PT-LawMom

That’s surely what the thousands of immigrants being held at detention centers nationwide are feeling these days, especially those who have lived in this country for years as legal residents and are suddenly being locked up for petty offenses committed years ago during their youth. How many of us regret things we did as a child? But should we have to die as a result? The New York Times has a heart-wrenching story about a man whose only crime was to overstay his tourist visa. He spent many years weaving elegant $2,000 gowns in New York City. When he tried to re-enter the U.S. after a recent vacation to his homeland, he was told that he application to adjust his status had been denied and he was jailed pending a hearing.

He should have been safe there. He should have received the same basic rights we are entitled to. But immigrants, as non-citizens, are not entitled to those same protections.

As the country debates stricter enforcement of immigration laws, thousands of people who are not American citizens are being locked up for days, months or years while the government decides whether to deport them. Some have no valid visa; some are legal residents, but have past criminal convictions; others are seeking asylum from persecution.

Death is a reality in any jail, and the medical neglect of inmates is a perennial issue. But far more than in the criminal justice system, immigration detainees and their families lack basic ways to get answers when things go wrong.

No government body is required to keep track of deaths and publicly report them. No independent inquiry is mandated. And often relatives who try to investigate the treatment of those who died say they are stymied by fear of immigration authorities, lack of access to lawyers, or sheer distance.

When Mr. Bah fell and fractured his skull, it took the detention center more than 24 hours to get him to a hospital. By the time they did, after hours of watching him vomit, he was in a coma and remained that way for four months before he died. His relatives had to track him down because no one informed them. When they tried to call the detention center, they were told the center could not give out any information.

Why is our country wasting its resources on people who are trying to better their lives and not on true “criminals.” And why is the government allowing the guards in these centers to get away with degrading and shaming people this way? The government got all high and mighty after Abu Ghraib and yet look what it is doing in its own country. How can we preach basic human rights to other countries and not practice what we preach?

While the Pope was spreading messages of peace, family unity and a calmer, more tolerant approach to immigration, ICE was continuing their family-destroying company raids. I thought it was a particularly interesting touch for them to time their biggest raids to coincide with the Pope’s major immigration speech alongside President Bush. I’m not Catholic, but I thought that was a pretty disrespectful move.

It has been 9 months since Chapin’s citizenship application was DENIED for “lack of good moral character” because of a discrepancy between his earlier applications and this one. They didn’t ask him about it in the 15-minute joke of an interview he had in January 2007, didn’t give him a chance to explain, did not even raise it as an issue — nope, just DENIED 8 months later. And, by the way, you suck. Oh, and we might just deport you if we feel like it. But, hey, no hard feelings.

According to the New York Times, this scenario is apparently playing out in living rooms across the United States. Hard-working, law-abiding people who have obeyed the process and taken the appropriate steps throughout every part of their immigration journey get to what should be the end and find out that they have hit a stone wall.

Largely overlooked in the charged debate over illegal immigration, many of these are long-term legal immigrants in the United States who were confident of success when they applied for naturalization, and would have continued to live here legally had they not sought to become citizens.

As applications for naturalization have surged, overburdened federal examiners, under pressure to make quick decisions and also weed out any security risks, prefer to err on the side of rejection, immigration lawyers and independent researchers said. In 2007, 89,683 applications for naturalization were denied, about 12 percent of those presented.

In the last 12 years, denial rates have been consistently higher than at any time since the 1920s.

Though precise figures are not available, an increasing number of these denials involve immigrants who believed they were in good legal standing, according to lawyers and researchers. Under the law, a number of grounds for naturalization denial can lead to an order of deportation, and appeals are more limited than in criminal cases.

“It’s no wonder there are so many illegal immigrants,” said Brad Darnell, an electrical engineer from Canada living in California who applied for citizenship but is also now fighting deportation. “The legal method is so intolerant and confusing.”

We have submitted an appeal. But, as I mentioned, it’s been 9 months and we have an immigration attorney we don’t necessarily trust who charged us almost $5,000 for a 3-page brief. The appeal process for these cases is purely administrative. Unlike all of the other immigration filings, you do not get a receipt from a central office and there is no one you can contact to find out the status. You just sit and wait and pray that sometime soon some immigration manager will either a) decide they screwed up and reverse the decision or b) call you in for a second hearing. In the meantime, Chapin plans to head to his country next month to visit his family. Although they said he’s still a legal resident for now, I’m praying he won’t get stopped at the border on his way back in…

The New York Times has a recent piece focusing on the huge hole in the Republican position on immigration — namely what happens to the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants currently in this country under their plan.

Except for Mr. McCain, the Republican candidates have skirted the issue or, worse, embraced the restrictionist approach known as “attrition.” That amounts to relentlessly tightening the screws in workplaces and homes until illegal immigrants magically, voluntarily disappear.

Making it work would require far more government intrusion into daily lives, with exponential increases in workplace raids and deportations. It would mean constant ID checks for everyone — citizens, too — with immigration police at the federal, state and local levels. It would mean enlisting bureaucrats and snoops to keep an eye on landlords, renters, laborers, loiterers and everyone who uses government services or gets sick.

Worst of all, it’s weak on law and order. It is a free pass to the violent criminals we urgently need to hunt down and deport. Attrition means waiting until we stumble across bad people hiding in the vast illegal immigrant haystack. Comprehensive reform, by bringing the undocumented out of the shadows, shrinks the haystack.

Do you know what I think? I don’t think they’re going to do anything except pass weak, token, piecemeal measures and then pick up the pieces when they have disastrous consequences. DHS is already facing the fallout from this past summer’s doubling of application fees, which resulted in 1.5 million additional citizenship applications filed in a one-year period without the necessary infrastructure in place to process those applications!

The immigration agency’s workload has nearly doubled, Aytes said, with 1.4 million naturalization applications arriving from October 2006 to September 2007, compared with 731,000 applications the year before. Between July and September of this year alone, USCIS received 560,000 applications, he said.

The number of green-card-related applications surged to 876,000 in fiscal 2007, from 497,000 in fiscal 2006, he said. At one point this summer, USCIS had 1 million applications and checks waiting to be opened and acknowledged, Aytes said, a backlog that now stands at 235,000. Overall, USCIS received 7.7 million applications for all types of immigration benefits, up from 6.3 million.

Of course they managed to deny Chapin’s citizenship two months after the new fees took effect. One more off the desk…

I have come down with a nasty cold this weekend. There’s a $265 speeding ticket in my purse that I got last week on my way back home after 72 hours straight at the ICU with a family member. I was supposed to meet with Pumpkinhead’s teacher for parent/teacher conference today but, bad Mommy that I am, I canceled and we spent the morning instead cuddling on the couch watching “Hercules.” This afternoon Chapin and I have to drive an hour across town to meet with his immigration attorney who, four months after filing his $4,600 five-page appeal brief (for denial of citizenship), has yet to give us a copy of that brief or proof of filing. I’m soooooo not up for it and I’ve told him he MUST talk because he is the client and she is his attorney. I will not do this for him anymore.

School, only in session one week, is already in high gear. We have group projects in both classes and I’ve already been dragged into groups (thank goodness because otherwise I probably would have found myself in serious trouble down the road). But they want to meet right away (like this week after class!) and I just cannot get motivated in the least. I was also supposed to meet with my co-representative for a school organization today but she didn’t get in touch so I’m going to let that slide. I’m going to try to have a low-key week and do only as much as I need to do to get through it. It’s frustrating because I had so hoped to start this semester off with a bang and instead it’s been one thing after another after another. I wanted to spend this weekend getting a lot done and recovering from last week’s events and instead I’ve gone through a half gallon of chicken noodle soup and two boxes of tissues.

This week I should hear back from the school’s accommodations committee regarding my neurologists’ requests that I not be grilled orally in class (my brain just can’t process quickly enough to get the answers to my mouth), that I be allowed to use a laptop in one (already know the answer is no for one professor, but I can use a tape recorder) and other helpful things. I should also be meeting with my supervisor about her meeting with my boss. He was extra nice after she met with him so maybe whatever she said got through. I don’t know. One of my coworker suggested floating but I was hired because of some specific technical skills that the desk requires so I’m not certain they would let me go that easily. I’ll just keep praying that a paralegal position opens up soon.

I’m so bummed. I picked our immigration attorney to handle the appeal of Chapin’s citizenship denial. She seemed good, has many years experience and has been chair of several local bar committees. But we’re having major problems with her. She said she was going to file a large brief and ended up filing only five pages, promising a second supplemental brief after that. She said she was going to tell us when we got close to our $5,000 retainer… and then charged us $4,700 just for the small brief (even though I had sent her several cases to save on research charges and transcribed a two-hour interview tape to also save money). Finally, I would think it should be standard practice to send copies of filings to clients, but despite multiple (10?) requests, we have yet to receive anything. She finally promised to send copies on the 4th of December, but we have yet to receive anything. She replied today, finally, and said that she mailed the documents personally on the 5th of December and is shocked that we haven’t received them. Mind you, she filed these documents in early October. When we first met with her she told us that once we file a notice of her appearance, withdrawing would mess everything up because she would have not notify the USCIS of the change in attorneys. This is really upsetting because a) that $5,000 was a lot of money for us and b) obviously we’re worried about upsetting things by switching attorneys at this point.

Her e-mail today suggests we come in for an appointment. Oh yes, because that way she can charge us $180/hour while she talks and talks and TALKS (she tends to go on and on). Chapin will be so pissed when he wakes up and I tell him.

I’ve really fallen down on the job in terms of my immigration-related posts lately. For one, the injustice just gets me down. But mostly it’s because my brain isn’t working too well these days and I just can’t get my head around things to get a serious post out. Yesterday Andrea wrote a very thoughtful post about Arizona’s state enforcement measure, which takes effect in January. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. It is my hope that the state gets hit hard and fast so that other states are deterred from passing similar measures. I’m also interested to see the additional legal challenges to the law once it is in effect.

P.S. I really like John Edwards. Obama and Clinton have both made similar pandering comments regarding immigration and it’s disappointing, but it does reflect the nation’s concern regarding this issue. I’m just not sure whether the issues aren’t being defined by the press and political rhetoric rather than by what the citizens as a whole actually want.

This article made me sick, but similar scenes are probably playing out all over the country. I think that people are in for a shock when the immigrant laborers leave for more accepting climates and suddenly, GASP, they have to pay a living wage and benefits if they want anyone to work for them. Or, OH NO, they actually have to pay a bit more at the local diner or nail salon because, you guessed it, the cheap labor has left the building. I’m not saying that the exploitation of these workers is fair or just, but I am saying that those who oppose immigrants (legal or illegal) often don’t realize just how positive of an effect they have on the local economy. Even the border states have found that the economic benefits come out ahead of the economic losses when they tally it all up.

Mr. Reza says he can’t understand why America accepts global flows of companies, money and jobs but not workers. Why faith in market forces seems to have been eclipsed by fear of immigrants. Or why the country cannot set up legal channels to let jornaleros come and go and not be hassled. “They actually are people with a work ethic that would make the Puritans proud,” he said.

Didn’t watch it, but after reading this article my only comment is that I’ve always liked John McCain.

Finally some good news for the people who have been targeted, often unfairly, by ICE raids (specifically, legal relatives or household members or children who have been scared out of their mind by these raids and torn away from their family members). A group of Bay Area law firms is forming a task force to challenge the constitutionality of the raids on behalf of these individuals.