Which Immigration Cases Will The Supreme Court Rule On This Session?

By Katie Rane www.immigrationimpact.com

The Supreme Court began a new session this October, and in the coming months, the justices will hear several high-profile immigration cases.

These cases involve the attempted termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative, the highly-criticized killing of a young boy in Mexico by a Border Patrol agent, and the criminal prosecution of immigrant workers.


The Termination of the DACA Initiative

On November 12, the Supreme Court will consider the Trump administration’s decision to end DACA, an Obama-era initiative that offers legal protection to some immigrants who arrived in the United States as children. Previous decisions from lower courts have temporarily stopped the termination.

The plaintiffs in this case (Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California) claim that the attempted rescission of DACA violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The APA outlines specific procedures that must be followed in implementing large-scale policy changes to prohibit executive decisions that are “arbitrary and capricious.”

The end of DACA would upend the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the United States and would increase the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States by nearly 700,000. This could have disastrous effects for DACA recipients, their families, and the country at large.


Young Boy in Mexico Killed by Border Patrol Agent

The Supreme Court will also hear a case on November 12 based on the story of a 15-year-old boy who was shot in Mexico by a Border Patrol agent in the United States. The case is Hernandez v Mesa.

Sergio Hernandez, a Mexican citizen, was playing with a friend in the canal between Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas when Border Patrol agent Jesus Mesa fired shots from the U.S. side. One bullet hit Hernandez, who was on the Mexican side of the border, killing him.

The Court will determine if Hernandez’s family can sue the Border Patrol agent for damages.

In order to recognize the family’s claim for damages, the Court must determine that the agent violated the U.S. Constitution by using excessive, deadly force against Hernandez. In making this determination, the Court will consider whether Agent Mesa is protected under “qualified immunity,” a legal doctrine that protects federal officers from prosecution when they act within the scope of their employment.

Cases involving excessive force and abuse rarely result in serious disciplinary action by the agency. A Bivens remedy in this case would create real consequences for immigration officials who violate noncitizens’ rights.

The Prosecution of Immigrant Workers The immigrant worker case (Kansas v. Garcia) deals with three individuals accused of identity theft—a state crime—based on information they provided in federal employment documents. On October 16, the Supreme Court will address whether federal documents can support state criminal charges and whether federal immigration law prevents states from criminally charging noncitizens for identity theft.

This case highlights a recurring pattern in the prosecution of unauthorized immigrant workers: it is the workers, not the employers, being brought to court.

For example, in the Mississippi ICE raids this summer, a federal investigator testified that there was probable cause to believe that employers hired unauthorized workers “for the purpose of commercial advantage or private financial gain.” Yet none of the employers have been prosecuted.

Each of these cases will have far-reaching policy implications affecting immigrants throughout the United States. Hopefully, the Court will take this opportunity to increase the due process rights of individuals impacted by immigration enforcement in the United States.

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4550-Immigration-Cases-Will-the-Supreme-Court-Rule.html

USCIS Wants To Make It Harder For Asylum Seekers To Get Work Permits

By Emily Creighton www.immigrationimpact.com

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently proposed a rule that will further delay asylum seekers’ ability to receive work authorization.

Under current law, USCIS must grant or deny an initial asylum applicant’s employment authorization application within 30 days. Under the proposed rule, USCIS would have no time frame in which it must decide the initial application.

An asylum applicant already must wait at least six months before receiving employment authorization if their asylum application has not already been decided. The 30-day rule allows an asylum applicant to apply for work authorization at the 150-day mark and have a decision by day 180.

Even with the 30-day rule, USCIS historically took far longer than 30 days to decide applications for employment authorization until a class-action lawsuit challenged the agency’s failure to comply with the 30-day deadline. In 2018, the court ordered USCIS to follow the 30-day rule. The agency now would like to reverse these developments.

USCIS states that the rule change will help “ensure USCIS has sufficient time to receive, screen and process” applications for employment authorization, but the agency seems laser-focused on fraud, stating that it needs more time to “reduce opportunities for fraud and protect the security-related processes” as it decides applications.

The agency, however, provides no evidence of fraud or security-related concerns related to the employment authorization process. It only vaguely references additional vetting and background checks that may take longer than 30 days.

Instead of devoting resources to comply with the regulatory time frame, USCIS is relinquishing responsibility for helping asylum applicants become self-sufficient as quickly as possible.

The impact of the delay caused by eliminating the 30-day rule would be multi-fold.

According to USCIS, the lost compensation to asylum applicants could range from approximately $255 to $744.76 million annually. Annual employment tax losses to the government could range from $39.15 to $118.54 million.

If this proposed rule goes into effect, asylum seekers will have even less assurance that they will be able to support themselves or their family during what is often a long and difficult asylum application process.

USCIS is in fact working against the idea that asylum applicants—who often have limited community connections and few resources—should independently support themselves as quickly as possible. The agency invokes security and fraud concerns to distract from its failure to meet a basic bureaucratic mandate—to timely adjudicate applications for employment authorization.

 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com 

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4480-USCIS-Harder-for-Asylum-Seekers-to-Get-Work-Permits.html

USCIS Processing Times Get Even Slower Under Trump

By Walter A. Ewing, Ph.D. 

The Trump administration has slowed the processing of immigration benefit applications to a crawl, causing needless harm to immigrants, their families, and their employers. Under President Trump, the backlog of applications at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) doubled in the span of only one year. 

A recent analysis of USCIS data by the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) refers to these “crisis-level delays” as “bricks in the Trump administration’s ‘invisible wall’ curbing legal immigration in the United States.” 

The numbers bear this out. According to AILA’s analysis, the average case processing time for all application types has increased 46 percent since Fiscal Year (FY) 2016—the last full fiscal year of the Obama administration. These escalating delays have occurred even when the number of new applications has fallen. For instance, from FY 2017 to 2018, processing times increased by 19 percent even though receipts of new applications declined 17 percent. So the delays cannot be plausibly blamed on rising workload. 

In fact, this state of affairs is exactly the opposite of what USCIS was intended to do. When USCIS was created in 2002, elimination of application backlogs—and prevention of future backlogs—were explicit priorities of the new agency. USCIS was meant to be an agency that provided immigration benefits to customers; it was not intended to function like an enforcement agency. 

But the tables have turned in the Trump era, with the institution of new security protocols that needlessly drag out the processing of virtually every application. For instance, in-person interviews are now required for each and every employment-based green card applicant. The administration’s overhaul of the refugee program has also brought processing of many cases to a complete standstill. 

From FY 2017 to FY 2018, the processing time of an N-400 (Application for Naturalization) rose from 8 months to over 10. Processing an I-485 (Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status) went from 8 to 11 months. And the processing time of an I-765 (Application for Work Authorization) rose from 3 to 4 months. 

Delays of this magnitude have serious repercussions when people can’t get a job, join their families, or escape refugee camps. The report cautions: 

“Longer processing times mean families struggle to make ends meet, survivors of violence and torture face danger, and U.S. companies fall behind.” 

The report suggests USCIS should begin providing service to its customers again rather than approaching everyone as a security risk. It also urges Congress to exercise some oversight authority over the agency, which has been sorely lacking during the past two years. Finally, USCIS operations should be made more transparent to the public so it is clear why applications take so long to process. 

USCIS processing delays and application backlogs under the Trump administration are having a devastating impact on the legal immigration system. This, in turn, is having an unnecessarily negative effect on families and employers across the country. 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com

http://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4010-USCIS-Processing-Times-Get-Even-Slower.html