On August 6, 2017, CBS News reported that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) apprehended 445 individuals illegally crossing the U.S.-Canada border into the United States from Canada in the first six months of 2018. This marks a 142-percent increase from the same period in 2017.
On July 31, 2018, Buzzfeed News reported that fifteen former immigration judges signed a letter criticizing the decision of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) to remove and replace sitting immigration judge from the case of Castro-Tum. In this post, I review the situation and the letter from the retired IJs.
On August 1, 2018, the U.S. Department of State (DOS) announced that it had added five U.S. host campuses to its EducationUSA Academy network for summer 2019. They will join the eleven other host institutions which also participated in summer 2018.
On July 30, 2018, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it had returned all fiscal year 2019 H1B cap-subject petitions that were not selected in the H1B lottery.
On June 28, 2018, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued Policy Memorandum (PM)-602-0050.1, titled “Updated Guidance for the Referral of Cases and Issuances of Notices to Appear (NTAs) in Cases Involving Inadmissible and Deportable Aliens.” The USCIS has temporarily delayed implementation of the memorandum until internal operational guidance is completed.
On July 24, 2018, CNN reported that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has instructed U.S. Attorney’s offices to not use the term “`undocumented’ immigrants.” CNN included the guidance with the article. Although the CNN report does not specify the scope of the guidance until the penultimate passage of the article, the original document in fact applies to terminology used in press releases issued by U.S. Attorney’s Offices. In this post, I will briefly examine the DOJ guidance posted by CNN.
On July 17, 2018, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published a news alert titled “Attorneys and Accredited Representatives Can Now File Form N-565 Online.” The news update deals with the Form N-565, Application for Replacement Naturalization/Citizenship Document. It explains that attorneys and accredited representatives may now file the Form N-565 for their clients by using their myUSCIS online account.
On July 19, 2018, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) announced that it launched an electronic filing pilot program at the San Diego Immigration Court that same week.
In a previous post, I discussed Israeli judoka Tal Flicker’s winning a major international judo competition at the Abu Dhabi Judo Grand Slam while the tournament’s Emirati hosts discriminated against the Israeli competitors by refusing to allow them to compete under the Israeli flag. In welcome news, the International Judo Federation announced that it had suspended the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam and the Tunis Grand Prix (hosted in Tunisia) for their discrimination against Israeli athletes.
On July 13, 2018, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published Policy Memorandum (PM)-602-0163, titled “Issuance of Certain RFEs and NOIDs; Revisions to Adjudicator's Field Manual (AFM) Chapter 10.5(a), Chapter 10.5(b).” In the decision, the USCIS changed its policy on when adjudicators may deny an application, petition, or request without first issuing a Request for Evidence (RFE) or a Notice of Intent to Deny (NOID). To learn about the new rules, please see our full article on the Policy Memorandum. In this blog post, I will explain why I think that the Policy Memorandum directs the implementation of a bad policy that will increase the discretion of bureaucrats to make poorly-reasoned decisions at the expense of those making filings with the USCIS.
