SAN JOSE – Immigration advocacy groups in the Bay Area are calling on Congress to pass a new bill that would give nearly 8 million immigrants a pathway to legal residency.
The bill, "Renewing Immigration Provisions of the Immigration Act of 1929," was co-authored by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, who held a news conference Wednesday morning in Washington, D.C., to announce the bill's introduction in the House of Representatives. The bill would update the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1929 to allow anyone who has lived in the United States for seven or more years to be registered for legal, permanent residency, as long as they meet other criteria, according to a statement from Lofgren. "For decades, immigrants who contribute significantly to our communities and our economy, have been relegated to a legal limbo," said Lofgren. "I'm proud to join my colleagues in introducing this legislation to provide these immigrants with the stability and certainty they and their families deserve." The bill is being supported by 66 Bay Area advocacy groups that make up the Bay Area Coalition for Citizenship and Economic Rights. Esmeralda Virelas, a community organizer with People Acting in Community Together, known as PACT, said that it is time to give relief to people who have been here for many years. "This bill will do that for nearly 8 million people through a law that already exists," Virelas said. The Immigration and Nationality Act has been updated four times since its inception, according to Richard Hobbs, an immigration attorney and executive director of Human Agenda, an immigrant advocacy group. The most recent change was in 1986, which moved the date of eligibility to 1972. Unlike past updates, the bill introduced Wednesday would not peg the entry date to a specific year but would establish seven years of continuous residency in the U.S. as the new eligibility cutoff. If you have a criminal record, it is likely that you will encounter issues entering Canada. If you are a foreign national who has been convicted of an offense or arrested, you may be criminally inadmissible to Canada. No matter the reason for travel, any individual with a criminal record is subject to Canada’s strict entry requirements. Inadmissibility issues can arise when foreign national artists need to come to Canada temporarily for shows or performances. Fame and fortune by no means guarantee entry into Canada. Several celebrities have been denied entry over the last few years, including singers, actors, comedians and even members of their supporting crew. Fortunately, there may be solutions available to you as long as you prepare in advance. Depending on the nature of your crime and the time passed since your most recent offense, there are temporary and permanent solutions to address the issue of criminal inadmissibility. There are three main ways to overcome criminal inadmissibility to Canada:
Criminal Rehabilitation ApplicationIf it has been at least five years since the completion of the imposed sentence, an individual can submit an application for criminal rehabilitation. This application permanently clears your past criminal history for the purpose of entering Canada. Upon receiving approval for criminal rehabilitation, the individual will no longer be considered inadmissible to Canada. In order to be eligible for criminal rehabilitation, you must meet the following criteria:
Temporary Resident Permit ApplicationIf it has been less than five years since the completion of the imposed sentence, an individual can instead apply for a Temporary Resident Permit (TRP). This application grants temporary access to Canada for a certain period of time. A TRP is given in situations where a traveller has a valid reason for entering Canada and the benefits of their entry outweigh any risks to Canadian society. A TRP can be granted for up to three years, depending on the reasons for entry, and does not require the completion of a criminal sentence. Legal Opinion LetterA legal opinion letter, which is drafted by a Canadian immigration lawyer, will explain the consequences of a conviction for Canadian immigration purposes. It will refer to relevant sections of Canadian law to help the official decide how to respond to charges and how different outcomes (conviction, sentencing, etc.) would affect the traveller’s ability to come to Canada. The effects of inadmissibility can have severe effects on employment as well as ability to see family members in Canada, so the letter can appeal to a judge’s compassion and be taken into consideration when deciding on an outcome.
‘The System Is Creating Death': Calls for Immigration Reform Follow Migrant Tragedy in San Antonio6/29/2022
Policy experts and immigration attorneys argue that it’s decades of failed immigration policy — not one party or administration — that led to Monday's tragedy and others like it.
Just hours after news broke Monday that dozens of people — later confirmed to be migrants — were found dead inside a tractor-trailer in San Antonio, lawmakers and advocacy groups took part in a partisan blame game. Gov. Greg Abbott blamed the president in a tweet: “These deaths are on at Biden. They are a result of his deadly open border policies.” The League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, instead blamed Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, a state-funded and -operated border-security mission, and former President Trump’s immigration policies. “The politics of President Trump and Governor Abbott to build the wall, deport them all, and Operation Lone Star have all been abysmal failures,” said Domingo Garcia, LULAC’s national president. But policy experts and immigration attorneys argue that it’s decades of failed immigration policy — not one party or administration — that led to the tragedy and others like it. “The idea that any one president is responsible for things like this is simply not in line with the facts. And, similarly, we have seen incidents like this occur in countries around the world,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, the policy director at the American Immigration Council, a Washington-based research and advocacy organization. “This is evidence of the systematic failure of the United States and other nations to update their legal immigration systems for a modern era of global displacement.” The death toll after Monday’s discovery increased to at least 51 Tuesday after some migrants taken to the hospital later died, Texas Public Radio reported. Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrand said 22 of the migrants were Mexican, seven were from Guatemala, two were from Honduras, and the remaining people have not yet been identified. Though the number of fatalities is staggering compared to other smuggling events, Reichlin-Melnick said, the motivation that led to similar tragedies was the same. “The last time we updated our legal immigration system was November 1990, months before the first website went online,” he said, referring to the Immigration Act of 1990 that raised the cap on legal migration. “For many migrants [now], there is simply no way to legally immigrate to the United States. And even for people who do have a path to get a visa to the United States, that path is often so expensive and time consuming that it is not practically possible.” Eduardo Beckett, an El Paso-based immigration attorney who specializes in asylum cases, said Republicans have had success in crafting an anti-immigrant message while Democrats can’t or won’t push back on the policy front. “The right-wing, the Trump [supporters], the anti-immigrants are loud and more in the open, they don’t hold back, but in reality, it’s the whole system,” he said. Beckett specifically said that Title 42, a Trump-era, public health policy that allows federal border officials to immediately expel migrants at the United States southern border, likely increased the migrants’ sense of desperation. The policy has been in place since March 2020 and the Biden administration, despite an outcry from immigrant rights groups, kept it in place until earlier this year. (The policy is still in effect due to a court order issued last month.) “Title 42 should have ended right away, Biden dragged his feet,” he said. “So he’s to blame for that. But this has been going on for years, all the way back to the Clinton administration. I think the system is working exactly as it’s supposed to be. Less people are getting in the legal way.” That leads more people to turn to criminals and smugglers for a chance at entering the country, Beckett added. “Things need to change. There needs to be a humane way for people to apply, to come here whether it’s for asylum or whether it’s to work as an agricultural worker. Because the system is creating death, right now. At the border and everywhere around the world.” Monday’s fatal smuggling attempts came as the number of migrants encountered by U.S. Border Patrol agents at the southern border continues to climb to near-record levels. There were about 239,400 encounters between federal agents and migrants at the southwest border in May, a 2% increase compared to April, according to Customs and Border Protection. Texas continues to see the highest number of apprehensions, especially in the Rio Grande Valley, where there have been more than 333,000 encounters since the beginning of the federal government’s fiscal year in October, according to CBP statistics. That’s followed by the Del Rio Sector, where there have been more than 280,600 in the same time frame. Border Patrol agents along the southern border recorded in May an all-time monthly high in apprehensions, processing migrants who entered the U.S. unlawfully over 222,000 times as part of a historic migration event, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) statistics released Wednesday show.
May's tally of migrant arrests surpassed the previous monthly record U.S. Border Patrol set in March 2000, when the agency recorded just over 220,000 apprehensions, according to historical government data for the past two decades. U.S. authorities also reported processing another 17,000 unauthorized migrants at official border ports of entry, where the Biden administration has been admitting some asylum-seekers deemed to be vulnerable so they can continue their immigration proceedings inside the country. The statistics published Wednesday show the unprecedented levels of migrant arrivals recorded along the U.S.-Mexico border over the past year under President Biden have only continued to intensify, posing major humanitarian, logistical and political challenges for his administration. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has processed migrants over 1.5 million times in fiscal year 2022, which will end at the end of September, a tally that is on track to exceed the record 1.7 migrant arrivals in fiscal year 2021. Republican lawmakers have said the unprecedented number of migrant arrests stem solely from Biden administration decisions to end some Trump-era restrictions. The administration and its allies, however, have said the record border arrivals are part of a broader displacement crisis fueled by pandemic-era economic woes, natural disasters, violence and political repression in parts of Latin America. May's historic tally of border arrests was, in part, driven by record arrivals of Colombian and Nicaraguan migrants, high numbers of Cuban asylum-seekers continuing to reach the Mexican border and a sharp increase in Haitians entering U.S. immigration custody. Arrivals of migrants from Brazil, Ecuador, Russia and other nations also increased. The soaring number of migrant arrivals has also been partly fueled by an unusually high rate of migrants crossing the border multiple times after being returned to Mexico. CBP said Wednesday that 25% of the migrant encounters in May involved migrants who had been previously stopped by the agency in the past year. Nearly 77,000 of the migrant encounters in May involved Mexicans; 25,348 involved Cubans; 21,382 involved Guatemalans; 19,491 involved Hondurans; 19,040 involved Colombians; 18,944 involved Nicaraguans; 10,418 involved Haitians; 8,955 involved Salvadorans; 5,118 involved Brazilians; 5,078 involved Venezuelans; 3,394 involved Russians and 3,045 involved Ecuadoreans. Approximately 100,000 of the CBP encounters in May led to migrants being expelled to Mexico or their home country without a chance to request asylum under a pandemic-era policy known as Title 42, agency data show. The Biden administration sought to end Title 42 last month, citing improving public health conditions, but a federal court required officials to continue the expulsions indefinitely. Decisions on whether to expel migrants under Title 42 depend on their nationality, age, the U.S. region where they are processed, diplomatic relations with their home countries and operational considerations by the government and the border-area organizations that shelter and assist asylum-seekers. In the past year, the Biden administration has used Title 42 mainly on single adults. In May, U.S. officials expelled single adults over 90,000 times, representing 90% of all expulsions that month. Another 74,550 single adults were processed under U.S. immigration law, which allows them to seek asylum. We need to look beyond the current legal arguments over whether or not the Biden administration can — or should — terminate Title 42 order, which requires U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to process undocumented land border crossers promptly without asylum screening or other Title 8 immigration processes — and then to expel them back to the country they came from through the closest port of entry. The simple fact is the Title 42 order — instituted in 2020 as part of the previous administration’s pandemic response — will be terminated eventually. What then? Nearly 2 million migrants have been expelled under the order since it was implemented, and all indications are that the Biden administration is entirely unprepared for what will happen when the order ends. Brief Background
The Biden administration announced that expulsions under the order would stop at the end of May; several states sued, and a federal district court judge issued a preliminary injunction ordering the Biden administration to hold off. The judge issued the injunction because he thought the states had established a substantial likelihood of success with their claim that the administration’s termination did not comply with the Administrative Procedure Act’s (APA) rulemaking requirements. The administration has appealed — but it doesn’t have to reverse the judge’s injunction to be able to terminate the order: It could just start over with a new termination using the judge’s decision as guidance on how to comply with the APA requirements. The administration may be stalling because it hasn’t figured out how to deal with the flood of illegal crossings that will almost certainly occur when the order is terminated. Two Problems National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd has expressed concern that termination of the Title 42 order will open the floodgates to illegal immigration. Border patrol resources are stretched when 3,500 illegal crossers a day are apprehended. When the total reaches 5,000 the border patrol’s resources are overwhelmed. The administration is expecting up to 18,000 a day. That isn’t the only problem. According to Chris Cabrera, a National Border Patrol Council vice president, drug smugglers use the migrant groups that make illegal crossings to distract agents. When border patrol officers are taken from their patrol duties to process illegal crossers, the border sections they are abandoning are unprotected. Many agents are starting their days at processing stations, hospitals, or in transportation details instead of out on patrol. “So from the beginning of our 10-hour shift we already lost half our manpower,” Cabrera said. “One or two hours in we lose another 10 percent. By the end of our shift, we’re down to maybe 30 percent out on the field.” Former presidents have used National Guard troops to fill gaps on the border when the border patrol has been overwhelmed. George W. Bush deployed roughly 6,000 National Guard troops to the border; Barack Obama sent about 1,200, and Donald Trump sent around 2,500. But there are limits on how a president can use soldiers at the border. Posse Comitatus Act The Posse Comitatus Act, which was enacted on June 18, 1878, restricts what presidents can do on the border with military forces. It consists of a single sentence. The current, amended version, states that: “Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, or the Space Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.” (Emphasis added.) The National Guard isn’t mentioned, but when its troops are operating under federal command and control it is considered to be part of the Army or the Air Force. |