issue that needs to be handled, now is a good time to get it done so you can potentially take advantage of the currently lower fee schedule. Now’s a good time to contact an experienced attorney well before November 23.

Or you can wait until the fee’s go up and pay the government more for the same forms and process. The choice is yours, as always.

www.4immigration.com
Toll-Free in the U.S.A. – 800-522-0804

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Monday nominated Solicitor General Elena Kagan, 50, to the Supreme Court, declaring she would demonstrate the same independence, integrity and passion for the law exhibited by retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

“Elena is widely regarded as one of the nation’s foremost legal minds,” said Obama. “She’s a trail-blazing leader.”

The president also praised Kagan’s temperament and her practice of “understanding before disagreeing.”

Just for a moment, let’s try to lower our blood pressure over Arizona’s putrid new immigration law, SB1070 – or as we call it around here, SunuvaBitch 1070 – and consider a positive.

That’s right – a positive.

Maybe this is exactly what comprehensive immigration reform 2010 really needed.

Maybe this is actually a tilting point.

Maybe, just maybe, we’ll look back on all this 10, 20, 30 years from now and be utterly thankful for Arizona’s neanderthal law galvanizing, like nothing else before, the pro-immigrant cause and the push for immigration reform.

I mean, hasn’t it done that already?

And we’re only at the beginning of the dark things to come this summer.

Wait until the 49 other states experience all those federal resources being sucked right down the Grand Canyon, with Arizona needing to beef up its staffing to help jail all those rounded-up undocumented aliens – an estimated 460,000 of them.

Wait until we experience the bitter backlash, when we witness on a grand scale the pure ugliness of racial profiling, when we see the lust for illegals lead to the illegality of unreasonable search and seizures, when our well-up eyes watching the news of this are forced to close because we can’t stand our own inhumanity anymore.

This new law will indeed shine a stark light on how abysmally our country handles the issue of immigration and the problem of the undocumented. It will show, with its egregious unconstitutionality, how busted a system we truly have.

So, guess what?

The end result could be the opposite of what Sheriff Joe, Gov. Brewer, and their ilk so desperately want.

It could lead to the type of national outrage we felt over 40 years, when the lynching of three activists in Mississippi compelled us to quickly bring about the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

So, for a moment, let’s seriously think about that.

Let’s consider the positive here.

Maybe this is a blessing in disguise after all.

Is Arizona making a run for this title of ignobility: The Most Racist State in the U.S.?

It’s a question that definitely needs to be asked now, with the passing of SB1070 on top of its already sordid history.

I mean, take a look:

1) Arizona was one of the last states to observe Martin Luther King Day, to where the National Football League, which had an increasing percentage of African American players, voted to yank 1993’s Super Bowl XXVII from Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe and awarded it instead to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. (Faced with a boycott, Arizona voters finally approved the holiday by ballot in 1992, and on March 23, 1993, the NFL awarded the 1996 Super Bowl XXX to Tempe.)

2) Arizona emboldens a crusty, creepy, crackpot like Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who proclaims himself America’s Toughest Sheriff – a guy who revels in dressing up inmates in pink underwear, endorses such things as tent cities for prisoners in the dead of desert summers, and thinks progress in law enforcement is going back to the days of chain gangs. Not to mention his absolute obsession with rounding up – with total impunity – anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant, to where seemingly anyone darker than himself is a reasonable target.

3) Arizona Governor Jan Brewer last week signs into law the anti-immigrant SB1070, which only further breaks an egregiously broken immigration system. It encourages, among other ugly things, racial profiling as well as a show-me-your-papers-or-else police state where immigrants unable to produce documents showing they are allowed to be in the U.S. could be arrested, jailed for up to six months and fined $2,500.

Way to go, Arizona!

You’re well on your way to winning a title no state in the union should ever want to win.

So, we wonder: What’s next on the agenda?

Waterboarding anyone with an accent?

Huh?

Shame on you.

Source: NBC News and other news sources

PHOENIX – President Barack Obama on Thursday criticized a pending Arizona law that would make it a state crime to be in the United States illegally and require anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant to produce identification.

During remarks at a naturalization ceremony for members of the military, Obama called the legislation “misguided” and warned that it could “threaten to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans.”

Gov. Jan Brewer is nearing a deadline to act o n the measure. Civil rights activists have said the bill would lead to racial profiling and deter Hispanics from reporting crimes. Hundreds of Hispanics protested the legislation at the State Capitol complex on Thursday.

Source: New York Times
By Manny Fernandez

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — The Long Island teenager accused of stabbing and killing an Ecuadorean immigrant in a racially motivated attack was convicted on Monday of manslaughter as a hate crime, a less serious crime than the initial murder charge — saving him from spending the rest of his life behind bars.

Seventeen months after the stabbing in 2008 and 24 miles from the parking lot in Patchogue where the victim left a 370-foot trail of blood, the jury forewoman rose in State Supreme Court here to read the verdict, ending four days of deliberations. The teenager, Jeffrey Conroy, was found guilty of first-degree manslaughter as a hate crime and gang assault in connection with the death of the immigrant, Marcelo Lucero, and guilty of attempted assaults on three other Hispanic men. He was acquitted of the most serious of the 20 charges against him, second-degree murder as a hate crime.

Read the entire story here.

Source: New York Times
By Nina Bernstein

A federal immigration officer who was caught on tape demanding sex in exchange for a green card pleaded guilty to all the charges against him in Supreme Court in Queens on Wednesday in expectation of a prison sentence of one and a half to four and a half years.

The officer, Isaac R. Baichu, 48, faced up to seven years in prison in the case, in which he coerced oral sex from the 22-year-old Colombian wife of an American citizen in December 2007. After hinting that he had the power to deny her a marriage-based green card and have her relatives deported, he summoned the woman to a private meeting in a parked car on Queens Boulevard. She put a digital camera in her pocket and made an audio recording.

“I want sex,” he said on the 16-minute recording, which the woman took to The New York Times and then to the Queens district attorney. “One or two times. That’s all. You get your green card. You won’t have to see me anymore.”

Read the whole story here.

By Stella Templo
Immigration Attorney, The Law Offices of Spar & Bernstein

Last week, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens announced that he would retire at the end of this term.

Stevens was nominated in 1975 by President Gerald Ford, who wrote 30 years later that he was prepared to allow history’s judgment of him to rest exclusively, if necessary, on that Stevens decision.This was a very smart statement, as the Stevens legacy is sure to resound.

Justice Stevens is the longest-serving member of the current Court and will turn 90 in just a few days on April 20.

By retiring at the end of this term, he narrowly misses two Supreme Court records. He will be two years short of longest service ever, a record held by Justice William Douglas at 36 years and 209 days, and a year short of being the oldest justice ever, a record held by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, age 91.

The retirement announcement was both expected and unexpected. It was expected because the man is almost 90.

He deserves to spend some time enjoying himself and he’s reputed to enjoy golf and bridge.

It is unexpected because he still has so much to give.

He showed his fire earlier this year when he delivered his 20-minute dissent in Citizens United, which includes this stinging rebuke, “essentially five justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law.”

With Justice Stevens’s departure, the court loses its only Protestant member and its last WW II veteran. It also leaves the pool representing only two law schools.

Justice Stevens is part of the losing liberal bloc of 4 and he will likely be replaced by someone who will vote the same way; thereby, preserving the current count.

Through Justice Stevens, we, as a society, have considered and defined our concepts of law and humanity as when he eloquently explained the importance of privacy rights of prisoners and when he opined that the death penalty is a violation of the Eight Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and inhuman punishment.

Without any disrespect to the supposed short-list candidates, the Court will suffer a huge loss.

Sure, Elena Kagan, Merrick Garland and Diane Wood are fantastic nominees and would be good justices, but will be they great?

Justice Stevens was great.

This is NOT great news in the fight for fair immigration reform.

Source: The Associated Press

PHOENIX (AP) — The Arizona House on Tuesday approved a bill that would draw local communities deeper into the fight against illegal immigration despite arguments from opponents that it would do nothing to keep people safer.

House Republicans advanced the measure on a 35-21 party-line vote. The Senate approved the bill in February but must concur to changes made in the House before sending it to Gov. Jan Brewer.

Supporters celebrated the bill as a tough crackdown on illegal immigration that will protect the state from violent criminals.

Arizona’s struggling economy has driven many illegal immigrants from the state. But as the economy rebounds, “so too will the illegal immigrants — larger, stronger and more destructive than they were several years ago,” said Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills.

“We need to put this law in place now so that when the new illegal immigrants come, we’re prepared to do battle with them,” he said.

Please take a moment to remember the millions of Jews and others killed in the Holocaust. Today is Holocaust Memorial Day.

Take time to watch the video below – even if you are not Jewish – and share a moment of silence and prayer:

Anyone who’s ever swapped goods on eBay has either done it or thought of doing it: leaving the type of negative feedback that all but makes your fingers burn.

Well, along come news this morning out of Florida that some guy has been hit with a $15,000 defamation lawsuit for doing that very thing.

The man reportedly bought a defective time clock for $44 in 2008 – he claimed it arrived in three pieces that didn’t fit together – and even though he received a refund (while at the same time sending the merchandise back), he felt compelled to warn future buyers about the seller by writing: “Bad seller; he has the ethics of a used car salesman.”

That slip of the typing fingers landed him a quick visit from a process server with a court summons.

Turns out the seller was a Miami Beach lawyer that wanted damages for ruining his 100 percent customer approval rating and “commercial reputation.”

Should make all of us eBayers pause, if not at least think twice the next time we feel the urge to punish some seller for sending us something we don’t like.

Creepy? Desperate? Pathetic? Unseemly?

You tell us.

It’s filmed strangely in black-and-white and uses the recorded voice of Tiger’s deceased father, Earl Woods, as if he were addressing his son about the recent sex scandal.

By Michael Biniakewitz
Criminal Defense Attorney, The Law Offices of Spar & Bernstein

Unless you’ve been in a cave the last few days, I’m sure you’ve heard the disturbing new disclosure that the Catholic Church apparently looked the other way while a spate of priests engaged in rampant sexual abuse, such as the case of Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who may have molested some 200 boys at the school of the deaf in the 1960’s, yet somehow, miraculously, still died a priest in 1998.

Which brings me to the sex offense registry and a scenario that could land someone on such a repugnant list:

A pedophile moves into a place, gains the trust of a young child with promises of things that he thinks will entice the child, make him or her feel safe, secure and trusting. Once that trust is gained, he shatters that child for the rest of his or her natural life. He then gets arrested and convicted for the offense and ends up having to register letting everyone know he’s a child molester and must stay away from kids.

But what about the instances where a man lives in a home among children and is known to be a horrible threat to them, while at the same time there’s an adult living there that cares for these kids, is aware of this predator’s continued despicable acts and turns a blind eye and even a deaf ear when these defenseless kids scream out for help, literally and figuratively?

In most places, the adult that sees no evil nor hears no evil would face prosecution, mainly for endangering the welfare of a child because he had every means available to stop these atrocities.

There are countless examples where one person is prosecuted because he or she failed to step in and help the child from being victimized when they had the ability to do so.

By law, teachers are mandatory reporters to the authorities when they suspect abuse, meaning that if there is reason to believe a child is abused and they fail to report it the teacher and school can be civilly liable.

So, can someone tell me why the pope, or cardinals in these parishes, where a despicable series of rapes and sexual assaults have occurred over and over, have not been prosecuted?

Are the pope and church leaders waiting for divine intervention to stop the abuse at the hands of these priests that are known to them to be sex offenders? Something should be done rather leaving this to correct itself internally.

I don’t think saying four Hail Marys and five Our Fathers will fix this one.

By Bindhu Vijayan
Immigration Attorney, The Law Offices of Spar & Bernstein

Kudos to the Supreme Court on the decision that immigrants to the United States have a constitutional right to be told by their lawyers whether pleading guilty to a crime could lead to their deportation.

We see many individuals in this office who are ineligible for forms of relief in removal/deportation proceedings or subject to mandatory detention and deportation as a result of past guilty pleas. Here’s a typical story – “My lawyer told me that if I plea guilty all I would do is pay a fine and be released. I didn’t know that this would be a problem.”

It’s a harsh lesson to learn that there are immigration consequences to criminal convictions, no matter how long ago the guilty plea was made.

Source: The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Immigrants to the United States have a constitutional right to be told by their lawyers whether pleading guilty to a crime could lead to their deportation, the U.S. Supreme Court said today.

The high court’s ruling extends the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment guarantee of “effective assistance of counsel” in criminal cases to immigration advice, especially in cases that involve deportation.

“The severity of deportation — the equivalent of banishment or exile — only underscores how critical it is for counsel to inform her noncitizen client that he faces a risk of deportation,“ said Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the opinion for the court.

The ruling came in the case of Jose Padilla, who was born in Honduras. Padilla asked the high court to throw out his 2001 guilty plea to drug charges in Kentucky, which made his deportation virtually mandatory.

Source: New York Times
By Nina Bernstein

ELMONT, N.Y. — When a police officer in this Long Island suburb found a marijuana cigarette in Jerry Lemaine’s pocket one night in January 2007, a Legal Aid lawyer counseled him to plead guilty. Under state statutes, the penalty was only a $100 fine, and though Mr. Lemaine had been caught with a small amount of marijuana years earlier as a teenager, that case had been dismissed.

But Mr. Lemaine, a legal permanent resident, soon discovered that his quick guilty plea had dire consequences. Immigration authorities flew him in shackles to Texas, where he spent three years behind bars, including 10 months in solitary confinement, as he fought deportation to Haiti, the country he had left at age 3.

Under federal rulings that prevailed in Texas, Mr. Lemaine had lost the legal opportunity that rulings in New York would have allowed: to have an immigration judge weigh his offenses, including earlier misdemeanors resolved without jail time, against other aspects of his life, like his nursing studies at Hunter Business School; his care for his little sister, a United States citizen with a brain disorder; and the help he gave his divorced mother, who had worked double shifts to move the family out of a dangerous Brooklyn neighborhood.

Now Mr. Lemaine, 28, is among thousands of noncitizens whose fate may hinge on a case to be argued on Wednesday before the United States Supreme Court, in a challenge to the way the government interprets immigration laws about drug-related convictions. The government maintains that for deportation purposes, two convictions for drug possession add up to the equivalent of drug trafficking, an “aggravated felony” that requires expulsion and prohibits immigration courts from granting exceptions based on individual life circumstances.

Read the rest of the story here.