Carl Shusterman Immigration Lawyer Blog

Immigration Blog

Former INS Attorney Carl Shusterman has been writing an immigration blog on a regular basis since 1996.

The Part of Illegal That I Don’t Understand

What part of “illegal” don’t you understand? This question is the traditional refrain of the anti-immigrant crowd. What they don’t seem to understand is that, in the same family, one spouse may be illegal while the other spouse is a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident. Their children may also be U.S. citizens. In such cases, does it make […]

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Liberty and Justice for All?

As everybody knows by now, recently, Arizona’s Governor signed a law requiring local law enforcement officials to take into custody persons when they have a “reasonable suspicion” that they are present in the U.S. illegally. The person would be turned over to the Immigration Service, and be released from jail if they could demonstrate their legal status. Last […]

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Above the Law?

Tomorrow, on May 13, the Senate Finance Committee will take up the nomination of Alan Bersin to be the Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), an agency with a staff of 57,000 and a budget of $11 billion. As the nation’s “border czar”, Bersin would be responsible for enforcing our immigration laws. As a matter of […]

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I Beg Your Pardon

Today’s New York Times featured an article revealing that New York Governor David Paterson is establishing a state panel to review pardon applications for legal immigrants who may face deportation because they were convicted of minor crimes in the distant past. Governor Paterson, in a speech to judges, called some of our immigration laws “embarrassingly […]

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10 Things We Like About the New CIR Proposal

On April 28, Democratic Senators began circulating a 26-page comprehensive immigration reform proposal which may soon be introduced in the Senate in bill form. Some of the ideas in this proposal are good, some bad, and a few are ugly. In this post, we discuss what we like about the proposal, in particular, some much needed reforms in the legal […]

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Big Government Comes to Arizona

Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) must be rolling in his grave. The conservative Republican senator from Arizona ran for President in 1964 on a platform condemning “Big Government”. As a kid, I read Goldwater’s “Conscience of a Conservative” and came away with a strong conviction that America was founded on the principle of individual freedom, and that no […]

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Padilla – Bring Back the JRAD?

Thanks to a healthy dose of jet lag (My wife and I just returned from walking on the Great Wall of China a few days ago!), I finally found the time to read the Supreme Court’s new decision in Kentucky v. Padilla. Although I was impressed that Justice Stevens, in the majority opinion, found that y criminal […]

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Good News For Filipinos

May 2010 promises to be a very good month for persons born in the Philippines who wish to immigrate to the U.S. through their relatives. Of course, when you are born in a country with some of the longest waiting times in the world for family-based immigration, “good” is a relative term. Want to immigrate through […]

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Shades of Grey

This evening, I watched a debate on television between a proponent and an opponent of comprehensive immigration reform aka CIR. The proponent emphasized that we need CIR not for the benefit of the undocumented, but because it would stimulate the American economy. The opponent said that this amounted to “open borders” and that our immigration system was already […]

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They Shoot Speeders, Don’t They?

The Highway Patrol officer pulls over a speeder on the freeway. It’s a young woman in a Red Camaro. “Do you know how fast you were  going?”, he questions her. “I don’t know, officer”, she stammers, “I’m late for a job interview, and I wasn’t paying a lot of attention. I’m really sorry.”  “Not as sorry as I am” replies the officer, […]

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