Immigration Law

Since 1995, I have represented individuals and families who need help in navigating the complexities of the Immigration System for benefits.

 

I also represent people who are in Removal proceedings, whether that be for asylum, cancellation of removal, or adjustment of status. My asylum clients have come from nearly every troubled spot in the world, including Rwanda, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Central African Republic, both Congos, Iran, Gambia, Guinea, Ethiopia, Eritrea, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.

 

I am also one of the rare attorneys who truly loves appellate work. I have successfully represented clients at the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) and at the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Thursday he posted to Facebook a thorough explanation of the refugee resettlement process. He cites “the misinformation and outright lies” about the “refugee process and the Syrian refugees” as his motivation for writing.

Kudos for Pastor Hicks, Esq., for clarity. As you will see, attempted infiltration of the American refugee process by terrorists is not only unlikely, it’s bad strategy.

[H]ere is a bit of information from the real world of someone who actually works and deals with this issue.

 

The refugee screening process is multi-layered and is very difficult to get through. Most people languish in temporary camps for months to years while their story is evaluated and checked.

 

First, you do not get to choose what country you might be resettled into. If you already have family (legal) in a country, that makes it more likely that you will go there to be with family, but other than that it is random. So, you can not simply walk into a refugee camp, show a document, and say, I want to go to America. Instead, the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees) works with the local authorities to try to take care of basic needs. Once the person/family is registered to receive basic necessities, they can be processed for resettlement. Many people are not interested in resettlement as they hope to return to their country and are hoping that the turmoil they fled will be resolved soon. In fact, most refugees in refugee events never resettle to a third country. Those that do want to resettle have to go through an extensive process.

 

Resettlement in the U.S. is a long process and takes many steps. The Refugee Admissions Program is jointly administered by the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) in the Department of State, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and offices within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) within DHS conducts refugee interviews and determines individual eligibility for refugee status in the United States.

 

We evaluate refugees on a tiered system with three levels of priority.

 

First Priority are people who have suffered compelling persecution or for whom no other durable solution exists. These individuals are referred to the United States by UNHCR, or they are identified by the U.S. embassy or a non-governmental organization (NGO).

 

Second priority are groups of “special concern” to the United States. The Department of State determines these groups, with input from USCIS, UNHCR, and designated NGOs. At present, we prioritize certain persons from the former Soviet Union, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Iran, Burma, and Bhutan.

 

Third priority are relatives of refugees (parents, spouses, and unmarried children under 21) who are already settled in the United States may be admitted as refugees. The U.S.-based relative must file an Affidavit of Relationship (AOR) and must be processed by DHS.

 

Before being allowed to come to the United States, each refugee must undergo an extensive interviewing, screening, and security clearance process conducted by Regional Refugee Coordinators and overseas Resettlement Support Centers (RSCs). Individuals generally must not already be firmly resettled (a legal term of art that would be a separate article). Just because one falls into the three priorities above does not guarantee admission to the United States.

 

The Immigration laws require that the individuals prove that they have a “well-founded fear,” (another legal term which would be a book.) This fear must be proved regardless of the person’s country, circumstance, or classification in a priority category. There are multiple interviews and people are challenged on discrepancies. I had a client who was not telling the truth on her age and the agency challenged her on it. Refugees are not simply admitted because they have a well founded fear. They still must show that they are not subject to exclusion under Section 212(a) of the INA. These grounds include serious health matters, moral or criminal matters, as well as security issues. In addition, they can be excluded for such things as polygamy, misrepresentation of facts on visa applications, smuggling, or previous deportations. Under some circumstances, the person may be eligible to have the ground waived.

 

At this point, a refugee can be conditionally accepted for resettlement. Then, the RSC sends a request for assurance of placement to the United States, and the Refugee Processing Center (RPC) works with private voluntary agencies (VOLAG) to determine where the refugee will live. If the refugee does have family in the U.S., efforts will be made to resettle close to that family.

 

Every person accepted as a refugee for planned admission to the United States is conditional upon passing a medical examination and passing all security checks. Frankly, there is more screening of refugees than ever happens to get on an airplane. Of course, yes, no system can be 100% foolproof. But if that is your standard, then you better shut down the entire airline industry, close the borders, and stop all international commerce and shipping. Every one of those has been the source of entry of people and are much easier ways to gain access to the U.S. Only upon passing all of these checks (which involve basically every agency of the government involved in terrorist identification) can the person actually be approved to travel.

 

Before departing, refugees sign a promissory note to repay the United States for their travel costs. This travel loan is an interest-free loan that refugees begin to pay back six months after arriving in the country.

 

Once the VOLAG is notified of the travel plans, it must arrange for the reception of refugees at the airport and transportation to their housing at their final destination.
This process from start to finish averages 18 to 24 months, but I have seen it take years.

 

The reality is that about half of the refugees are children, another quarter are elderly. Almost all of the adults are either moms or couples coming with children. Each year the President, in consultation with Congress, determines the numerical ceiling for refugee admissions. For Fiscal Year (FY) 2016, the proposed ceiling is 85,000. We have been averaging about 70,000 a year for the last number of years. (Source: Refugee Processing Center)

 

Over one-third of all refugee arrivals (35.1 percent, or 24,579) in FY 2015 came from the Near East/South Asia—a region that includes Iraq, Iran, Bhutan, and Afghanistan.
Another third of all refugee arrivals (32.1 percent, or 22,472) in FY 2015 came from Africa.
Over a quarter of all refugee arrivals (26.4 percent, or 18,469) in FY 2015 came from East Asia — a region that includes China, Vietnam, and Indonesia. (Source: Refugee Processing Center)

 

Finally, the process in Europe is different. I would be much more concerned that terrorists are infiltrating the European system because they are not nearly so extensive and thorough in their process.

See also: Is it easy for Syrian refugees to get to America?

Syrian refugees: Competing narratives may confuse

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Featured image credit: Photo © Dominic Chavez/World Bank

Masterpiece

Graded on a Curve: 
Scott Fagan, 
South Atlantic Blues

BY JOSEPH NEFF | NOVEMBER 24, 2015

Scott Fagan’s tale holds a circuitous course of impressive connections, valiant attempts, and unfortunate misses, but it’d be anticlimactic without a worthwhile record in the equation; the fresh reissue of South Atlantic Blues helps provide enduring relevance to the narrative. Originally released by Atco in 1968 to utter consumer neglect, it’s a rediscovery requiring neither qualifications nor special pleading, for nobody else cooked up a progressive stew of folk, pop, and soul quite like this one. It’s out now through Saint Cecilia Knows, the first 1,000 hand numbered copies of the LP featuring 180gm vinyl and a heavy-duty tip-on jacket exclusively reproducing Jasper Johns’ lithograph “Scott Fagan Record.”

Scott Fagan’s father was a musician (reportedly a saxophonist and singer) who kept company with such heavyweights as Dizzy Gillespie and Lester Young, while his dancer mother raised him in an art colony on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas. As a teen Fagan played rock ‘n’ roll in an act christened The Urchins and in the mid-‘60s stowed away for Florida, eventually making his way to New York where he immediately scored an in-person audition with Brill Building songwriters Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman.

Consequently, Fagan was signed to Pomshu Productions, receiving two years of mentoring from the duo as he and Pomus wrote “I’m Gonna Cry Till My Tears Run Dry,” a hit for Irma Thomas later waxed by Linda Ronstadt. Pomshu additionally secured deals for Fagan, first with Columbia, where he cut an unreleased single, and then via Bert Berns’ Bang Records, the association producing ‘66’s “Give Love a Chance” b/w “Tutsie.”

The story takes a wild turn as Fagan almost became an Apple signing, South Atlantic Blues amongst the candidates to be the first non-Beatles-related album issued by the label (a distinction belonging to the self-titled debut of James Taylor, though the Modern Jazz Quartet’s Under the Jasmine Tree is documented as sharing the same release date in the UK and US.)

Instead, Fagan landed at Atco, and by ’69 his LP was in the cutout bins; the copy plucked by Jasper Johns inspired three lithographs by the Modern Art cornerstone all titled “Scott Fagan Record,” one currently housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, another in the Museum of Modern Art, and the third at the Walker Art Center. And all this colorful background is capped off by Fagan being the biological father of Stephin Merritt, the esteemed songwriter behind The Magnetic Fields and numerous related projects.

Fagan knew nothing of his paternity until 2000 after Merritt mentioned it on NPR, and they didn’t meet in person until 2013. This distance is reflected in the stylistic diversity between father and son, with any similarities generally implicit though it is worth noting both Fagan and Merritt specialize in non-Rock sensibilities. Of the two, Fagan was more adjusted to his times, as Merritt has essentially thrived as a non-calculated anachronism supplying Broadway/show tune pop classicism to the indie crowd.

South Atlantic Blues was produced by Elmer Jared Gordon (who’d worked with Pearls Before Swine) and arranged by Horace Ott (noted as the writer of “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”) with the personnel rumored to include drummers Bernard Purdie and Jimmy Johnson of the Sun Ra Arkestra. The results have procured a distinguished list of comparisons: Scott Walker, the Tims Hardin and Buckley, Donovan, Lou Reed, young David Bowie, and the Van Morrison of Astral Weeks, it and South Atlantic Blues’ emergence in the same month underscoring that Fagan wasn’t beholden to anybody else’s style.

Described on more than one occasion as a song cycle, the LP does embody the era’s ambitiousness without ever falling victim to it. “In My Head” opens the record strongly, matching touches of the baroque to horn section boldness as Fagan’s testifying bears more than a slight resemblance to Donovan in a soulful frame of mind.

But perhaps the most striking element is Fagan’s voice, the unforced nature of his delivery, frequently emitting an idiosyncratic quaver, substantially reinforcing the comparisons above. “Nickels and Dimes” is also a more identifiable ‘60s folk-pop merger as the vocals exude emotionalism and avoid the effete or the fragile across each side. However, the strings in “Crying” do reinforce an air of sophistication nicely offset by the subtle weight of the horns.

Borrowed soul/R&B trappings were often overzealously applied during the period of South Atlantic Blues’ making but are tasteful in this instance and extend to the upbeat “The Carnival Has Ended,” the aura mingling with Victor Brady’s non-trite steel pans as the unique qualities of Fagan’s voice acquire warmth and ride up front in the mix. “South Atlantic Blues” contrasts; one of the record’s more folk-inclined numbers, it offers an appealing blend of acoustic and electric guitars and percussion as Fagan’s powerful singing maintains a sense of control throughout.

From there, “Nothing but Love” is punchy folk-soul with charts leaning to the pop side of the Stax spectrum, and “Tenement Hall” is a slower, earthier groove, initially restrained and building toward bursts of expression abetted by the surges of horn. Effectively halving the tune is an out of left-field flight of abstraction followed by a moment of silence that’s just as unexpected; composure restored, the song course is reset, and culminates in an abruptly wild ending.

Alternately reminiscent of Van and Buckley, the direct folky air of “In Your Hands” pairs well with title track, while “Crystal Ball” is a surprising bit of late-‘60s neo-Tin Pan Alley augmented with hints of ‘50s pop, especially in Fagan’s brief spoken section; strings add a psychedelic touch near the end. Closing selection “Madame-Moiselle” mildly recalls Scott Walker’s early solo albums if they were as influenced by later-‘60s Motown as Jacques Brel; ultimately it’s not that distant from the mood, if not necessarily the overall sound, of Love’s Forever Changes.

Fagan’s debut doesn’t reach the heights of that masterpiece (nor Astral Weeks) but it is a remarkably assured statement and far less a curio than yet another legit addition to the ‘60’s hefty shelf. After a promising start Fagan was beset by a series of commercial obstacles, subsequently cutting a 45 in ’69 for Epic, co-writing the ’71 rock musical Soon (with a pre-fame Richard Gere in the cast, it managed three performances), and seeing Many Sunny Places issued in ’75 by RCA.

It seems Fagan reacted to it all in a manner befitting his bohemian upbringing, an outlook exquisitely detailed on South Atlantic Blues.

GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-

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John Oliver, Paris and f**king a-holes

Sarah Larson

SARAH LARSON

NOVEMBER 16, 2015

Vive John Oliver

John Oliver delivered a “moment of premium-cable profanity” on Sunday: “First, as of now, we know that this attack was carried out by gigantic fucking assholes.”John Oliver delivered a “moment of premium-cable profanity” on Sunday: “First, as of now, we know that this attack was carried out by gigantic fucking assholes.”CREDITHBO

After hearing about the terror attacks in Paris, on Friday, many of us spent the weekend in some combination of grief, shock, and the familiar feeling of trying to reconcile our pleasant or mundane plans—doing some work, visiting with a beloved cousin, getting ready for a birthday party—with thinking about the unspeakable horror, distant but psychically near, that had ruined the lives of countless others. In conversations this weekend, in life and online, what came through was mass sadness, the usual desperate and limited attempts to understand what had happened, who had done it, and why. On social media, people in Paris posted that they were heartbroken but all right; Americans, and others, overlaid their Facebook photographs with the tricolor. People posted photographs of themselves smiling in front of the Eiffel Tower, images from “Madeline” and “Le Petit Prince,” clips from “Children of Paradise” and “Casablanca”— the “Marseillaise” scene, of course—and photographs of everything from One World Trade to the Sydney Opera House to the Burj Khalifa lit with blue, white, and red lights. Some pointed out, rightly, that the terrorist attacks in Beirut the day before had not received the same attention in the Western press or in the public’s response. Others pointed out, rightly, that some of these observations amounted to criticizing people for grieving.

On Sunday, France started bombing Islamic State targets in Syria. People everywhere argued about Syria, ISIS, refugees, 9/11 and the U.S. response to it, Islam, prejudice, immigration, extremism, and the cycle of violence and fear that continues to churn. A man at a Packers-Lions game yelled “Muslims suck!” during a moment of silence for the terror victims, and a quarterback criticized him for it. (“It’s that kind of prejudicial ideology that, I think, puts us in the position that we’re in today, as a world.”) You might have found yourself moved by some friends’ responses, annoyed by others (everything from self-important to completely unfazed), frustrated at yourself for being so powerless and inept in the grand scheme of things, and exhausted by your own millions of opinions and micro-opinions.

If you happened to be up late watching John Oliver before bed, you, like me, might have found yourself laughing and crying, having the first cathartic emotional response you’d had since Friday, and grateful for it.

“Look, it’s hardly been forty-eight hours, and much is still unknown,” Oliver said at the beginning of his show, “Last Week Tonight.” “But there are a few things we can say for certain. And this is where it actually helps to be on HBO, where those things can be said without restraint.” What HBO could help him provide, he said, was a “moment of premium-cable profanity”: a gift that HBO has provided many great works, and which should be commended. Oliver is a master of tone and timing—I’ve often marvelled that the show’s writing is so well suited to his voice, and that he’s so skilled at delivering it, that he seems to be thinking aloud, just talking, when he’s actually performing an aria of high-grade “Thick of It”-style sweary indignation. He’s part news anchor, part gleeful nerd—a formula that’s almost scientific in its ability to deliver hard-core information with chasers of wit. In this, however, he was just giving us a kind of release.

“So here is where things stand. First, as of now, we know that this attack was carried out by gigantic fucking assholes, unconscionable, flaming assholes, possibly, possibly working with other fucking assholes, definitely working in service of an ideology of pure assholery,” he said. His audience began to laugh. “Second, and this goes almost without saying, Fuck these assholes!” The audience began to cheer. “Fuck them, if I may say, sideways!” He made some definitive hand gestures. Third, he said, nothing these assholes attempt is going to work. “France is going to endure. And I’ll tell you why. If you are in a war of culture and life style with France, good fucking luck!” More cheering. “Go ahead, go ahead. Bring your bankrupt ideology. They’ll bring Jean-Paul Sartre, Edith Piaf, fine wine, Gauloises cigarettes, Camus, Camembert, madeleines, macarons”—images of these appeared behind him as he spoke—“Marcel Proust, and the fucking croquembouche!” An image of what looked like a glazed-cream-puff Christmas tree popped up. He waved his hands and pointed at it. “The croquembouche! You just brought a philosophy of rigorous self-abnegation to a pastry fight, my friends. You are fucked! That is a French freedom tower!” The crowd howled with delight.

For clarity of expression and comedic effectiveness, John Oliver’s show may be the best and purest show on television—the most useful satire, the highest satisfaction-to-filler ratio of anything we’ve got. It takes the best of the “Daily Show” and “Nightly Show” model—brilliant satirical writing, a sharp point of view, a strong voice, deep empathy, righteous outrage—and lacks those shows’ uneven desk bits, field interviews, guest conversations, and group hangs, which can either work well and bring valuable insights or, more often, feel like strained concessions to old TV formats that hope to please a mass audience. “Late Night with Stephen Colbert” gives us a Colbert freed from the limitations of his ingenious pundit character but coöperating with the demands of the mass market. “Last Week Tonight,” on HBO—free from all of that, and from the many-episodes-a-week grind, and able to swear willy-nilly—is able to offer something focussed and wonderful: a glorious croquembouche of profanity, fury, silliness, and intelligence that we didn’t know we needed until it arrived and wouldn’t want to do without. It has comedic authority and moral intelligence that can help fill the Jon Stewart-shaped hole in our lives—providing a good laugh-sob to help maintain sanity, and maybe even a decent Sunday night’s sleep, so that on Monday morning we can get back to trying to figure it all out.