The USCIS Administrative Appeals Office, or AAO, has administrative appellate jurisdiction over a wide variety of USCIS decisions that are not appealable to the Board of Immigration Appeals. This jurisdiction is primarily set forth in a regulatory list that has been absent from the Code of Federal Regulations since 2003, but was incorporated by reference […]
By David A. Isaacson On April 25, 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit released an amended opinion in Shabaj v. Holder, docket number 12-703. The prior opinion in Shabaj was the subject of a previous post on this blog. To summarize, Shabaj held that a claimed error by the USCIS Administrative Appeals […]
As most readers of this blog are likely aware, earlier this week the U.S. Senate’s “Gang of 8” – that is, Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY), John McCain (R-AZ), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Michael Bennet (D-CO), and Jeff Flake (R-AZ) – introduced a proposed comprehensive immigration reform bill. […]
On January 15, 2013, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a precedential decision in the case of Shabaj v. Holder, No. 12-703. Paulin Shabaj, the plaintiff in the case, had come to the United States in November 2000 with a false Italian passport and sought asylum. His asylum application was ultimately denied, […]
One year ago, a previous post on this blog by Cyrus Mehta and this author discussed the issuance by USCIS of a proposed rule allowing certain applicants for a waiver of the 3- or 10-year bars to obtain such a waiver on a provisional basis before departing from the United States. It has been a […]
By David A. Isaacson On September 7, 2012, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a precedential opinion in Ruqiang Yu v. Holder, No. 11-2546-ag, reaffirming that opposition to corruption may under some circumstances qualify as a political opinion upon which a grant of asylum can be based under U.S. immigration law. According […]
In a previous post on this blog, “The Prejudice Caused By Summary Removal After Visa Waiver Admission: What the Third Circuit Missed in Vera and Bradley”, I discussed the case of Vera v. Attorney General of the U.S., in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that a woman who had […]
In its decision earlier this month in the case of Vera v. Attorney General of the U.S., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that a woman who had entered the United States at the age of 12 under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) could be removed without a hearing before an […]
By David A. Isaacson Chief U.S. District Judge Sharon Blackburn of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama recently issued a memorandum opinion preliminarily enjoining the enforcement of certain portions of Alabama’s new immigration law but upholding other portions. This decision has already attracted substantial criticism, with the New York Times describing […]
By David A. Isaacson In its recent decision in the case of Khalid v. Holder, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rejected the 2009 decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) in Matter of Wang. The Fifth Circuit in Khalid held that a derivative beneficiary of an immigrant petition, whose adjusted […]
