Carl Shusterman Immigration Lawyer Blog

Immigration Blog

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

Immigration Reform in 2010

As Rodney King famously remarked, “Why can’t we all get along?” As Democrats and Republicans in Congress have spent the past year beating each other up regarding the health care bill, do we want the same thing to happen with immigration this year? At the moment, President Obama cannot even find two Republican senators out of 40 […]

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Lack of Checks and Balances in Removal Proceedings

The concept of separation of powers, and of “checks and balances”, is as old as Ancient Greece and the Roman Republic. Our Founding Fathers modeled the U.S. Constitution on principles derived from Enlightenment philosophers like Montesquieu, who believed that “the judiciary was generally seen as the most important of powers, independent and unchecked…” He specified that “the independence of the judiciary has […]

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Reforming the Immigration Court System

On February 2, a report entitled “Reforming the Immigration System: Proposals to Promote Independence, Fairness, Efficiency, and Professionalism in the Adjudication of Removal Cases” was presented to the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration. The report, which is almost 500-pages long, was prepared on a pro bono basis by the law firm of Arnold and Porter. Those who are interested […]

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Freeing a Family from CBP Custody: A Lawyer’s Perspective

A few weeks ago, I posted a story written by one of our clients, a Registered Nurse from the Philippines employed by a hospital in the U.S., who was stopped and held by CBP officers as she and her family tried to drive north from their home in El Centro, California near the U.S.-Mexican border to Palm […]

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Fix Our Broken Legal Immigration System

The State Department has released a report showing the increasing number of people with approved immigrant visa petitions at the National Visa Center who are waiting for their visa numbers to be current. The number is about three and one-half million. Given that our immigration laws permit only 376,000 people to immigrate to the U.S. each […]

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Universal Health Care Without Nurses?

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate each passed health care legislation in 2009, and the Administration is hoping to craft a compromise bill which would extend health insurance to an additional 30-40 million Americans. Although the Congressional debate was extremely contentious, one important issue was never debated: How can our country provide health care for tens of millions […]

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Obama’s 38 Words on Immigration

I listened intently to President Obama’s State of the Union speech yesterday. The man is clearly a gifted orator. He stressed the need for cooperation between Democrats and Republicans on the big issues facing our country: the economy, climate change, and health care reform, but where, oh where was immigration? Finally, after the President was over one hour […]

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CIR: You Can’t Always Get What You Want (When You Want It)

I am a strong supporter of Comprehensive Immigraton Reform (CIR). I have been on both sides of the fence. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was an attorney for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). I spent a couple of years representing the government in deportation proceedings, often conducted in Federal prisons. Are […]

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Federal Courts May Review I-751 Hardship Waiver Denials

In 1996, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA), which severely restricts the ability of Federal Courts to review decisions of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), especially those which are “discretionary” determinations. Many of these discretionary decisions involve whether “extreme hardship” or “extraordinary and extremely unusual hardship” exists in a specific case. We, therefore, are interested in […]

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EB-5 Regional Center Program: Fast Lane to Permanent Residence

Congress created the EB-5 immigrant investor program in the early 1990s, and set aside 10,000 visas per year for this program, in order to encourage foreign-born persons to invest money in the U.S. economy and to create jobs for U.S. workers. The program requires persons to invest $1 million in a business and to hire […]

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